#MPLA

[degeneratedworker]

"Celebrating the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the Angolan War of Independence (1961-1974)" Angola 1976

[the-leegend-99]

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He died of pancreatic cancer, but at least he lived enough to see his country free from the colonial and imperialist yokes. He was a poet, a doctor, and a revolutionary. Let us all honor him.

Let us honor all our martyrs.

[almanach-international]

11 novembre : l’indépendance de l’Angola

Le 11 novembre 1975, à minuit, à Luanda, Agostinho Neto, du Mouvement populaire pour la libération de l'Angola (MPLA), proclamait l'indépendance de l'Angola. Il mettait fin à plus de quatre siècles de d’occupation portugaise et 14 ans d’une guerre d’indépendance qui avait débuté le 4 février 1961.

L’Angola indépendant fêtera donc ses 50 ans l’an prochain. Les célébrations de cinquantenaire commencent dès aujourd’hui, 11 novembre 2024, jour férié appelé Jour de l’indépendance (Dia da Independência nacional). Le point culminant des cérémonies se déroule en présence du président angolais, João Lourenço, sur la place de la République, où se trouve le Mémorial António Agostinho Neto. Les célébrations se poursuivront jusqu'en décembre 2025.

« Angola 50 ans : Préserver et valoriser les acquis, construire un avenir meilleur », telle est la devise centrale de ces treize mois et demi de festivités.

Le 11 novembre 1975, une guerre de libération se terminait , mais l'indépendance a été proclamée le même 11 novembre par trois mouvements différents : le MPLA (Mouvement populaire pour la libération de l'Angola) à Luanda ; le FNLA (Front national pour la libération de l'Angola) à Ambriz, soutenu par le Zaïre, et l’UNITA (Indépendance totale de l'Angola) à Huambo. Cependant, seule la proclamation du MPLA (soutenue par les Soviétiques et les Cubains) a été reconnue par la communauté internationale mais son installation au pouvoir n’a pas été acceptée par les formations concurrentes qui n’ont pas baissé les armes, en particulier l’UNITA soutenue à la fois par les Américains et les Chinois. Il faudra attendre encore 27 ans pour qu’elles se taisent vraiment, le 4 avril 2002 précisément.

Un article de l'Almanach international des éditions BiblioMonde, 11 novembre 2024

[pitch-and-moan]

The Lego Angolan Civil War

A Lego stop motion retelling of Operation Carlota.

[fraoula-me-psyxologika]

Νορβηγικη ή αιγυπτιακη μυθολογια ο συμβολισμός?

του ουροβορου? νομιζω αιγυπτιακος/Μεσοποταμιακος, αν και το συμβολο του ερπετου που τρωει την ουρα του εχει βρεθει να απεικονιζεται σε πολλους αρχαιους πολιτισμους ανα τα χρονια, με μικρες διαφοροποιησεις στην συμβολική του εκφανση. κρινοντας απο αυτο, πολλοι πολιτισμοι βρηκαν, πιθανον, την συνεχως εξελισσόμενη και αναγεννησιακη φυση του φιδιου/ερπετού (ενα πλασμα που αλλαζει το δερμα του για να επιβιωσει καλυτερα στο περιβαλλον του) απο μονη της συμβολικη για την αλλαγη, ποσο μαλλον συμπληρωνοντας την μεταφορα με την βορα του ιδιου του εαυτου. στην συχγρονη εποχη συνανταμε τον ουροβορο μετουσιωμενο στο νοημα του, και ανοιχτο προς μεταφραση απο αλλη σκοπια.

[psychotrenny]

Like I really do wish people remembered more about the Anti-Imperial struggles of Southern Africa in the late 20th century. As incomplete as their revolutions may have been, with the politically free nations succumbing to the overwhelming force of Western Imperialism and being taken over by neo-colonial comprador regimes, what they did manage to achieve was still so very impressive. A struggle for human dignity against the most openly cruel and brutish forms of colonialism, the mobilisation and education of the most impoverished and super-exploited people on the planet in the name of not only liberating their own people but with the understanding that they were advancing the interests of humanity as a whole. Nationalist in character and internationalist in spirit, seeking to build independent nations that could co-operate in solidarity with all the progressive minded peoples of the world. Introducing healthcare, education and fair exchange into the forgotten and exploited parts of their country, giving a purpose to millions who enthusiastically gave their lives to defend and advance their gains both material and psychological.

The MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the alliance of ZANU and ZAPU in Zimbabwe, SWAPO in Namibia and the ANC of South Africa. It's also worth remembering the PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde who, despite their geographical separation, faced a common enemy and so forged deep bonds with their comrades to the south. Whatever their eventual fates after independence, triumphs and failures alike, the struggles they fought against the reactionary White Supremacist regimes of Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa were nothing short of heroic. Despite vast differences in space and time, I think these struggles hold both inspiration and lessons for progressives peoples all over the world to this day. It's truly a great shame how much they've been forgotten, these conflicts only ever brought up as a footnote to something more well known rather than as an area of interest in their own right.

If you're curious, the Africa section of the Marxist Internet Archive has a lot of good material from the period that's a good place to start learning more, even if it is rather lacking in information from the latter portion of the struggle. ARG's Race to Power gives a good overview of the general situation in Southern Africa as of 1971, while LSM has some good general collection of material collected from Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The entire LSM "Life Histories from Revolution" series provides some really interesting first hand ground-level accounts of the conditions of life under Imperialism and the movements that formed to oppose it, while their Interviews with Liberation Movement Leaders provides the views of people higher up in the revolutionary movements. I'd recommend checking them out to at least broadly familiarise yourself with these tragically neglected struggles.

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against AFRICA

In early 2017, the US began conducting drone strikes in Somalia against Al Shabab militants. An attack on July 16th killed 8 people.

In 1998, the US bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, killing one employee and wounding 11. It was the largest pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, producing medicine both for human and veterinary use. The US had acted on false evidence of a VX nerve agent from a single soil sample, and later used a false witness to cover for the attack. It was the only pharmaceutical factory in Africa not under US control.

In June 1982, with the help of CIA money and arms, Hissene Habre , dubbed Africa’s Pinochet, takes power in Chad. His secret police, use methods of torture including the burning the body of the detainee with incandescent objects, spraying gas into their eyes, ears and nose, forced swallowing of water, and forcing the mouths of detainees around the exhaust pipes of running cars. Habré’s government also periodically engaged in ethnic cleansing against groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and the Zaghawa, killing and arresting group members en masse when it was perceived that their leaders posed a threat to the regime. Human Rights Watch claimed that Habre was responsible for thousands of killings. In 2001, while living in Senegal, he was almost tried for crimes committed by him in Chad. However, a court there blocked these proceedings. Then human rights people decided to pursue the case in Belgium, because some of Habre’s torture victims lived there. The U.S., in June 2003, told Belgium that it risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters if it allowed such a legal proceeding to happen. So the result was that the law that allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad was repealed. However, two months later a new law was passed which made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habre. In May 2016 he was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery and ordering the killing of 40,000 people, and sentenced to life in prison.

In the 1980s, Reagan maintains a close relationship with the Apartheid South african government, called constructive engagement, while secretly funding it in the hopes of creating a bulwark of anti-communism and preventing a marxist party from taking power, as happened in angola. Later on, in the wars against Apartheid in South Africa and Angola, in which cuban and anti-apartheid forces fought the white south african government, the US supplied south africa with nuclear weapons via Israel.

In 1975, Henry Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola, backing the brutal anti-communist leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi, against Agostinho Neto and his Marxist-Leninst MPLA party, creating a civil war lasting for 30 years. The CIA financed a covert invasion via neighboring Zaire and a drive on the Angolan capital by the U.S. ally, South Africa. Congress continues to fund UNITAS, and their south-african apartheid allies until the late 1980s. By the end of the war, more than 500,000 people had died and over one million had been internally displaced.

In 1966, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows he widely popular Pan-Africanist and Marxist leader Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, inviting the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to take a lead role in managing the economy. With this reversal, accentuated by the expulsion of immigrants and a new willingness to negotiate with apartheid South Africa, Ghana lost a good deal of its stature in the eyes of African nationalists.

In 1965, a CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko, described as the “archetypal African dictator” in Congo. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.

In 1962, a tip from a CIA spy in South Africa lead to the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, due to his pro-USSR leanings. This began his 27-year-long imprisonment.

In 1961, the CIA assists in the assassination of the democratically elected congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, throwing the country into years of turmoil. Before his assassination the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying “lethal biological material” intended for use in Lumumba’s assassination. This virus would have been able to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa and was transported in a diplomatic pouch.

In 1801, and again in 1815, the US aided Sweden in subjugating a series of coastal towns in North Africa, in the Barbary Wars. The stated reason was to crack down on pirates, but the wars destroyed the navies of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, and secured European and US shipping routes for goods and slaves in North Africa. US Representatives stated: “When we can appear in the Ports of the various Powers, or on the Coast, of Barbary, with Ships of such force as to convince those nations that We are able to protect our trade, and to compel them if necessary to keep faith with Us, then, and not before, We may probably secure a large share of the Meditn trade, which would largely and speedily compensate the U. S. for the Cost of a maritime force amply sufficient to keep all those Pirates in Awe, and also make it their interest to keep faith.” Thomas Jefferson echoed and carried out the war, saying that war was essential to securing markets along the Barbary Coast.

[doorhine]

"Like many other former rebels who have needlessly pushed their people into armed conflict while pretending to be working for peace, because continuous fighting helped them obtain or maintain political power, Hemedti shows newfound but questionable commitment to advance an unimpeded constitutional order and avoid a return to war sometime in the future.

As a rebel leader whose primary motivation for fighting appears to be accumulating personal power rather than improving the living conditions of his people, Hemedti is more similar to Jonas Savimbi, the founder of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), than any other political figure in Africa.

Following a power struggle that broke out soon after Angola gained independence from Portugal in November 1975, Savimbi waged a 27-year intermittent civil war against the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

The cold-war conflict, in which Russia supported the MPLA and the US, alongside apartheid South Africa, backed UNITA, killed one million people and made four million others homeless...."

[ptseti]

PT. 2: FORMER CIA AGENT SPILLS ON WAR AGAINST THIRD WORLD

Most people don’t know a fraction of the CIA’s crimes against humanity.

In this 1988 video clip, former CIA agent John Stockwell exposed a few of the US intelligence agency’s activities.

From death squads in Central America to brutal wars against revolutionaries in Korea and Vietnam, the countries of the Global South have been under constant attack since capitalism first emerged in Western Europe and, later, when the United States became a hegemon, dominating the world following the Second World War.

Of course, the West has not spared Africans. Stockwell participated in CIA operations in Angola, assisting reactionary groups such as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by anti-communist Jonas Savimbi. The political party’s goal was crushing the revolutionary People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

But this was not limited to Angola. It was also a war against the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) of Namibia and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa.

And, today, we can relate to the Palestinian national liberation struggle because we continue our liberation struggle.

And, so, we will not forget the crimes of the CIA and its collaborators.

[neo-axe-oc-thoughts]

𓆝 TIMELINE - Guppy 𓆝

I've put together a timeline, which contains what is/isn't canon in my AU. There are some things I've added and changed that weren't apart of the games original plot. Hopefully this all makes sense, if there's any questions about the timeline just leave a comment and I'll answer it for you.

Timeline

1961 --- Black Ops : Operation 40

1963 --- Black Ops : Vorkuta | U.S.D.D | Executive Order

1968 --- The Rest of Black Ops takes place

1979 --- David Mason is born, Mason's wife dies after he is born.

1981 --- Black Ops Cold War happens, Bell survives the good ending. They are taken in by Woods and Mason after they found out what happened. (Both unaware that Bell was brain washed, thought they were helping of their own volition.)

1984 --- Bell takes care of David while Mason and Woods help Adler after he is compromised / unsuccessfully brainwashed.

1986 --- Mason retires to Alaska, but is brought back to save woods from MPLA, re-enlists to hunt down Menendez.

1989 --- Operation Just Cause, Mason doesn't die but is injured and retires with Woods, them and Bell focus on taking care of David who is now 10.

1990 --- Gulf Wars (90-91), conflict in Iraq

1997 --- Bell leaves for Australia after David Mason joins the US army. Guppy is born.

2001 --- Bell and Guppy meet in an Auslan class, Guppy is instantly close and trusting of Bell. To the surprise of zir parents and teacher.

2005 --- Guppy starts taking more interest in logical puzzles and cryptography, xe also "meet" Mason and Woods for the first time.

2014 --- Guppy graduates Highschool

2015 --- Guppy Graduates 1st university course (Cyber Security Diploma)

2016 --- Guppy Graduates 2nd University course (Information Technology Diploma)

2017 --- Guppy Joins AUS Navy as an Intel Analysis

2019 --- Guppy and David meet for the first time on a joined mission, Modern Warfare takes place

2021 --- Guppy joins the Aus Intelligence Corps, getting the nickname Guppy in the process.

2022 --- Modern Warfare II takes place, and Guppy joins TF-141 via recommendation from David Mason and Laswell who ze met sometime after joining the Intel Corps.

2023 --- Current planned story takes place

[captain-price-unofficially]

Cuban soldiers pose with Soviet-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) soldiers near Cuito Cuanavale, 29 February 1988.

[nameinconcept-blog]

"Opening of the II Congress of the MPLA - Labor Party. On the podium - Chairman of the MPLA - Labor Party, President of the NRA Jose Eduardo dos Santos"

From the Soviet photo book "Ангола" published by Planeta Publishers. 1987

[munchausenparokaja]

Ez a kedvenc képem Magyar Péter új pártjának régi képei közül.

A Tisza (Tisztelet és Szabsdság) párt régi csoportképe ez a honlapjukról, az asztalon az MPLA, az Angolai Népi Felszabadítási Mozgalom zászlójával.

Talán @markoferko egyéb afrikai ereklyéket is kiszúr a kis zsiráfon kívül.

[almanach-international]

23 mars : une date de paix ou de guerre en Afrique méridionale

Ce 23 mars 2024, un sommet extraordinaire de la SADC (Communauté de développement de l'Afrique Australe) est réuni à Lusaka, capitale de la Zambie, pour débattre de questions de sécurité dans l’Est de la République démocratique du Congo et à Cabo Delgado, au Mozambique. Kinshasa compte sur la force de la SADC en cours de déploiement dans l'est de la RDC pour l'aider à "récupérer les territoires" occupés par la rébellion du M23 (le Mouvement du 23 mars).

Cette date du 23 mars est brandie par un mouvement rebelle, majoritairement tutsi et soutenu par le Rwanda. Ce mouvement du 23 mars, également appelé M23, est un groupe créé à la suite de la guerre du Kivu. Il est composé d'ex-rebelles réintégrés dans l'armée congolaise à la suite d'un accord de paix signé le 23 mars 2009 avec Kinshasa. Mais, en 2012,  nombre de ses membres se sont mutinés, considérant que le gouvernement congolais n'avait pas respecté les modalités de l’accord de 2009. C’est ainsi qu’est né le M23. Dans l’est de la RDC, les combats ont repris de plus belle depuis 2021. Le M23 est accusé de nombreuses violences contre les populations civiles, par des ONG (Human Rights Watch), par la cour pénale internationale et par le gouvernement américain. C’est de cette situation d’urgence dont on débat aujourd’hui à Lusaka, hôte d’un sommet de la SADC.

Ce même jour, le 23 mars, a une autre signification en Afrique australe, depuis 2018. Cette année-là , on fêtait le 30e anniversaire de la bataille de Cuíto Cuanavale et le 23 mars a été décrété Jour de la Libération de l'Afrique Australe (Dia da Libertação da África Austral) en souvenir de la fin de cette bataille qui s’est déroulée du 15 novembre 1987 au 23 mars 1988 sur le territoire de l’Angola. Ce pays, en particulier, en a fait une célébration nationale qui a lieu chaque année, principalement à Cuíto Cuanavale et à Luanda. Pour le régime de Luanda, issu de ce conflit post-colonial, cultiver la gloire de cette victoire est un moyen de faire oublier l’absence totale d’alternance politique depuis un demi-siècle.

La bataille de Cuíto Cuanavale est décrite comme l’une des plus importantes et l’une des dernières de la guerre froide. Elle opposait l’armée du FPLA, un mouvement de libération angolais, au pouvoir à Luanda depuis l’indépendance du pays, à celle de l’UNITA, un autre mouvement rebelle dirigé par Jonas Savimbi, qui combattait pour le camp adverse, avec le soutien de l’Afrique du Sud (encore sous apartheid) et des États-Unis. Alors que les forces de Luanda bénéficiaient du soutien militaire de Cuba et de l’URSS selon la logique de la guerre froide.

Cette bataille qui gangrenait le sud du continent, s’est arrêtée un 23 mars, en 1988, et a débouché sur les Accords de New York, qui ont donné lieu à la mise en œuvre de la Résolution 435/78 du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU, conduisant à un retrait des forces cubaines et sud-africaines, puis à l’indépendance de la Namibie deux ans plus tard (presque jour pour jour) et finalement en 1994, à la fin du régime de ségrégation raciale en vigueur en Afrique du Sud. C’est dire l’importance de cette date, même si cette victoire militaire est loin d’être le seul facteur des bouleversements géopolitique vécus dans la région à la toute fin du XXe siècle.

La décision de faire du 23 mars un jour de commémoration a été approuvée à l'unanimité par 15 États membres de la SADC lors du 38e sommet ordinaire de cette organisation régionale qui s’est tenu en 2018 dans la capitale namibienne, Winddhoek. Sa célébration est variable selon les États. L’Angola en a fait un jour férié et chômé.

Un article de l'Almanach international des éditions BiblioMonde, 23 mars 2024

[archivist-crow]

The Sex Pistols - “Anarchy in the U.K.” (1976)

Forty-eight years ago today, on November 26, 1976, “Anarchy in the U.K.”, the debut single by the Sex Pistols, was released. Issued in a plain black sleeve, “Anarchy” is the first and only single by the band on the EMI label, who opted to drop the band in January after they used profanity during a live television broadcast. Deliberately provocative and anti-political, the song drops several abbreviations of 1970s paramilitary armies, including the IRA, the UDA, the MPLA, and even cites “the enemy,” meaning NME, or New Music Express, one of the major British music weeklies. The song peaked at No. 38 on the UK Singles Chart, but the song is now considered among the most important in rock history and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

[gravedangerahead]

On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison-Industrial Complex Speech at SOAS in London

(Angela Davis, December 13, 2013)

Transcript from the book Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

When this event highlighting the importance of boycotting the transnational security corporation G4S was organized, we could not have known that it would coincide with the death and memorialization of Nelson Mandela.

As I reflect on the legacies of struggle we associate with Mandela, I cannot help but recall the struggles that helped to forge the victory of his freedom and thus the arena on which South African apartheid was dismantled. Therefore I remember Ruth First and Joe Slovo, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, and so many others who are no longer with us. In keeping with Mandela’s insistence of always locating himself within a context of collective struggle, it is fitting to evoke the names of a few of his comrades who played pivotal roles in the elimination of apartheid.

While it is moving to witness the unanimous and continued outpouring of praise for Nelson Mandela, it is important to question the meaning of this sanctification. I know that he himself would have insisted on not being elevated, as a single individual, to a secular sainthood, but rather would have always claimed space for his comrades in the struggle and in this way would have seriously challenged the process of sanctification. He was indeed extraordinary, but as an individual he was especially remarkable because he railed against the individualism that would single him out at the expense of those who were always at his side. His profound individuality resided precisely in his critical refusal to embrace the individualism that is such a central ideological component of neoliberalism.

I therefore want to take the opportunity to thank the countless numbers of people here in the UK, including the many then-exiled members of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, who built a powerful and exemplary antiapartheid movement in this country. Having traveled here on numerous occasions during the 1970s and the 1980s to participate in antiapartheid events, I thank the women and men who were as unwavering in their commitment to freedom as was Nelson Mandela. Participation in such solidarity movements here in the UK was as central to my own political formation as were the movements that saved my life.

As I mourn the passing of Nelson Mandela I offer my deep gratitude to all of those who kept the antiapartheid struggle alive for so many decades, for all the decades that it took to finally rid the world of the racism and repression associated with the system of apartheid. And I evoke the spirit of the South African Constitution and its opposition to racism and anti-Semitism as well as to sexism and homophobia.

This is the context within which I join with you once more to intensify campaigns against another regime of apartheid and in solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian people. As Nelson Mandela said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Mandela’s political emergence occurred within the context of an internationalism that always urged us to make connections among freedom struggles, between the Black struggle in the southern United States and the African liberation movements—conducted by the ANC in South Africa, the MPLA in Angola, SWAPO in Namibia, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. These international solidarities were not only among people of African descent but with Asian and Latin American struggles as well, including ongoing solidarity with the Cuban revolution and solidarity with the people struggling against US military aggression in Vietnam.

A half-century later we have inherited the legacies of those solidarities—however well or however badly specific struggles may have concluded—as what produced hope and inspiration and helped to create real conditions to move forward.

We are now confronted with the task of assisting our sisters and brothers in Palestine as they battle against Israeli apartheid today. Their struggles have many similarities with those against South African apartheid, one of the most salient being the ideological condemnation of their freedom efforts under the rubric of terrorism. I understand that there is evidence indicating historical collaboration between the CIA and the South African apartheid government—in fact, it appears that it was a CIA agent who gave SA authorities the location of Nelson Mandela’s whereabouts in 1962, leading directly to his capture and imprisonment.

Moreover, it was not until the year 2008—only five years ago—that Mandela’s name was taken off the terrorist watch list, when George W. Bush signed a bill that finally removed him and other members of the ANC from the list. In other words when Mandela visited the US after his release in 1990, and when he later visited as South Africa’s president, he was still on the terrorist list and the requirement that he be banned from the US had to be expressly waived.

The point I am making is that for a very long time, Mandela and his comrades shared the same status as numerous Palestinian leaders and activists today and that just as the US explicitly collaborated with the SA apartheid government, it continues to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine, currently in the form of over $8.5 million a day in military aid. We need to let the Obama administration know that the world knows how deeply the US is implicated in the occupation.

It is an honor to participate in this meeting, especially as one of the members of the International Political Prisoners Committee calling for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners, recently formed in Cape Town, and also as a member of the jury of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. I would like to thank War on Want for sponsoring this meeting and progressive students, faculty, and workers at SOAS, for making it possible for us to be here this evening.

This evening’s gathering specifically focuses on the importance of expanding the BDS movement—the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement called for by Palestinian civil society—which has been crafted along the lines of the powerful model of the antiapartheid movement with respect to South Africa. While there numerous transnational corporations have been identified as targets of the boycott, Veolia for example, as well as Sodastream, Ahava, Caterpillar, Boeing, Hewlett Packard, and others, we are focusing our attention this evening on G4S.

G4S is especially important because it participates directly and blatantly in the maintenance and reproduction of repressive apparatuses in Palestine—prisons, checkpoints, the apartheid wall, to name only a few examples.

G4S represents the growing insistence on what is called “security” under the neoliberal state and ideologies of security that bolster not only the privatization of security but the privatization of imprisonment, the privatization of warfare, as well as the privatization of health care and education.

G4S is responsible for the repressive treatment of political prisoners inside Israel. Through Addameer, directed by Sahar Francis, we have learned about the terrifying universe of torture and imprisonment which is faced by so many Palestinians but also about their hunger strikes and other forms of resistance.

G4S is the third-largest private corporation in the world—behind Walmart, which is the largest, and Foxconn, the second largest.

On the G4S website, one discovers that the company represents itself as capable of providing protection for a broad range of “people and property,” from rock stars and sports stars to “ensuring that travelers have a safe and pleasant experience in ports and airports around the world to secure detention and escorting of people who are not lawfully entitled to remain in a country.”

“In more ways than you might realize,” the website reads, “G4S is securing your world.” We might add that in more ways that we realize, G4S has insinuated itself into our lives under the guise of security and the security state—from the Palestinian experience of political incarceration and torture to racist technologies of separation and apartheid; from the wall in Israel to prison-like schools in the US and the wall along the US-Mexico border. G4S-Israel has brought sophisticated technologies of control to HaSharon prison, which includes children among its detainees, and Damun prison, which incarcerates women.

Against this backdrop, let us explore the deep involvement of G4S in the global prison-industrial complex. I am not only referring to the fact that the company owns and operates private prisons all over the world, but that it is helping to blur the boundary between schools and jails. In the US schools in poor communities of color are thoroughly entangled with the security state, so much so that sometimes we have a hard time distinguishing between schools and jails. Schools look like jails; schools use the same technologies of detection as jails and they sometimes use the same law enforcement officials. In the US some elementary schools are actually patrolled by armed officers. As a matter of fact, a recent trend among school districts that cannot afford security companies like G4S has been to offer guns and target practice to teachers. I kid you not.

But G4S, whose major proficiencies are related to security, is actually involved in the operation of schools. A website entitled “Great Schools” includes information on Central Pasco Girls Academy in Florida, which is represented as a small alternative public school. If you look at the facilities page of the G4S website you will discover this entry: “Central Pasco Girls Academy serves moderate-risk females, ages 13-18, who have been assessed as needing intensive mental health services.” G4S indicates that they use “gender-responsive services” and that they address sexual abuse and substance abuse, et cetera. While this may sound relatively innocuous, it is actually a striking example of the extent to which security has found its way into the educational system, and thus also of the way education and incarceration have been linked under the sign of capitalist profit. This example also demonstrates that the reach of the prison-industrial complex is far beyond the prison.

This company that provides “security” for numerous agencies as well as rehabilitation services for young girls “at risk” in the United States, while operating private prisons in Europe, Africa, and Australia, also provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank along the route of Israel’s apartheid wall as well as to the terminals from which Gaza is kept under continuous siege. G4S also provides goods and services to the Israeli police in the West Bank, while it offers security to private businesses and homes in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.

As private prison companies have long recognized, the most profitable sector of the prison-industrial complex is immigrant detention and deportation. In the US, G4S provides transportation for deportees who are being ushered out of the US into Mexico, thus colluding with the increasingly repressive immigration practices inside the US. But it was here in the UK where one of the most egregious acts of repression took place in the course of the transportation of an undocumented person.

When I was in London during the month of October, speaking at Birkbeck School of Law, I spoke to Deborah Coles, codirector of the organization Inquest, about the case of Jimmy Mubenga, who died at the hands of G4S guards in the course of a deportation from the UK to Angola. On a British Airways plane, handcuffed behind his back, Mubenga was forcibly pushed by G4S agents against the seat in front of him in the prohibited “carpet karaoke” hold in order to prevent him from vocalizing his resistance. The use of such a term for a law enforcement hold, albeit illegal, is quite astonishing. It indicates that the person subject to the hold is compelled to “sing into the carpet”—or in the case of Mubenga—into the upholstered seat in front, thus rendering his protests muffled and incomprehensible. As Jimmy Mubenga was held for forty minutes, no one intervened. By the time there was finally an attempt to offer him first aid, he was dead.

This appalling treatment of undocumented immigrants from the UK to the US compels us to make connections with Palestinians who have been transformed into immigrants against their will, indeed into undocumented immigrants on their own ancestral lands. I repeat—on their own land. G4S and similar companies provide the technical means of forcibly transforming Palestinian into immigrants on their own land.

As we know, G4S is involved in the operation of private prisons all over the world. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (CO-SATU) recently spoke out against G4S, which runs the Mangaung Correctional Centre in the Free State. The occasion for their protest was the firing of approximately three hundred members of the police union for staging a strike. According to the COSATU statement:

G4S’s modus operandi is indicative of two of the most worrying aspects of neoliberal capitalism and Israeli apartheid: the ideology of “security” and the increasing privatization of what have been traditionally state run sectors. Security, in this context, does not imply security for everyone, but rather, when one looks at the major clients of G4S Security (banks, governments, corporations etc.) it becomes evident that when G4S says it is “Securing your World,” as the company slogan goes, it is referring to a world of exploitation, repression, occupation and racism.

When I traveled to Palestine two years ago with a delegation of indigenous and women-of-color scholar/activists, it was the first time the members of the delegation had actually visited Palestine. Most of us had been involved for many years in Palestine solidarity work, but we were all thoroughly shocked to discover that the repression associated with Israeli settler colonialism was so evident and so blatant. The Israeli military made no attempt to conceal or even mitigate the character of the violence they inflicted on the Palestinian people.

Gun-carrying military men and women—many extremely young—were everywhere. The wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison. Before Palestinians are even arrested, they are already in prison. One misstep and one can be arrested and hauled off to prison; one can be transferred from an open-air prison to a closed prison.

G4S clearly represents these carceral trajectories that are so obvious in Palestine but that also increasingly characterize the profit-driven moves of transnational corporations associated with the rise of mass incarceration in the US and the world.

On any given day there are almost 2.5 million people in our country’s jails, prisons, and military prisons, as well as in jails in Indian country and immigrant detention centers. It is a daily census, so it doesn’t reflect the numbers of people who go through the system every week or every month or every year. The majority are people of color. The fastest-growing sector consists of women —women of color. Many are queer or trans. As a matter of fact, trans people of color constitute the group most likely to be arrested and imprisoned. Racism provides the fuel for maintenance, reproduction, and expansion of the prison-industrial complex.

And so if we say abolish the prison-industrial complex, as we do, we should also say abolish apartheid, and end the occupation of Palestine!

In the United States when we have described the segregation in occupied Palestine that so clearly mirrors the historical apartheid of racism in the southern United States of America—and especially before Black audiences—the response often is: “Why hasn’t anyone told us about this before? Why hasn’t anyone told us about the segregated highways leading from one settlement to another, about pedestrian segregation regulated by signs in Hebron—not entirely dissimilar from the signs associated with the Jim Crow South. Why hasn’t anyone told us this before?”

Boycott G4S! Support BDS!

Just as we say “never again” with respect to the fascism that produced the Holocaust, we should also say “never again” with respect to apartheid in South Africa, and in the southern US. That means, first and foremost, that we will have to expand and deepen our solidarity with the people of Palestine. People of all genders and sexualities. People inside and outside prison walls, inside and outside the apartheid wall.

Palestine will be free!

Thank you.