Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Pilger on British/American Imperialism
Published on Sunday, March 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Have a Nice World War, Folks
by John Pilger
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence" Robert Gates complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marja" from the Taliban's "command and control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
"War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today's public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a "partner". We should interrupt their fun.
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Have a Nice World War, Folks
by John Pilger
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence" Robert Gates complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marja" from the Taliban's "command and control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
"War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today's public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a "partner". We should interrupt their fun.
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
White Professor Condemns Racism
- Andrew M. Manis is associate professor of history at Macon State
College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.
Andrew M. Manis: When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period
did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here's my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."
College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.
Andrew M. Manis: When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period
did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here's my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."
Simon (published originally by Azibo Press)
http://www.azibopress.org/?p=375
I saw his face and was not surprised. His left eye was half-closed, his right eye was bruised, and his left cheek looked like it had been scraped repeatedly by a cheese grater. Instead of shock I felt a very deep sadness within me, but this was not the first time I had been affected by the appearance — not to mention the actions — of this 19-year-old juvenile detainee.
Why was he here? I had asked this question several times to myself and to coworkers who had worked with him before, successfully teaching him to read, as he had gone through the entire program a year or so prior to my start date. After searching for some answers, it became apparent to me that he wasn’t sent to us again because of another crime he had allegedly committed, but because he had absconded from his community placement (likely a group home), and they had nowhere else to send him.
I was told that he was practically tortured by the other youths in his previous stint. He was relatively old even then, but from what I know of him now, he likely had the maturity and personality of a neglected 12-year-old — not to mention his small ears and high-pitched, wavering voice. A youth detention center is no place for the weak of spirit. The other youths, hardly more mature and confident themselves, devoured him like vultures on a carcass. He had no adequate means of defense.
Now he resorts to silly, simple-minded insults — even against me at times — when he feels threatened. His unit-mates know, along with almost everyone else, that those insults don’t lead to threats because he is incapable of backing them up. Recently, Simon was playfully ambushed by another youth at the end of art class. This happened after I had tried unsuccessfully to convince him that writing that his art teacher was a “bitch” on his drawing paper was not a wise decision.
Unfortunately for Simon, the youth’s heavy body almost brought him to the floor. From my (close) vantage point, it did not look like Simon was hurt physically, but his pride had been dashed, and he was already upset for some reason before it happened. Again I was sad, but not surprised, when Simon ran after the heavyset youth in an almost comical fashion but with serious intent to get some manner of satisfaction. One of the corrections officers and I attempted to block Simon’s path, but he kept weaving around us, jumping over tables, and managing to chase his attacker out into the hall. This went on for several minutes, with the antagonist laughing the entire time.
The laughter and general cruelty of the situation upset me the most. I yelled at the larger youth to stop laughing, which only strengthened Simon’s resolve. The corrections officer, ironically called “Tiny” despite his massive build, seemed relatively relaxed at first. I quickly realized that he wasn’t too concerned about Simon catching the other youth because Simon “can’t fight.” Tiny seemed to be hoping he might connect with one of his feeble swings and bring on some much-needed self-pride and satisfaction without physically hurting the target. I didn’t see that happening.
Eventually, once the other youth managed to lock himself in the bathroom with me guarding the door, Tiny moved past me, went into the bathroom, and shouted at him in a voice I didn’t know he had. The part that sticks with me is when he hollered, referring to Simon, “You know something ain’t right with him!”
Soon after, Simon got moved to the awaiting placement unit. Although I passed him in the halls and watched him toss snowballs fruitlessly out in the courtyard, I didn’t have a chance to talk to him until the end of the week, while he was taking his social studies test with the enthusiasm of a kid in a toy store. He later won a game of bingo with my help and seemed to thank me with a half-embrace from behind that caught me unprepared. He showed me a brochure for a therapeutic group home in Pennsylvania he said he might be going to soon. It looked great to me, but he didn’t seem too excited.
I asked around about his face and heard he got jumped by eight guys. Tiny told me they had tried to put him in the hospital. What surprised me is that they didn’t succeed.
I saw his face and was not surprised. His left eye was half-closed, his right eye was bruised, and his left cheek looked like it had been scraped repeatedly by a cheese grater. Instead of shock I felt a very deep sadness within me, but this was not the first time I had been affected by the appearance — not to mention the actions — of this 19-year-old juvenile detainee.
Why was he here? I had asked this question several times to myself and to coworkers who had worked with him before, successfully teaching him to read, as he had gone through the entire program a year or so prior to my start date. After searching for some answers, it became apparent to me that he wasn’t sent to us again because of another crime he had allegedly committed, but because he had absconded from his community placement (likely a group home), and they had nowhere else to send him.
I was told that he was practically tortured by the other youths in his previous stint. He was relatively old even then, but from what I know of him now, he likely had the maturity and personality of a neglected 12-year-old — not to mention his small ears and high-pitched, wavering voice. A youth detention center is no place for the weak of spirit. The other youths, hardly more mature and confident themselves, devoured him like vultures on a carcass. He had no adequate means of defense.
Now he resorts to silly, simple-minded insults — even against me at times — when he feels threatened. His unit-mates know, along with almost everyone else, that those insults don’t lead to threats because he is incapable of backing them up. Recently, Simon was playfully ambushed by another youth at the end of art class. This happened after I had tried unsuccessfully to convince him that writing that his art teacher was a “bitch” on his drawing paper was not a wise decision.
Unfortunately for Simon, the youth’s heavy body almost brought him to the floor. From my (close) vantage point, it did not look like Simon was hurt physically, but his pride had been dashed, and he was already upset for some reason before it happened. Again I was sad, but not surprised, when Simon ran after the heavyset youth in an almost comical fashion but with serious intent to get some manner of satisfaction. One of the corrections officers and I attempted to block Simon’s path, but he kept weaving around us, jumping over tables, and managing to chase his attacker out into the hall. This went on for several minutes, with the antagonist laughing the entire time.
The laughter and general cruelty of the situation upset me the most. I yelled at the larger youth to stop laughing, which only strengthened Simon’s resolve. The corrections officer, ironically called “Tiny” despite his massive build, seemed relatively relaxed at first. I quickly realized that he wasn’t too concerned about Simon catching the other youth because Simon “can’t fight.” Tiny seemed to be hoping he might connect with one of his feeble swings and bring on some much-needed self-pride and satisfaction without physically hurting the target. I didn’t see that happening.
Eventually, once the other youth managed to lock himself in the bathroom with me guarding the door, Tiny moved past me, went into the bathroom, and shouted at him in a voice I didn’t know he had. The part that sticks with me is when he hollered, referring to Simon, “You know something ain’t right with him!”
Soon after, Simon got moved to the awaiting placement unit. Although I passed him in the halls and watched him toss snowballs fruitlessly out in the courtyard, I didn’t have a chance to talk to him until the end of the week, while he was taking his social studies test with the enthusiasm of a kid in a toy store. He later won a game of bingo with my help and seemed to thank me with a half-embrace from behind that caught me unprepared. He showed me a brochure for a therapeutic group home in Pennsylvania he said he might be going to soon. It looked great to me, but he didn’t seem too excited.
I asked around about his face and heard he got jumped by eight guys. Tiny told me they had tried to put him in the hospital. What surprised me is that they didn’t succeed.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Amistad Resurrected
A symbol of the slave trade joins US and Cuba
By JIM KUHNHENN
The Associated Press
7:26 a.m. Thursday, March 18, 2010
WASHINGTON — Days from now, a stately black schooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights — the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby.
The ship is the Amistad, a U.S.-flagged vessel headed for largely forbidden Cuban waters as a symbol of both a dark 19th century past and modern public diplomacy.
The Amistad is the 10-year-old official tall ship of the state of Connecticut and a replica of the Cuban coastal trader that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives, only to become an emblem of the abolitionist movement.
Its 10-day, two-city tour of Cuba provides a counterpoint to new and lingering tensions between Washington and Havana and stands out as a high-profile exception to the 47-year-old U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island.
For the Amistad, it also represents a final link as it retraces the old Atlantic slave trade triangle, making port calls that are not only reminders of the stain of slavery but also celebrations of the shared cultural legacies of an otherwise sorry past.
When it drops anchor in Havana's harbor on March 25, the Amistad will not only observe its 10th anniversary, it will commemorate the day in 1807 when the British Parliament first outlawed the slave trade.
The powerful image of a vessel displaying home and host flags docking in Cuba is not lost on Gregory Belanger, the CEO and president of Amistad America Inc., the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the ship.
"We're completely aware of all of the issues currently surrounding the U.S. and Cuba," he said. "But we approach this from the point of view that we have this unique history that both societies are connected by. It gives us an opportunity to transcend contemporary issues."
It's not lost on Rep. William Delahunt, either. The Massachusetts Democrat has long worked to ease U.S.-Cuba relations and he reached out to the State Department to make officials aware of the Amistad's proposal.
U.S.-flagged ships have docked in Havana before, but none as prominently as the Amistad. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has periodically approved Cuba stops for semester-at-sea educational programs for American students, and the Commerce Department has authorized U.S. shiploads of exports under agriculture and medical exemptions provided in the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.
"Obviously we have serious differences, disagreements," Delahunt said. "But in this particular case the two governments, while not working together, clearly were aware of the profound significance of this particular commemoration."
The original Amistad's story, the subject of a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie, began after it set sail from Havana in 1839. Its African captives rebelled, taking over the ship and sending it on a zigzag course up the U.S. coast until it was finally seized off the coast of Long Island. The captured Africans became an international cause for abolitionists; their fate was finally decided in 1841 when John Quincy Adams argued their case before the Supreme Court, which granted them their freedom.
Miguel Barnet, a leading Cuban ethnographer and writer who has studied the African diaspora, said it is only appropriate that the new Amistad would call on the place of the original ship's birth. Indeed, he said in an interview from Cuba on Wednesday, it is the horror of the slave trade that left behind a rich common bond —not just between the United States and Cuba, but with the rest of the Caribbean — that is rooted in Africa.
"That's why this is an homage to these men and women who left something precious for our culture," he said.
The new Amistad has crossed the Atlantic and wended its way through the Caribbean since 2007. It has worked with the United Nations and UNESCO's Slave Route Project. Using high technology hidden in its wooden frame and rigging, the ship's crew of sailors and students has simulcasted to schools and even to the U.N. General Assembly.
It will do so again — with Cuban students — from Havana.
By JIM KUHNHENN
The Associated Press
7:26 a.m. Thursday, March 18, 2010
WASHINGTON — Days from now, a stately black schooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights — the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby.
The ship is the Amistad, a U.S.-flagged vessel headed for largely forbidden Cuban waters as a symbol of both a dark 19th century past and modern public diplomacy.
The Amistad is the 10-year-old official tall ship of the state of Connecticut and a replica of the Cuban coastal trader that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives, only to become an emblem of the abolitionist movement.
Its 10-day, two-city tour of Cuba provides a counterpoint to new and lingering tensions between Washington and Havana and stands out as a high-profile exception to the 47-year-old U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island.
For the Amistad, it also represents a final link as it retraces the old Atlantic slave trade triangle, making port calls that are not only reminders of the stain of slavery but also celebrations of the shared cultural legacies of an otherwise sorry past.
When it drops anchor in Havana's harbor on March 25, the Amistad will not only observe its 10th anniversary, it will commemorate the day in 1807 when the British Parliament first outlawed the slave trade.
The powerful image of a vessel displaying home and host flags docking in Cuba is not lost on Gregory Belanger, the CEO and president of Amistad America Inc., the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the ship.
"We're completely aware of all of the issues currently surrounding the U.S. and Cuba," he said. "But we approach this from the point of view that we have this unique history that both societies are connected by. It gives us an opportunity to transcend contemporary issues."
It's not lost on Rep. William Delahunt, either. The Massachusetts Democrat has long worked to ease U.S.-Cuba relations and he reached out to the State Department to make officials aware of the Amistad's proposal.
U.S.-flagged ships have docked in Havana before, but none as prominently as the Amistad. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has periodically approved Cuba stops for semester-at-sea educational programs for American students, and the Commerce Department has authorized U.S. shiploads of exports under agriculture and medical exemptions provided in the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.
"Obviously we have serious differences, disagreements," Delahunt said. "But in this particular case the two governments, while not working together, clearly were aware of the profound significance of this particular commemoration."
The original Amistad's story, the subject of a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie, began after it set sail from Havana in 1839. Its African captives rebelled, taking over the ship and sending it on a zigzag course up the U.S. coast until it was finally seized off the coast of Long Island. The captured Africans became an international cause for abolitionists; their fate was finally decided in 1841 when John Quincy Adams argued their case before the Supreme Court, which granted them their freedom.
Miguel Barnet, a leading Cuban ethnographer and writer who has studied the African diaspora, said it is only appropriate that the new Amistad would call on the place of the original ship's birth. Indeed, he said in an interview from Cuba on Wednesday, it is the horror of the slave trade that left behind a rich common bond —not just between the United States and Cuba, but with the rest of the Caribbean — that is rooted in Africa.
"That's why this is an homage to these men and women who left something precious for our culture," he said.
The new Amistad has crossed the Atlantic and wended its way through the Caribbean since 2007. It has worked with the United Nations and UNESCO's Slave Route Project. Using high technology hidden in its wooden frame and rigging, the ship's crew of sailors and students has simulcasted to schools and even to the U.N. General Assembly.
It will do so again — with Cuban students — from Havana.
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