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Colonialism

Where Flowers Find No Peace Enough To Grow

September 24, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
On 13 July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a landmark resolution on the prevalence of racism and for the creation of an independent mechanism made up of three experts to investigate the root cause of deeply embedded racism and intolerance. The Group of African States pushed for this resolution, which had emerged out of global anger over the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020. The discussions in the UNHRC considered the problems of police brutality and went back to the formation of our modern system in the crucible of slavery and colonialism. A number of Western countries – such as the United States and the United Kingdom – hesitated over both the assessment of the past and the question of reparations; these governments were able to remove the requirement to investigate systematic racism in US law enforcement.

The Horrific Truths About Indian Boarding Schools Are Gaining Attention

June 28, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Due in part to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the horrific truths about what children and their families endured and the graves of the children who were murdered in the residential schools are being uncovered. The residential schools originated in the United States, which has yet to recognize their existence and what happened in them. That may be starting to change after many decades of activism to raise awareness and now an initiative by Secretary of the Interior Haaland. Clearing the FOG speaks with Matt Remle, an indigenous human rights activist about the history of the boarding schools, their purpose to enable the exploitation of resources and how they are connected into the bigger picture of genocide and colonization.

Capitalism Cannot Exist Without Imperialism

June 14, 2021 Rania Khalek, Breakthrough News. , , ,
Prahbat Patnaik, professor emeritus at JNU, joins Rania Khalek on her program Dispatches to discuss the argument he lays out in his book A Theory of Imperialism, which argues that capitalism was always a function of imperialism. But today’s imperialism takes a subtler less visible form than during colonialism, keeping large parts of the world in poverty through mechanisms like income deflation so that the wealthy nations can maintain access to the cheap commodities only tropical regions can produce. Imperialism also requires an army of unemployed people in the third world that are even more essential to capitalism than the army of reserve labor in the global north. Patnaik also addresses the democratic socialist ideal of turning America into Denmark but that too cannot happen without imperialism.

How To Wreck A Black Nation In The Age Of ‘Black Lives Matter’

June 13, 2021 Taytu Bitul, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Folks, having spent much time navigating my way through the twilight zone that is American Foreign Policy, I feel compelled to share with you all how the cynical (but very real) game of sabotaging and undermining a large African country is played while loudly proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. Here is the international playbook. Note, this playbook requires meticulous alignment and careful coordination amongst vicious terrorist groups, their trolls, paid Washington DC lobbyists, US and European Union (EU) government officials, major western media outlets, UN agencies, and Amnesty International. It seems impossible to achieve this level of coordination, but apparently it can be done! In fact this playbook is being executed right now as we speak.

Toward An Abolitionist Approach To Anti-Asian Violence

May 9, 2021 Dylan Rodriguez, Society and Space. , , ,
Atrocities targeting people and bodies we identify as our own tend to incite powerful feelings of exception.  A shared sense of singular vulnerability and violation circulates virally, and the epidemiology of toxic intimacy with violence is simultaneously social and personal. The sheer quantity of casualties matters less than the bare fact of unexpected cruelty. Singularity and exception yield to righteous outrage, communal mobilization, and militant demand on surrounding authorities. Something must be done now. A famous few may issue bounties for individual culprits, with no regard for the collateral consequences of such grandstanding. A larger narrative quickly forms, condensing in precious keywords:  hate, hate crime, justice, ignorance, safety, policing, prosecution, inclusion, education, criminal.

Joint Submission To UN Special Rapporteur Over Israel’s Settler-Colonial, Apartheid Regime

May 4, 2021 Al Haq. , , ,
On 30 April 2021, the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC); Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies; and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network submitted a joint submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Mr Michael Lynk, laying out the framework for the illegality of Israeli colonial settlements, which are key to Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime, and analysing their impact on the Palestinian people’s rights. The joint submission is pursuant to a call for input ahead of the Special Rapporteur’s report on the issue, which will be presented to the Human Rights Council in its 47th Session (21 June – 9 July 2021).

COVID-19, The Climate Crisis, And Mutual Aid

December 25, 2020 Tina Gerhardt, The Progressive. , , ,
After COVID-19 struck in spring 2020, the absence of a concerted federal response prompted people across the country to begin self-organizing everything from food distribution to sewing squads to shelter. That work continues today, drawing on a long tradition. “Mutual aid,” a concept coined by the Russian naturalist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, refers to the principles of cooperation, and of people joining together to help each other. It ran counter to the then-hegemonic Darwinian theories emphasizing competition and survival of the fittest. Kropotkin did not deny the role of competition, but he argued that the cooperative spirit has gone under-examined.

As A Native American, Here’s What I Want You To Know About Thanksgiving

November 25, 2020 Corinne Oestreich, Huff Post. , , ,
Native Americans don’t just live on reservations, we live in cities, and we live internationally. I grew up in the Silicon Valley of California. I was born in the city and have lived here my whole life, as an “Urban Native.” My grandfather moved to California from Mohawk territory in the 1950s after he served in Korea, and we have all lived in Sunnyvale ever since. The challenges I grew up around were different from my Oyaté (family) out on the reservations. It is easier to lose our sense of culture living among so many established settler communities.

Energy Transitions And Colonialism

November 11, 2020 Hamza Hamouchene, Africa Is A Country. , , ,
The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented oil price crash, causing a shock to the fossil fuel industry. The impact has been brutal among oil companies, especially in the high-cost US shale oil sector. As for oil-producing African countries, such as Angola, Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria, more economic strain has been added to their economies with mounting budget deficits and a hemorrhaging of their foreign exchange reserves. Against this backdrop, some analysts have rushed to speculate that the pandemic could kill the oil industry and help save the environment.

On Contact: Origin Of White Supremacy

September 27, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the origin of white supremacy and how it plays out in contemporary society with historian Gerald Horne. Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, Texas. Horne’s new book is ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century’.

UK And Hong Kong: Mutually Reinforced Ignorance

July 17, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Three years ago, I visited Old Supreme Court Building in Hong Kong, also known as The Court of Final Appeal, together with my friend, an Afghan-British lawyer, who was on a personal mission of ‘re-discovering Asia.’ Coming from a prominent, highly educated family in Afghanistan, my friend was extremely well aware that both the United States and the United Kingdom thoroughly destroyed her country during the recent occupation. In fact, under the NATO boots, Afghanistan became the poorest country in Asia, with the lowest life expectancy. But after the long journey through Asia, somehow, she became nostalgically attached to Hong Kong. It looked familiar. As she studied and practiced law in the U.K., The Court of Final Appeal Building looked familiar and reassuring to her.

To Abolish The Medical Industrial Complex

July 14, 2020 Gwendolyn Wallace, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The past six months have highlighted the fight that Black people are in against state violence, both in the form of policing and the US healthcare system. Though the ruling class cries that the coronavirus pandemic is “the great equalizer ,” the virus continues to demonstrate exactly who our capitalist health-care system was designed to keep alive. So far, across the country, about 42% of coronavirus deaths have been Black people , even though they were only about 21% of the population in the areas analyzed. In Louisiana , over 70% of people who died were Black (despite Black people being only 32% of the population). Along with high rates of death, countless stories have emerged about Black people turned away from hospitals, struggling to access testing, and being disproportionately arrested or ticketed for not following public health guidelines.

How Palestine Advocates Can Support Black Struggle

June 29, 2020 By Kristian Davis Bailey, The Electronic Intifada. , , ,
Black people are one of the first and largest victims of Western colonialism and racial capitalism. We have never received justice for 500 years of racist violence and exploitation. The US and most Western countries built their empires through profits from the Atlantic slave trade. As an illegitimate settler colony that was built on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population and enslavement of Africans, the US requires the continuous subjugation of Black and Indigenous people to maintain its imperial domination abroad. Accordingly, the greatest internal threat to the US empire is that of a Black revolution. This is why the last real moment of Black revolution was so viciously attacked and destroyed between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

How The Weapons Of White Supremacy Wiped Out The Afro Argentines

May 18, 2020 the Pan-African Alliance. , , ,
The easiest way to understand a complex system like white supremacy is to see that system in action. When it comes to the multifaceted system that is white supremacy, we should look at a nation that has used the weapons of white supremacy to remove Blacks from their population: Argentina In 80 years, Argentina reduced the Black population from almost half of the overall population to less than 4 percent using very specific weapons of white supremacy. According to records, African slaves first arrived in Argentina in the 1500s. They joined millions of other slaves across the Americas who were forcibly removed from their homelands to toil in Argentina under white masters. Even though there are an estimated 1 million Black Argentines alive today, few claim Black as their race because Africans are perceived to be “undeveloped and uncivilized”. 

On Contact: Colonial War On Palestine

May 3, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the long, disingenuous role the USA has played in the Israel-Palestine conflict with Professor Rashid Khalidi. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. His new book is ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance.’
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