Re: ugnet_: Open Letter to all those who want African and Human Liberation
It is all lies that PBS is an independent media. It is just propaganda. Same with BBC. When I came to live in N America in the mid 1980's , I was shocked that the media here was worse than the apartheid-era type I had left behind. Mitayo Potosi From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ugnet_: Open Letter to all those who want African and Human Liberation Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 10:21:39 EDT To the limited degree we have been able to organize our movement(s) we have realized success, although it does not always seem evident. But all we have to do is look at the reaction of our enemies, because we will see that they spend a lot of energy studying and analyzing the impact of peoples' struggles for national and social liberation, to sharpen their systemic responses to these struggles. If I may, let me give you a few quick examples. I. Cambridge University Cambridge University in the UK has a special academic program totally devoted to the issue of land as a central economic factor. I have excerpted a section from their web site: We are a specialised department within Cambridge, devoted to the multidisciplinary study of land, property, the environment and resource management. Our two primary disciplines are law and economics. We have a full, three year, undergraduate degree course (known as the Tripos) and we have a strong postgraduate programme. Our teaching has been certified by an independent Panel from the Government's Quality Assurance Agency as being of the highest quality. We are a small department by Cambridge standards, with a lively and active group of staff and students, operating within an intensive research-oriented environment. Yet we have over 40 teaching and research staff, including: economists with specialist interests ranging from urban and regional economics to housing, from environmental economics to property markets, and from agricultural economics to the economics of less developed countries; lawyers with interests that include real property law, environmental law, land tenure and aboriginal rights, land-use planning law, public and constitutional law and central and local government. planners, urban geographers, statisticians and econometricians. http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/about.htm I think we should pay close attention to their emphasis on areas such as agricultural economics to the economics of less developed countries and land tenure and aboriginal rights, because they speak directly to the current issues being waged in various international fora and on the ground in many places around the world For example the relationship between possession and use of the land and indigenous rights is raging in various localities, Zimbabwe, Azania/South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Brazil, Palestine, Australia and even here in the US (for example the just struggles of the indigenous peoples of the North American continent, and those of Hawaii). The issue of agricultural economics has been a vocal point of trade and related talks between the so-called developed world, i.e., most of the world, and the capitalist powers. The question of the general economic uses of land has been a hotly contested issue in states such as Nigeria, where significant sections of the population are unhappy with the way the transnational corporations conduct their petroleum discovery and extraction activities. Similar concerns about petroleum, and other extraction industries such as the mining of precious and strategic metals, the use of precious resources such as water and plant life, have been voiced in other countries across the globe. The lesson I think we should learn from the approach of institutions such as Cambridge, because it is important to recognize that Cambridge's interest in these areas is not an isolated phenomena, is that we must develop more efficient and comprehensive institutions to study our struggle and advance our own knowledge and expertise in these areas as means of sharpening the production of our organizations and institutions at every level. My second example is the Public Broadcasting System here in the USA. II. PBS programming PBS has several very revealing programs that speak to the struggle between the majority of humanity and capitalism. I wish to cite two here; one is called Commanding Heights the second is called The Wind of Change: The End of Colonialism in Africa; the first tries to demonstrate that what is euphemistically called globalization is the logical outcome of the political economic struggles and development of the 20th century; the second attempts to prove that the African Liberation Movement and the drive for a United States of Africa, launched with the independence of Ghana, faltered because of the ill preparedness of the Africans and because of the cold war. To give you
ugnet_: Open Letter to all those who want African and Human Liberation
To the limited degree we have been able to organize our movement(s) we have realized success, although it does not always seem evident. But all we have to do is look at the reaction of our enemies, because we will see that they spend a lot of energy studying and analyzing the impact of peoples' struggles for national and social liberation, to sharpen their systemic responses to these struggles. If I may, let me give you a few quick examples. I. Cambridge University Cambridge University in the UK has a special academic program totally devoted to the issue of land as a central economic factor. I have excerpted a section from their web site: "We are a specialised department within Cambridge, devoted to the multidisciplinary study of land, property, the environment and resource management. Our two primary disciplines are law and economics." "We have a full, three year, undergraduate degree course (known as the Tripos) and we have a strong postgraduate programme." "Our teaching has been certified by an independent Panel from the Government's Quality Assurance Agency as being of the highest quality." "We are a small department by Cambridge standards, with a lively and active group of staff and students, operating within an intensive research-oriented environment. Yet we have over 40 teaching and research staff, including:" "economists with specialist interests ranging from urban and regional economics to housing, from environmental economics to property markets, and from agricultural economics to the economics of less developed countries;" "lawyers with interests that include real property law, environmental law, land tenure and aboriginal rights, land-use planning law, public and constitutional law and central and local government." " planners, urban geographers, statisticians and econometricians." http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/about.htm I think we should pay close attention to their emphasis on areas such as "agricultural economics to the economics of less developed countries" and "land tenure and aboriginal rights", because they speak directly to the current issues being waged in various international fora and on the ground in many places around the world For example the relationship between possession and use of the land and indigenous rights is raging in various localities, Zimbabwe, Azania/South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Brazil, Palestine, Australia and even here in the US (for example the just struggles of the indigenous peoples of the North American continent, and those of Hawaii). The issue of agricultural economics has been a vocal point of trade and related talks between the so-called developed world, i.e., most of the world, and the capitalist powers. The question of the general economic uses of land has been a hotly contested issue in states such as Nigeria, where significant sections of the population are unhappy with the way the transnational corporations conduct their petroleum discovery and extraction activities. Similar concerns about petroleum, and other extraction industries such as the mining of precious and strategic metals, the use of precious resources such as water and plant life, have been voiced in other countries across the globe. The lesson I think we should learn from the approach of institutions such as Cambridge, because it is important to recognize that Cambridge's interest in these areas is not an isolated phenomena, is that we must develop more efficient and comprehensive institutions to study our struggle and advance our own knowledge and expertise in these areas as means of sharpening the production of our organizations and institutions at every level. My second example is the Public Broadcasting System here in the USA. II. PBS programming PBS has several very revealing programs that speak to the struggle between the majority of humanity and capitalism. I wish to cite two here; one is called "Commanding Heights" the second is called "The Wind of Change: The End of Colonialism in Africa"; the first tries to demonstrate that what is euphemistically called globalization is the logical outcome of the political economic struggles and development of the 20th century; the second attempts to prove that the African Liberation Movement and the drive for a United States of Africa, launched with the independence of Ghana, faltered because of the ill preparedness of the Africans and because of the "cold war". To give you an idea of the spurious orientation of the Commanding Heights series examine the following quote on Nkrumah and the imperialist coup against the CPP government: "State-owned companies and public authorities mushroomed in all fields. So did mismanagement and graft. The price was most painfully felt in the countryside as Nkrumah used cocoa revenues, controlled by the official marketing board, to cover the growing losses of public companies. The imposition of unrealistically low cocoa prices on farmers, combined with the bloated organization
