Colonialism

The Refugees Are Coming!!!

August 16, 2015 Andre Vltchek, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Climate Change, Colonialism, Immigration, Migrants

By Andre Vltchek for Counterpunch - The ongoing “refugee crises” is not a “problem that Europe has to deal with”. Europe is creating the crises. Europe is not “dealing” with anything. It is, as always, cheating, lying and calculating pennies, after stealing billions. Those who don’t see it are either blind or conditioned, alternatively well paid not to see. If the mother earth gets hit, powerfully, with tremendous destructive force, pieces of it will fly, in all directions. The same applies to countries, to nations. If left in peace, states will find the way to take care of their people. The present situation is actually just a tiny reflection, an overflow of horrors that the colonized and plundered world has to endure. It is just a tiny bit of that nightmare which is taking place inside Africa, the Middle East and several parts of Asia; a tiny bit thrown back to the face of the Europeans; being brought to and left at their doorsteps.

Social Democracy Or Revolutionary Democracy: Syriza & Us

August 6, 2015 Michael A. Lebowitz, www.socialistproject.ca Strategize! Austerity, Colonialism, Greece

By Michael A. Lebowitz in Socialist Project - 1. For several years, Syriza has been the hope of the working-class in Greece, Europe and in every country suffering from neoliberalism and austerity. It was sending a message that a better opposition was possible; and as such it was an inspiration to similar anti-austerity struggles (in particular, that of Podemos in Spain). 2. European and Greek capital was determined to kill that messenger. Accordingly, it was and is relentless in its determination to send a quite different message: TINA, there is no alternative to neoliberalism and austerity. 3. Despite its programme as a party, the platform on which it was elected to govern and a strong popular vote endorsing its rejection of the demands of European capital, the Syriza government totally capitulated and accepted a colonial status for Greece. 4. It is never too late (or too soon) to unleash the creative power of the masses.

Puerto Rico Defaults On Debt Repayment

August 5, 2015 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com Educate! Colonialism, Debt, Debt Colony, Puerto Rico

By Dominic Rushe in The Guardian - Puerto Rico missed its first debt repayment on Monday, the first time the troubled US commonwealth has failed to pay its bills. The island paid just $628,000 toward a $58m debt due to creditors of its Public Finance Corporation. While the default was expected, it is likely to worsen the financial situation for the island as it struggles with debts estimated at $72bn. “This was a decision that reflects the serious concerns about the Commonwealth’s liquidity in combination with the balance of obligations to our creditors and the equally important obligations to the people of Puerto Rico,” the territory’s government development bank president, Melba Acosta Febo, said in a statement. Late last month Víctor Suárez, chief of staff for governor Alejandro García Padilla, warned that the government did not have the money for the $58m of principal and interest due on Public Finance Corporation bonds.

The 100 Year Occupation of Haiti By The United States

August 3, 2015 Mark Schuller, www.nacla.org Educate! Colonialism, Haiti, Imperialism, Occupation, Racial Justice, usa

By Mark Schuller in NACLA - This Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the commencement of the U.S. Occupation of Haiti. On July 28, 1915, U.S. Marines landed on the shores of Haiti, occupying the country for 19 years. College campuses, professional associations, social movements, and political parties are marking the occasion with a series of reflections and demonstrations. Several have argued that the U.S. has never stopped occupying Haiti, even as military boots left in 1934. Some activists are using the word “humanitarian occupation” to describe the current situation, denouncing the loss of sovereignty, as U.N. troops have been patrolling the country for over 11 years. While the phrase “humanitarian occupation” may seem distasteful and even ungrateful to some considering the generosity of the response to the January 12, 2010 earthquake, there are several parallels between the contemporary aid regime and the U.S. Marine administration.

Hedge Funds Want Education Slashed In Puerto Rico

July 30, 2015 Mark Karlin, www.truth-out.org Educate! Austerity, Banking, Colonialism, Education, Puerto Rico

By Mark Karlin in Truth Out - According to a July 28 article in the Guardian, the financial vultures of the US are circling over Puerto Rico's skyrocketing debt, which totals more than $70 billion dollars. It is an austerity-driven death watch that by now is common practice among predatory "debt distress" consolidators: Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes. The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default - and repay its debts - by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education. The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt "unpayable" - paving the way for bankruptcy.

Argentina: Columbus Statue Replaced By Female Freedom Fighter

July 24, 2015 TeleSurTV, www.telesurtv.net Create! Argentina, Colonialism, Feminism, Latin America, Social Change

By TeleSurTV - Juana Azurduy was a South America guerrilla military leader and critical figure in the South American struggle for independence. Bolivian President Evo Morales' visit to his Argentina counterpart Cristina Fernandez Wednesday will focus not only on bilateral agreements between the two nations, but also South America's independence history, Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported. The two South American leaders will inaugurate a monument to independence heroine and South American guerrilla military leader Juana Azurduy. The 15-meter high (52 feet) bronze statue has been erected outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires in the place that a monument to Christopher Columbus once stood. “Bye Columbus, see you never. Hello Juana Azurduy, UNTIL VICTORY, ALWAYS… Long live Patria Grande.”

Lapavitsas Calls For Exit As The Only Strategy For Greece

July 20, 2015 Costas Lapavitsas, www.therealnews.com Create! Colonialism, Europe, Finance and the Economy, Greece

By Costas Lapavitsas in The Real News - And it is--it is neocolonial for many reasons. I will mention three. First, the deal proposes the establishment of a privatization fund of 50 billion Euros which will basically sell public property under foreign management. 25 billion of that, the first 25 billion, will go to the banks by the agreement. If there's anything left, and there won't be anything left because they'll never make 50 billion, it might go to repaying the debt and possibly to investment. Essentially, then, this fund will sell what it can of public property to recapitalize the banks. We've just agreed the deal that sells the family silver to recapitalize the failed Greek banks. We've also agreed to reforms of civil administration managed by the EU. We've also agreed to monitoring, and this monitoring will be very severe and it will last a lot longer than the three years that this deal will last.

Not Just Apologies But Repentance

June 26, 2015 Nassrine Azimi, www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp Create! Colonialism, History, Imperialism, Memory, Violence, Wars and Militarism

By Nassrine Azimi in Hiroshima Peace Media - In the Nuclear Age apologies for historical wrongs are not some diplomatic niceties, to quickly offer and get over with. Rather, they should prod us to understand why we still live in such a violent world, spend so much money on arms or need 16,000 nuclear warheads -- 2000 of them on trigger-hair alert - for our security. Why here, as in so many other nations, we have politicians who want us to believe that more warfare is the only way forward. And why, despite our great strides and achievements, we are unable to trust the powers of repentance and to solve our problems in a just, civilized manner. The stakes, of not understanding, have never been so high.

Reimagining Our Collective Powers Against Austerity

June 7, 2015 Max Haiven, www.roarmag.org Create! Colonialism, Commons, Human Rights, Neoliberalism

By Max Haiven in Roarmag. You ask about the utility and power of claiming a “right to the commons,” and how that might inform the circuit of struggles we are today encountering in Canada, where I live. I think the answer here depends on how you imagine “rights.” Is a right something granted by a state or sovereign, or is it something that emerges more organically from communities as they struggle? I think the latter is true. And so then how can we speak of a “right” to the commons? I think we cannot imagine that this right will ever be “granted” to us by those in economic and political power. In the end, the ideal of the commons (horizontalist, grassroots democracy, sustainable reciprocity, community-level decision-making and radical autonomy) is completely antithetical to the state-form and the Eurocentric regime of sovereignty that has, to date, been the “container” of “rights” as we are accustomed to imagining them.

Thousands Protest Against US Airbase In Japan’s Okinawa

May 18, 2015 Al Jazeera, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Colonialism, Japan, Wars and Militarism

Thousands of people have protested in Okinawa against a controversial US marine airbase in the southern Japanese island, as a two-decade-long row over the relocation of the site deepens. The massive demonstrations on Sunday aimed to pressure Tokyo to halt building work for the military base that has continued despite vehement opposition from the local government in Okinawa. Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 US service personnel stationed in Japan as part of a defence alliance, a proportion many of the island's residents say is too high. Washington announced plans to move the Futenma airbase in 1996, hoping to ease tensions with the host community after the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by servicemen.

Bringing Fanon’s “Concerning Violence” To Film

March 24, 2015 Alnoor Ladha, www.truth-out.org Educate! Colonialism, History, Modernization, Violence

Activist and author Alnoor Ladha interviews Joslyn Barnes, co-producer of Göran Hugo Olsson's film, Concerning Violence, which explores African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s: As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak says in her preface to the film, "The issue of colonization is a greed shared by humankind. No one is better than anyone; every generation must be trained in the practice of freedom, caring for others, as did [Frantz] Fanon, and that is what colonization stops. Within the greed for capital formation, colonization allows already existing ignorant racism to spread the markets in the name of civilization or modernization or globalization, as it does today. This film captures the tragedy of the moment when the very poor are convinced in the name of a nation, that is going to reject it once it is established on its own two feet, to offer themselves up for a violent killing. Fanon insists that the tragedy is that the very poor is reduced to violence, because there is no other response possible to an absolute absence of response and an absolute exercise of legitimized violence from the colonizers."

Haiti: Corporations Are The New Conquistadors

February 16, 2015 Andrey Panevin, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Colonialism, Corporatism, Haiti, Monsanto, US

On the 12th of January 2010, Haiti was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. An estimated 3 million people were affected, with upwards of 160,000 to 316,000 people killed. In the wake of this disaster a massive aid-campaign was initiated, with the United States leading the charge. However the allotted funds have not been used to help the people of Haiti, instead they have been funneled towards programs managed by USAID and Monsanto. The goals of these programs are to fundamentally restructure the Haitian economy, particularly the agricultural sectors. This is being done in order to maintain a corporate monopoly on both the import of food products into Haiti, as well as the means of food production within the country.

The Crises Are Urgent, So Let’s Slow Down

February 7, 2015 Hénia Belalia, www.truth-out.org Organize! Capitalism, Civil Rights, Colonialism

Wise sister and civil rights organizer George Friday, once told me that "There are two paces to organizing for change: the speed with which our systems are collapsing and the slow intentional time that is necessary for deep movement building." Too often, the anxieties about the world's problems lead to a hasty rush for solutions in which the slow time is compromised for the sake of moving actions, campaigns and institutional agendas forward. In that space, the complexities of systemic oppressions are overlooked, and the very inequalities that we are fighting to abolish continue to play themselves out. With every excuse to deal with the micro aggressions later, because the crises of environmental and social degradation must take precedence, the same folks are made expendable and sacrificed.

The Re-Colonization Of Africa

February 7, 2015 Jim Goodman, www.commondreams.org Educate! Africa, Colonialism, Food and Agriculture, Wars and Militarism

Most of the world's food is grown by small scale farmers. While it is called "traditional" agriculture, it is never static and farmers constantly adapt. This traditional agriculture relies on a varied and changing mix of crops, a polyculture, which provides a balanced diet, is affordable for local farmers and can accommodate changing local conditions. The Green Revolution relied on increasing acreages of monocultures, mostly cereal grains, which also increased the use of herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers as well as new varieties of high yielding crops. Inputs that small farmers, those who fed the people, were never meant to afford. It was an unsustainable system that called for too many inputs, too much machinery and too much energy.

A Message From The Dispossessed

January 13, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Charlie Hebdo, Colonialism, France

We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed. The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism. And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force. This is not about justice. It is not about the war on terror. It is not about liberty or democracy. It is not about the freedom of expression. It is about the mad scramble by the privileged to survive at the expense of the poor. And the poor know it. Caught between two worlds, they drift, as the two brothers did, into aimlessness, petty crime and drugs.

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