The British and U.S. governments are stepping up their military drive and drawing in larger numbers of troops and war materiél from Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. The imperialist powers are literally driven to attack working people at home and abroad. They are pressed by the workings of the capitalist market system, including the long-term decline in profit rates, the growing interimperialist competition for access to cheap raw materials and markets, and the need to gain the edge in a world marked by capitalist overproduction.

Whole sections of Africa are marked by the conflicts between French, British, and U.S. imperialism and the widening impact of an overburdening foreign debt, for which payments are squeezed out of the lives of workers and peasants, and out of the land and resources of each country. Capitalism inflicts famine, disease, social dislocation, deteriorating infrastructure, and political turmoil on hundreds of millions.

Unable to chart a way out of this social catastrophe in the interests of humanity, and covering up their vulturistic aims, the imperialists resurrect the idea of the "white man's burden" to take on the problems of the great "dark continent." The big-business mouthpieces are working overtime to depict--with the usual imperial arrogance and class blindness that comes with it--one African country after another as barbaric, backward, and unable to control repeated "tribal" wars.

They work hard to divert us from the reality that the underdevelopment and oppression is the fruit of what the colonial and imperialist powers have imposed and maintained for hundreds of years, including every possible way to foster divisions among the oppressed.

The main goal of all parties involved--Washington and London, the capitalist governments in Africa and Asia that are sending troops at the imperialists' behest, and the current government in Sierra Leone as well as the opposition forces--is to keep working people out of political life and prevent them from acting in their own interests.

Washington and London well know the capacities of workers and peasants in Africa. Over the past half century, anticolonial and revolutionary struggles have swept South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, the Congo, and Algeria, to name a few of the places where toilers have stood up to the imperial powers and fought to reorder the social and economic relations they had imposed.

Millions learned they had important allies who were ready to act around the world to join in their struggle. Liberation fighters fought in common trenches across the continent. Cuban internationalist volunteers were found on every possible front. And fighters in North America such as Malcolm X championed their cause and sought to deepen the struggle inside the United States against a common enemy.

Speaking at a time of rising anticolonial struggle, Malcolm X told an audience in Detroit that "colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States.... it's an international power structure" used "to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources." Pointing to the upsurge in Africa at the time, Malcolm said that in addition to the "revolution on the outside of the house," the "powers that be are beginning to see that this struggle on the outside by the Black man is affecting, infecting the Black man who is on the inside of that structure. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say."

The challenge for working people and fighting youth in both the United States and Britain is to reject each one of the rationalizations for imperialist military adventures and repression at home, and never to give one millimeter to these brutal governments in their use of armed forces and police. It is to deepen the struggle "inside the house" of British or U.S. imperialism, and chart a revolutionary course to replace the number one regime of this "international power structure" with a government of workers and farmers that can join with others around the world to chart a new course for humanity.  
 
 
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