Comrade:Verda.Majo

Hello, my name is Verda.Majo. I am a ML.

I hope to contribute what I can to increase peoples' access to information and knowledge through this project.

To do

Here I will list things I am either currently working on or that I plan to work on, as well as some ideas I'm thinking of. I have no exact schedule for these. Of course, anyone is welcome to jump in and work on these things before I do.

Create page for the Project for the New American Century
Create page for Fifth Pan-African Congress/Pan-African Congresses
Add an "Administration" section to pages of US presidents and include the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, CIA Director, and Secretary of Defense
Improve/fix my old edits (improve citations, make articles more concise and better organized)
Library: Finish adding text, proofreading, adding images, tables, footnotes, etc. to:
Library: Add summaries to infoboxes
Zimbabwe: continue history section
Settler colonialism: fill in section on displacement
International Monetary Fund: add more subheadings under "structural adjustment programs" section; add more information to "By country" section; add info to 1990s in history section regarding the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Natural rubber: continue history section
Make pages for other natural resources, important commodities, primary and secondary products, etc. Sugar, cotton, gold, cocoa, soybeans, coffee, oil, uranium, iron, etc.
Make pages on various cities of DPRK
Make pages on various types of weapons including ancient and modern weapons
Make pages on handicrafts including ancient and modern production of handicrafts
Make pages on the US military, detailing locations of bases and "cooperative security locations" and other information about its operations

Reading recommendations

Dark Days in Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah (1968)

Dark Days in Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah

"The issues we faced at independence were so gigantic that within every sphere we had to take calculated risks. We could not, however obvious were the limitations of many of the police, the civil service and the judiciary, change them overnight. We had had no revolutionary war which would have produced and trained those who might take their place. [...] Before the military revolt the policy of Ghana was based upon an attempt to develop the country along what were essentially socialist lines. This policy could have succeeded had the western world been prepared to see coming into existence a genuinely independent African state."

Dark Days in Ghana (1968) explains in detail the many internal and external challenges of a country just after formal decolonization, where trained professionals vital to economic development remained scarce and largely reactionary, at the same time that the country needed to develop at a rapid pace within a hostile imperialist environment in the context of the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the wave of post-WWII decolonization. The work discusses the causes and consequences of the 1966 CIA-backed coup d'etat in Ghana, as told by former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, who wrote this work in exile soon after the events of the coup. It covers in detail the socialist-oriented development that had taken place in Ghana, with details on development plans and projects prior to the coup, alongside his analysis of the many contradictions within Ghana and the external conditions which together ultimately made the coup possible.

I feel that Dark Days in Ghana is not only a good book for learning about Ghana in particular, but also about the challenges and limitations in general of a country in a position similar to Ghana's at the time. Nkrumah, author of Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) was very aware of the vulnerabilities his country faced and what the consequences of an imperialist coup would be, and so I think his writing on the subject of what happened in his country is a great resource which discusses the subject clearly, thoroughly, and without illusions. As his author's note at the start of Dark Days in Ghana reads: "Ghana's experience since 24th February 1966, costly but priceless, must be viewed in the context of the African Revolution as a whole. It is with this in mind that I have written, in Conakry, about Ghana's 'dark days' in the hope that publication of the facts may help to expose similar setbacks in other progressive independent African states."

The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1939 by Walter Rodney (1974)

The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1939 by Walter Rodney

This work elucidates the step-by-step process of establishing a colonial economy and what it looks like in terms of the specific patterns of violence and resistance that emerge, the types of laws enacted, the patterns of economic production which emerge, and the political landscape of the colony as well as the metropole, including the differences between the demands of settlers and the interests of the metropole, which diverged in some ways and coincided in others. In particular, this work goes into detail about the early phases of colonization in Tanganyika (the mainland of what is now Tanzania). Along with providing insight into Tanzania's history in particular, it provides a detailed overview of the specific measures taken to undermine the original indigenous economy and supplant it with a colonial one, as well as to keep indigenous production in check after the colonized population ends up being more successful than settlers in certain areas of the economy. The behavior of settlers demanding special privileges from the metropole when they could not compete with indigenous production is also discussed. European imperialist rivalries in the pre-WWI to WWII era, particularly between Germany and Britain, are the backdrop of this work. I feel that this work has a lot to teach about the specifics of Germany's position in the imperial core at the time and clearly shows the essential relationship of colonization to imperialist power struggles, along with detailing a lot of information about the establishment and workings of a colonial economy in this era. I think this work is a good companion to Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) and could be read before, after, or alongside it.

Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club, speech by Herbert Chitepo (1973)

Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club (video), speech by Herbert Chitepo

"I could go into whole field within discrimination in legislation, in residence, in economic opportunities, in education, I could go into that. But I will restrict myself to the question of land because I think this is very basic. To us, the essence of exploitation, the essence of white domination, is domination over land. That is the real issue. The essence of what they have done to us has been the deprivation that they have done by taking the land away from us. And this is a very serious situation." "We looked upon the situation we were facing. It was clear we were facing a situation of assault, a situation of violence. We were at all intents and purposes being made under compulsion, under force, under duress, of a very vicious type, to serve in the mines, to be minions, to have no place, no education, to live like serfs in the country of our birth. We thought no, the time had come to change tactics. We will have to confront the regime. We can no longer beg it to talk to us. It won't talk to us. We must now confront it."

This speech by Zimbabwe African National Union leader Herbert Chitepo was given in the midst of the Second Chimurenga, the war for national liberation Zimbabweans fought against the racist white settler regime of so-called "Rhodesia" in the 1960s and 70s. In this speech, Chitepo gives a historical overview of the colonization of Zimbabwe by white settlers, up to the development of the liberation war then being fought. Chitepo provides his analysis of settlers, settler colonialism, the progression of ways that Zimbabwean people decided to confront it, and what role the Rhodesian settler regime played within the international system of imperialism. As Chitepo explains:

"...We realize that what we are dealing with is not simply racism as such, it is also imperialist exploitation. The white people who are in Zimbabwe are very largely of the post-Second World War sort of generation. They left England after it had been war-torn, they left Europe after the war, to seek greater opportunities, to seek more fortunes, more money, more status in society which they couldn't even have got in their own country. In short, what they were seeking is comfort. Big homes, servants, large salaries, an economy that made life easy for them. It is our determination in the attack that we have embarked on to remove that false structure of society based on corruption, on privilege, on exploitation. [...] The Zimbabwe situation, the settlers there, can and truly should be looked upon, really, the immediate local agents of a huge international capitalistic maneuver to control and continue to exploit the resources of Zimbabwe—in which they include ourselves. We are just a natural resource to be exploited for the benefit of these big combined, these big companies. [...] If in fact these companies get threatened by the indigenous peoples, you will no doubt find that they will send troops to go and defend their so-called properties in these areas. This is what all this machine is. It is part of the machinery of international capitalism to try to exploit the third world, in particular southern Africa."

I feel this speech is very worth reading or watching not only for the specific knowledge it provides on Zimbabwe's history, but also for hearing the words and thoughts of a leader during an active liberation war against settler-colonialism.

My Life and Faith by Ri In Mo (1997)

My Life and Faith by Ri In Mo

"'Our Korean nation is not dead but alive,' he said. 'Armed guerrillas in the mountains, workers with hammers in their hands in factories and peasants with hoes in the countryside are fighting the Japanese. In schools students demonstrate and go on strike. If they continue to fight our nation will definitely win independence.' [...] I still remember that I could not fall asleep for a long time that night because Jong’s words reverberated in my mind: 'The Korean nation is not dead but alive and fighting....' [...] That night I dreamed of joining the guerrillas of Mt. Paektu on horseback and chasing away the Japanese. This dream became my lifelong vision. Later almost every day I and my friends visited Jong Un Gil after school. He instilled socialist ideas into us, telling us about capitalism, socialism, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin." "As time went by, a sense of loneliness, of being detached from the ranks of struggle, grew more and more in me. My uncle seemed to pity me in such a state and suggested that I go to Changbai County and attend the middle school there. [...] While I was hesitating I heard the news of the anti-Japanese armed struggle in the border area. To our great joy, the guerrillas were fighting battles almost every day against the Japanese army and police, we were told. The news of the anti-Japanese guerrilla force spread in Phungsan like wildfire, and made me decide to go to Changbai. I told my uncle that I would go to the middle school in Changbai County to study. But I had other plans."

My Life and Faith is the memoir of Ri In Mo, a war correspondent in the Korean People's Army and an unconverted long-term prisoner who was imprisoned in south Korea for 34 years. Ri In Mo's memoir provides a lot of information and context about modern Korean history, spanning the author's youth and radicalization during the last years of Japanese colonial rule in Korea, to the early years of development in the DPRK, to his decades of imprisonment and torture in south Korea, and his eventual repatriation to DPRK in the 1990s. I feel that this work is good for gaining a vivid sense of life in Korea during the 20th century. Not only can the reader learn about Korean history through the lens of an individual's experiences, but it is also a portrait of the process of radicalization of a person growing up under colonial rule and the development of their determination to participate in the national liberation struggle, starting first with rejecting colonial education, forming reading groups, and later seeking to join the guerrilla forces.

Other

Space for other notes. Nothing at the moment.