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Colonialism

Dilemmas Of Humanity Conference Calls For Pan-African, Working Class Power

August 20, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , ,
The world’s attention will be on the city of Johannesburg next week as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will convene the 15th annual BRICS Summit (August 22-24). Organized under the banner of “BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development, and Inclusive Multilateralism,” this year’s conference could potentially usher in a new era of cooperation among the global South. Over 40 countries have expressed their interest in joining BRICS, including 23 countries that have officially applied for membership. Meanwhile, leaders from 71 countries across the Global South have been invited to participate in the upcoming conference’s dialogues.

Burkina Faso’s New President Condemns Imperialism

August 3, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , ,
The new president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, has vowed to fight imperialism and neocolonialism, invoking his country’s past revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara and quoting Che Guevara. The West African nation has also formed close diplomatic ties with the revolutionary governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, as well as with NATO’s arch-rival Russia. In January 2022, a group of nationalist military officers in Burkina Faso toppled the president, Roch Kaboré, a wealthy banker who had fostered close ties with the country’s former colonizer, France, where he was educated.

African States Support Nigerien Sovereignty

August 2, 2023 Governments Of Burkina Faso, Mali And Guinea, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , , ,
Reaction to the coup in Niger is a litmus test which determines who is truly supportive of self-determination for African nations. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is urging Nigeria to invade neighboring Niger, which is just what the U.S. and France would like to see happen. But the leaders of Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali are standing firm and demanding that the people of Niger, who appear to be supportive of the military involvement in their country, resolve their own conflict without the intervention of imperialist western nations. The leaders of Mali and Burkina Faso announced a joint statement, and were joined by the president of Guinea in upholding sovereignty and Pan-African unity.

Sierra Club Workers Challenge Leaders’ Greenwashing ‘Apartheid Tours’

July 21, 2023 Jessica Buxbaum, Mintpress News. , , , , ,
In June, members of the Sierra Club unit of the Progressive Workers Union (PWU) passed a resolution pledging solidarity with the Palestinian people as the environmental organization pushes forward with its planned trips to Israel. The workers’ resolution puts its words into action by ensuring union funds aren’t investing in Israel’s settler enterprise and contributing to the oppression of Palestinians. It also calls for establishing a Palestine solidarity committee to foster relationships with Palestinian-led organizations and help educate members on the connections between Palestine and Indigenous struggles in the U.S.

President Raisi’s Latin America Tour Aims To Build Solidarity

June 16, 2023 Xavier Villar, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
Several experts have emphasized that this visit aims to highlight similarities between the Islamic Republic and the three Latin American countries, particularly in their political stance towards the West. It’s important here to explain the political similarities between them from a historical perspective with a focus on the connection between Western ideology and colonialism. To understand the critique of the colonial project from an external perspective to the Western discourse, it is essential to grasp this ontological relationship between the West and colonialism..

Anti-Colonialism And Direct Democracy

May 31, 2023 Yavor Tarinski, Resilience. , , , , ,
There has been this state-centered perception of anti-colonialism that tends to equate the term with any type of government that will stand up to US hegemony. This has led many to overlook the role of authoritarianism, considering it, wrongly, as a secondary issue, and thus pledge their support to autocratic regimes. Proposals such as that of “multipolar world”, which often seeks to reassert old imperialist glory and nationalism, have become a point of reference for the supporters of this brand of pseudo anti-colonialism. Activist Promise Li describes it as a faith in the reshuffling of the US hegemon’s power to a multipolarity of national elites to unlock better conditions of struggle, to which he adds that believing this would be idealism in its own right.

Economy Must Be ‘At Service Of Life’

May 28, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , ,
On May 19, Ghana received the first tranche of a $3 billion, three-year bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Accra had approached the lending agency in 2022 amid a severe cost of living crisis as food prices surged by 122% and the inflation rate breached 50%—the highest in two decades. With its currency cedi having lost over half of its value against the US dollar, and a debt burden that was draining between 70-100% of government revenues, Ghana reached a loan agreement with the IMF in December. This is Ghana’s seventeenth arrangement with the IMF since independence, with each engagement marked by similar policies of austerity which worked to erode the revolutionary vision of the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

Reject US Imperialism! Make Our Americas A Zone Of Peace

April 7, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. , , , ,
On Tuesday, April 4, The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with key partner organizations, launched an effort to activate the popular movements in our region in support of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) 2014 call to make the Americas region a “Zone of Peace.” This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition. With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.

Puerto Rico Contends With Two Storms: Fiona And Colonialism

October 20, 2022 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , ,
In mid-September of this year, Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico as a Category 1 storm. Despite Category 1 being the mildest ranking, the damage was devastating, triggering an island-wide blackout and leaving more than 760,000 without clean water. After nearly a month since the storm, the reality on the ground is still grim. Officials estimate $172 million in damages to roads, excluding municipal roads, which are the majority. Around 900,000 Puerto Ricans have applied for individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 59%, or three out of every five such applications have been approved. According to Manuel Laboy, the director of the Central Office of Recovery (COR3), FEMA has not approved any of the public assistance applications submitted by the 78 municipalities, 40 agencies and 57 non-profit organizations. FEMA itself has challenged this claim.

Africans Take UK To Court Over Abuses Committed During Colonial Era

August 31, 2022 Almayadeen. , , ,
Several Kenyan activists are suing the United Kingdom over abuses committed during the British empire's colonial era, raising a case against the country in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday. The plaintiffs, Africans forced off their land in the Kenyan Rift Valley, are saying London violated the European Convention of Human Rights through the abuses it committed in Africa during its colonial rule of the continent. The UK is a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, and the plaintiffs' lawyers are saying it violated the accord by consistently ignoring complaints raised by the victims of the brutal British colonial rule.

The Intricate Fight For Africa

August 8, 2022 Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News. , , ,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent tour in Africa was meant to be a game changer, not only in terms of Russia’s relations with the continent, but in the global power struggle involving the US, Europe, China, India, Turkey and others. Many media reports and analyses placed Lavrov’s visit to Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia within the obvious political context of the Russia-Ukraine war. The British Guardian’s Jason Burka summed up Lavrov’s visit in these words: “Lavrov is seeking to convince African leaders and, to a much lesser extent, ordinary people that Moscow cannot be blamed either for the conflict or the food crisis.” Though true, there is more at stake. Africa’s importance to the geostrategic tug of war is not a new phenomenon.

South Africa’s Energy Crisis Escalates

July 28, 2022 Brian Kamanzi, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
On the morning of June 27, 2022, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) shop steward David Fankomo joined his fellow members at the picket line outside Eskom’s Emalahleni office in the heart of South Africa’s coal belt. Workers at Eskom, the nation’s state-owned electricity utility, have been embattled in four rounds of wage negotiations with the executives since April 2022. South Africa is rich in energy but is in the midst of cascading energy shortages. Fankomo’s union is at the heart of this crisis: the workers bring the coal out of the ground but live with barely enough of its energy. On June 28, Eskom announced  that it was going to implement “Stage 6 load shedding” due to “unlawful industrial action.” “Load shedding” is defined as a rationing measure to reduce the demand for electrical energy by imposing rotational power outages when the supply from power plants is severely constrained.

Puerto Rico: Between Colonialism, Racism And Slavery On July 25

July 27, 2022 Antonio A. Camacho Camacho, Multipolarista. , , ,
Despite the harsh reality that Puerto Rico is neither free, nor associated, nor a state, July 25 marks the day of the creation of the constitution of the “Free Associated State,” or commonwealth, of Puerto Rico. I write this article with the purpose of revealing some details about the Anglo-Saxon-supremacist jurisprudence that gave rise to and govern this colonial territorial status. Before we travel back in time, let me point out that Section 2 of Article 3 of the United States constitution contains the Territorial Clause, which gives Congress the authority to fully regulate and dispose of US territories. Under this, the United States has total control over Puerto Rican territory. Let’s start with the slavery controversy elucidated in Dred Scott v. Sandford, dated 1856. Scott was a slave who lived in the Missouri Territory, but in Illinois he obtained his freedom – a legal status that Missouri did not recognize when Scott re-entered the territory.

Who Is Bankrolling Israel’s Latest Excursion Into The West Bank?

July 23, 2022 Jessica Buxbaum, Mintpress News. , , ,
Occupied West Bank - On Wednesday, thousands of Israeli settlers from the Nachala settler group — along with Israeli lawmakers — flocked to the occupied West Bank and established seven illegal outposts in a land grab operation propelled by a massive fundraising campaign. By Thursday evening, Israeli forces evacuated the day-old outposts and detained and later released 11 settlers. Despite the evictions, Nachala remains determined to continue building on land they claim is only reserved for Jews, with plans to set up new outposts as early as next week. Nachala, the group responsible for the infamous Evyatar outpost erected last year, has been preparing since April to establish outposts en masse in July. Initially, the plan was to build 28 new outposts throughout the West Bank, but that number was scaled back in recent days.

Nicaragua Expels The OAS

April 25, 2022 Kawsachun News. , , ,
The government of Nicaragua has announced the expulsion of representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the closure of its offices in the country. “We will not have a presence in any of the instances of that diabolical instrument of the misnamed OAS (..) neither will this infamous organism, consequently, have offices in our country. Its local branch has been closed” reads the communique released by the Foreign Ministry on Sunday afternoon. Back in November, the Sandinista government communicated that it would begin the typically two-year withdrawal process from the OAS. Today’s statement reads; “from this date we cease to be part of all the deceitful mechanisms of this monstrosity”. Police were seen guarding the now closed former offices of the OAS in Managua following the announcement.
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