The U.S. "drug war” that imprisons and murders African people is big business for just about every sector of the capitalist economy.
The multi-billion dollar prison industry has created countless jobs and spin-off businesses, serving as an economic stimulus for white people.
More than that, the U.S. and British governments, through the big Wall Street banks, push drugs and coordinate the drug trade which makes trillions of dollars on the backs of African and oppressed people.
This fact was highlighted by the recent announcement by the U.S. Justice Department that it would not prosecute the British HSBC Bank for its years of blatant drug money laundering.
One of the largest banks in the world, HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation) was founded in 1865 as Britain’s main drug pusher in Asia, which, along with the trade in African people and the colonial domination of much of the world, is the basis for the wealth of Britain, the U.S. and world capitalism today.
While one out of every eight people incarcerated in the entire world is an impoverished African in the U.S., the HSBC bank simply paid $1.9 billion to the cash-strapped U.S. government and charges were dropped.
The $1.9 billion is just a drop in the bucket of HSBC’s 173 billion dollars in shares on the stock market and assets of 2.6 trillion dollars.
U.S courts refuse to prosecute HSBC bank
According to a recent article in the UK Guardian:
"U.S. authorities defended their decision not to prosecute HSBC for accepting the tainted money of rogue states and drug lords on Tuesday, insisting that a $1.9bn fine for a litany of offences was preferable to the 'collateral consequences' of taking the bank to court…”
"Announcing the record fine at a press conference in New York, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said that despite HSBC's 'blatant failure' to implement anti-money laundering controls and its willful flouting of U.S. sanctions, the consequences of a criminal prosecution would have been dire.”
"Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized.”
HSBC is THE longest running, most vicious, rotten filthy drug dealer in the entire world
So while the U.S. Department of Justice has sent millions and millions of African people to prison on drug charges, no HSBC banker went to trial, faced thirty years to life or had his or her mug shot plastered across the pages of newspapers.
The bank didn’t even have to give up the multi-trillions they made during centuries drug pushing and drug money laundering since it was founded in Britain 150 years ago.
According to the article “HSBC: The World’s Dirtiest Bank,” “HSBC has served as the world’s #1 drug money laundry since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars. During the Vietnam War, HSBC laundered CIA heroin proceeds.”
Another article, “HSBC: Flagship of Britain’s Dope, Inc.,” states:
“It should come as no surprise that British banking giant HSBC was caught laundering money for drug cartels and terrorist groups. HSBC…is the kingpin bank of the global drug trade, a bank which, since it’s founding in 1865, has been devoted to financing drug crops and laundering the proceeds. HSBC is, in fact, one of the key controlling institutions of the global illicit drug cartel we call Dope, Inc…”
“The opium trade began in the early 1700s as an official monopoly of the British East India Company, which conquered India, and ran it on behalf of the British Crown and the financiers operating through the City of London.”
“Indian-grown opium became a key component in the trade for tea and silk in China. The East India Company had a thriving business selling British textiles and other manufactured products in India, and selling Chinese silk and tea in Britain.”
“But the Company ran into problems with the opium end of the trade. The influx of opium caused major problems for China, and led the Emperor to issue an edict in 1729 prohibiting opium consumption. Then, in 1757, the Emperor restricted all foreigners and foreign vessels to a trading area in the port city of Canton. A stronger edict in 1799 prohibited the importation and use of opium under penalty of death.”
“None of this stopped the British from continuing to flood China with opium, creating millions of addicts, but it did cause the East India Company to protect its tea and silk trade by shifting its Chinese opium operations to nominally independent drug runners who bought opium legally from the East India Company in Calcutta, and smuggled it into China.”
“…In 1839, the Chinese Emperor launched an anti-opium offensive, which included the confiscation of all opium stocks in the hands of Chinese and foreign merchants. The merchants put up a fight, but were ultimately forced to concede, turning in their opium stocks after being indemnified against losses by British officials.”
“In response, however, the British launched a propaganda campaign against China, accusing it of violating Britain’s right to “free trade.” Britain sent its fleet to China, to force the Chinese to capitulate to the opium trade. The action, known as the First Opium War, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, under which China not only capitulated to the opium trade, but also agreed to pay reparations to the opium runners and gave the British control of the island of Hong Kong.”
“However, the treaty did not specifically legalize opium, so the British launched a second Opium War, which resulted in the 1856 Treaty of Tientsin, which legitimized the opium trade and opened China up to foreigners even more.”
The basis of the wealth of the Queen of England, the Wall Street Bankers, the white ruling class and the entire white society
Along with the British assault on Africa, the trade in African human beings and the British colonial empire that spanned the globe, British and U.S. imperialist drug dealing, coordinated through HSBC for 150 years, was a key component of the vicious, filthy foundation of the capitalist system itself.
Rape and plunder, enslavement of a whole continent of African people, genocide and slaughter of the Indigenous people of this entire hemisphere and pushing drugs on Asia and the world: this is how capitalism was born and how it is maintained.
These are the real drug pushers, the slave masters, murderers and rapists who made their fortune on the backs of African and oppressed peoples everywhere so they could live the highest standard of living ever known on the planet.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela tells us, this is what Karl Marx called “the primitive accumulation of capital,” the start up money that got the whole capitalist system up and running.
Chairman Omali quotes from Part VIII of “Capital” by Marx:
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels tread the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China.”
HSBC has continued to coordinate the world drug trade, working with the CIA in Vietnam, in Thailand and in Mexico today where 120,000 people have died as a result of the U.S. and bank-financed “drug war.”
HSBC is the latest in a string of huge banks the U.S. did not bring to trial for massive drug pushing involvement
Other banks recently fined with no legal actions include Wachovia Bank, which is in fact tied to HSBC and UBS, which gave more than half a million dollars to the 2008 Obama campaign.
In 2010, Wachovia Bank paid $50 million for breaking U.S. banking laws, the largest settlement ever for money laundering.
The federal prosecutor in the case remarked, "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations."
Wachovia laundered $378.4 billion for the drug gangs.
In an extensive article entitled "The Global Banking 'Super-Entity' Drug Cartel: The 'Free Market' of Finance Capital," marketoracle.com blogger Andrew Marshall points out that Wachovia's fine, plus $110 million in drug money it had to forfeit, was less than two percent of the bank's 2009 profits.
The article states that “in 2009, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that billions of dollars in drug money saved the major banks during the financial crisis, providing much-needed liquidity.”
Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated that drug money was ‘the only liquid investment capital’ available to banks on the brink of collapse, with roughly $325 billion in drug money absorbed by the financial system.
Without identifying specific countries or banks, Costa stated that, “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drug trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”
The U.S. branch of HSBC donated $75,000 to Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
Overall Wall Street and world bankers have contributed more than $35 million to Obama in 2012, even though Obama gave them about $13 trillion in bailouts during his first administration.
Our pain, their income
HSBC is also the largest subprime mortgage hound in the U.S., responsible for home foreclosures of hundreds of thousands of Africans in the U.S.
Seventy-five percent of the 2.5 million people in U.S. prisons and the six million who are behind bars, on parole or probation or awaiting trial are impoverished African, Mexican or Indigenous people.
The vast majority have been targeted by the U.S. government’s “War on Drugs,” defined by the African People’s Socialist Party as a counterinsurgency used to salt the earth following the defeat of the African Revolution of the 1960s.
It is young African people who are forced into the U.S. government and banks’ illegal penny-ante street drug trade after their communities, businesses and jobs were destroyed by the U.S. government’s counterinsurgency.
It is African, Mexican and other impoverished, colonized “black and brown” people who are labeled the criminals and drug kingpins, rounded up to fill the prison beds for the massive prison industry spawned from the drug pushing of the government and big banks like HSBC.
This takes place in a country built on slavery and genocide, where white people own 22 times the assets of African families and where African youth unemployment hovers at 50 percent.
Corrections Corporation of America, which has rising shares on the stock market as the largest private prison company in the country, is now buying prisons in Florida and most other states with the agreement that each state will guarantee at least 1000 beds and a 90 percent occupancy rate in the prisons they are selling.
As Adam Copnik noted in an article in the New York Times:
"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the most fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole — than were in slavery then."
This is why Point Number Six of the Working Platform of the African People’s Socialist Party states, “We want the immediate and unconditional release of all black people who are presently locked down in U.S. prisons.”
The African People’s Socialist Party is uniting African people around the world to liberate Africa and all its resources and end once and for all this brutal capitalist system built and maintained at our expense.
Imperialist capitalist-colonialism is the real enemy.
Uncle Sam is the real drug Kingpin and the White House is the Dope House.
Open the gates of the colonial prison system!
Jail the parasitic bankers and all who have profited from the U.S. prison system and oppression of African people for the past 600 years!
