today african rulers are destroying their own people through corruption, incompetence, mismangement and clinging to outmoded ideologies, while at the same time expecting the western nations whom they so readily criticize, to come to their aid at the same time

the world does not work like that, you cannot be friends with china, iran, russia and spew forth communist propaganda, while wondering why the west do not come to your aid and help with aiding in the civil wars, AIDS, hunger and ethnic violence

http://elliottjoseph.blogspot.com/2007/03/ken-livingstone-apology.html

Provocative pronouncements recently suggesting modern day human trafficking is worst than Chattel Slavery is but a confirmation of culpability. In fact such insensitive conjecture, (without an apology for this transgression) further compounds complicity for a flagrant abuse of human rights. It is also a direct assault/insult on the integrity of surviving generations across the Afrikan Diaspora.

The world, as we know it today is still reeling from the effects of that human calamity. While many remain unaware that painstaking research- has revealed this so called ”Gentleman’s Trade” was not abolished because perpetrators felt remorse for their victims (of whatever hue or origin) but conveniently abandoned some conduits of this heinous system because of economic expediency.

As indicated in our previous issue, this auspicious anniversary offers all an opportunity to debate, RE-visit and RE-examine the factors that contributed to this sad saga that haunts the present. It is necessary to redress the balance acknowledging the diverse struggles against this grave injustice.

Abolition as legislated (two hundred years ago) resonates hollow as the fate of those who were rescued by British ships were immediately conscripted into the military service (First West India Regiment) to serve in colonial conflicts during the period. The American War of Independence, Boer, Ashanti and Zulu wars are clear examples of this maltreatment. Descendants across the globe still bear the traumatic burdens and anguish of this tragedy.

Need it be reiterated, that the Planters and Slave proprietors in the British Colonies were compensated with Twenty Million pounds while the Afrikan slaves got zilch and were retained in servitude for decades under an ill-conceived Apprenticeship scheme.

dialogue does not condone the insensitive celebration of hailed individuals as Abolitionists when they were oppressors of their own country men/women by way of unjust class partitions, servitude, social deprivation and economic apartheid.

Our Winter/Spring edition is consciously dedicated to our predecessors who relentlessly resisted enslavement via rebellions on the slaver vessels to the first factories (Gold Mines, Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco & Cocoa plantations).

We give formal thanks with libations for the prescience and pains of Ancestors Jacques Dessalines, Harriet Tubman, Henri Christophe, Paul Bogle, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Leonard Parkinson, Julien Fedon, Nat Turner, Cudjoe, Simon Bolivar, Cinquez, Bussa, Kofi, Sam Sharp, Nanny of the Maroons, Chatouer, Zumbi dos Palmares, Daaga and Carlota among many other nameless Herus and Ausets (Horus & Isis).

The Europeans never raided African villages to kidnap and enslave Africans. They purchased slaves from powerful African tribes that ran the slave market.

European military forces did not enter Africa until the late 1800s, after slavery had been abolished in the United States and Europe. Some merchants got rich, but the African colonies proved to be a drain on European treasuries. That’s why the rush to get out of Africa was as urgent as the rush to get in.

The European colonization of Africa virtually ended slavery in Africas, but it is making a strong comeback now that the Europeans have abandoned their colonies. Today, more human beings, many of them children, are trafficked in African each year than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, the infrastructure that the Europeans left behind them in Africa (schools, roads, hospitals and industries) is rapidly disappearing through most of Africa. Europeans continue support Africa with foreign air and debt forgiveness, and occasionally sends troops to stop famines and genocidal warfare.

The Europeans did not introduce slavery to the Americas. Both the Aztec and Inca empires, for example, were slave-based societies. The largest slave market that every existed in the Americas was the Aztec slave market outside Mexico City in pre-Colombian times. The minor Native American tribes also had slaves.

In the United States, about 6 percent of whites and 1/6 percent of free blacks owned slaves. (Some of the South’s biggest landowners and slave owners were free blacks.) The other 94 percent of whites worked. U.S. industries not related to slavery, to name a few, include mining, railroading, tool making, light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, livestock, auto manufacturing, mining, aerodynamics, electronics, radio, television, space exploration, and computer hardware and software. The development of farm machinery and improved horticulture not slavery made the United States an agricultural powerhouse.

The slave trade and the theft of Africa’s resources, along with genocide against the indigenous peoples and the theft of their land and colonialism around the world: This is what made Europe and the white world rich. Now white people are rich and everybody else is poor and oppressed.

Africa is poor today because of this! Why should anyone in diamond, gold, bauxite, coltan, uranium, oil-rich Africa be living on a dollar a day when the European and American companies are making billions of dollars–taking everything out of Africa!

Africa and all its resources belong to African people everywhere–African working people, not the puppets who front for America and Europe.–people like Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba who were overthrown and assassinated for their stand to unite and liberate Africa.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/4954