ISAIAH 18

                                                  IN WHICH ANNOUNCEMENT IS MADE TO THOSE SCATTERED
                                                 BEYOND THE SEA OF THE LIBERATION OF SOUTHERN AFRICA


  1  Hail to the land shadowed by wings, which is past the rivers of Nubia;
  2  That sends ambassadors by sea, even with artifacts of papyrus upon the surface of the waters, saying, “Go, 
swift messengers, to a nation scattered and become plunder, to a people whose history has been fearful from of old; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, who were taken as spoil down the rivers of their land.”
  3  All who inhabit the world and dwell upon the earth, when He raises a standard upon the mountains, look; and when He sounds the ram’s horn, listen.
  4  For so has the LORD said to me, “I will be still and will observe from My dwelling place, like clear heat shimmering, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
  5  Because before the harvest, when the bud is complete and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives, and take away and cut down the branches.
  6  They will be left together for the birds of prey of the mountains and for the beasts of the earth; and the birds of prey will spend the summer feasting on them, and all the beasts of the earth will feast on them through the winter.
  7  At that time an offering will be brought to the LORD of hosts from a people scattered and become plunder, and from a people whose history has been fearful from of old, a nation meted out and trodden under foot, who were taken as spoil down the rivers of their land, to the place of the Name of the LORD of hosts, the mount of Zion.

    The joy of the great Afro-American diaspora at the liberation of southern Africa and the extirpation of the militantly racist settler element that dominates it now is here prophesied.  Nubia is the ancient name of the Sudan, whose rivers extend to Lake Victoria in Uganda.  The land referred to is, of course, “past the rivers” from the perspective of Palestine.  The “wings” are the massive projections of the northern portion of the continent to the east and west.  “Artifacts of papyrus” are books or the like; “whose history has been fearful” in the sense of tragic.  The “pruning knives” symbolize the liberation forces.

    And we may understand that these ambassadors journey over the sea not only to declare good tidings here but also to invite rotating cadres of black American administrators and technicians to southern Africa to replace the reprobates and so help ensure the continued prosperity of that land during a transitional period to follow their overthrow and to conclude with the founding of a Christian communalist democracy of the type discussed at some length elsewhere.  And who can know whether the aid of black Americans might not ultimately be sought by the victims of yet other tyrannical or dictatorial African regimes as well, or in abrogating that gruesome form of racist stratification known as “caste” introduced into the society and religion of ancient India by her ethnically European Indo-Aryan conquerors, who being few in number devised a corpus of apartheid legislation in those days and then preached it as revealed dogma among the subjugated peoples, a root destined to bear gall and woe in every age; as that of other Americans will surely be for the liberation and social and economic restructuring of their own ancestral homelands within either the Celtic culture zone of the British Isles or the Soviet colonial sphere in Eastern Europe, or the restoration of the ancient peasant social order in Mexico and throughout the whole of Latin America, or the re-establishment of an independent Tahuantinsuyu encompassing the zone of Incan heritage and Quechuan speech and culture within the territory of the present Andean republics — and as is only just and right after many aeons of torment and spoliation and the Indian utterly isolated and uncomprehending, surrounded by lies and the power of the gun and the leer of the conqueror indelibly branded on every face?

     Raise the standard over the walls of Babylon; strengthen the guard, set up watchmen, prepare ambushes; for the LORD has both devised and performed what He has spoken against the inhabitants of Babylon.  O you who dwell by many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come, even the reward for your covetousness!  The LORD has sworn by Himself, saying, “Surely I will fill you with men as with locusts and they will raise the war cry against you!”
                                                                                                                                                    — Jeremiah 51:12-14

                                                                                                                                          — Barry I. Hyman
                                                                                                                                              CHRISTIAN REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD