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Neocolonialism

Trump Or Not, Africa Must Take Charge Of Its Future

For decades, Africa’s relationship with the US has been shaped largely by foreign aid, security partnerships, and economic ties that have fostered dependence rather than mutual benefit. Now, under Trump’s “renewed” leadership, this dynamic is being called into question, especially as his policies begin to impact critical sectors such as health, education, and security, causing unease across the continent. On January 20, Trump announced a 90-day freeze on USAID funding, halting essential services and sparking outrage across the world.

Mass Deportation As Ethnic Cleansing: On The Ongoing War

The Trump raids have begun . In many ways, nothing is new. Despite liberals’ best attempts at depicting Trump’s policy as qualitatively different, what we are witnessing is merely an intensification of the bipartisan U.S. deportation regime. In other words, “mass deportation” chants might be new, but mass deportations aren’t. During his first term in office, Trump deported fewer people than all previous three administrations. Later, Biden deported twice as many people as Trump. The only thing that substantively changes under the latter is the visibility of these processes. In short, liberals now care. Time for new photo-ops and selective outrage—if that.

What’s Happening In Niger?

“Homeland or death, we will win.” This sign stands in the Place de la Patrie, one of the cradles of the popular struggle against France in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Today, it serves as a meeting point where people gather, chat, and watch the movement on Boulevard Zarmaganda, home to the headquarters of the first popular committee supporting the Nigerien army. “It used to be called Place de la Francophonie. Today, it’s Place de la Patrie because this is the birthplace of the patriotic struggle for complete national sovereignty. A week after the coup d’état, we moved here.

Ukraine’s Leaders Discuss Continued War Against Russia

After Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5, the Ukrainian authorities and media are visibly concerned about a possible change of policy in Washington. During the recent presidential and Congress elections, US media close to the Democratic Party were full of scare stories that Trump and the Republican Party, if elected, would force Ukraine into negotiations and concessions with the Russian Federation. The unelected, governing regime in Kiev is entirely dependent on Western powers for arms to pursue the war against Russia and for loans and investments to keep its economy afloat.

The United States And Israel Set Out To Remake The Middle East, Again

Twenty-two years ago, as the winds of war were gathering in Washington, there was a strong sense of not just rage but of over-confidence in the United States. The neoconservative movement was at the height of its influence, both in and outside of government. The world had rallied around the United States and its invasion of Afghanistan, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and they had not yet realized that the invasion force was already sinking into what would become a twenty-year quagmire. The neocons argued that it was time to remake the Middle East according to the West’s vision. Ignoring the fact that the region’s problems stemmed in large measure from post-colonial conditions that traced their roots back to the Allied Powers’ decision to draw the region’s borders according to their colonial ambitions in the aftermath of World War I, they seized the opportunity to put their theories to the test.

Venezuela Presents Anti-Blockade Policies To Burkina Faso Delegation

This Wednesday, Venezuelan vice minister for anti-blockade policy, William Castillo, made a presentation to the visiting delegation from Burkina Faso. Castillo’s presentation covered the impact on Venezuela’s economy of the illegal coercive measures—euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”—imposed by the US and its vassals and spoke about how Venezuela has overcome them. In a statement, Castillo wrote that both parties agreed that “the sanctions are part of an illegal and criminal foreign policy and of a model of neocolonialism that uses attacks on the economy as a spearhead for the geopolitical control of free nations.” Burkina Faso also faces sanctions imposed by the European Union.

Kenya At 60: Field Notes From The Neocolony

Just four years after independence, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga published Not Yet Uhuru, a seminal political treatise of the new country. 60 years after independence, and 56 years after its publication, one might argue that nothing much has changed. As a nation, we find ourselves still grappling with the question of how Kenya became free with the greater portion of the arable land controlled by a handful of owners even as millions are squatters on their ancestral land.

Cultural And Communicational Decolonization

Without the organization of culture and communication within our community, our best decolonizing efforts occur as islands of “good intentions,” even if they are educated, ingenious, and passionate. There is no correct practical application without correct organization. That is a major weakness and an urgent current task. What should such a community organized against symbolic manipulation look like? Perhaps we do not know it completely, but it is inexcusable to know how we do not want it to be, [without considering what it should be.] That is why we need a semiotics for de-colonization.

Beyond The Neocon Debacle In Ukraine

We are entering the end stage of the 30-year U.S. neoconservative debacle in Ukraine. The neocon plan to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO has failed. Decisions now by the U.S. and Russia will matter enormously for peace, security, and wellbeing for the entire world. Four events have shattered the neocon hopes for NATO enlargement eastward, to Ukraine, Georgia, and onward. The first is straightforward. Ukraine has been devastated on the battlefield, with tragic and appalling losses. Russia is winning the war of attrition, an outcome that was predictable from the start but which the neocons and mainstream media continue to deny.

France Out Of Africa, US And NATO Too: Activists Picket The United Nations GA

On Tuesday September 19, the opening day of the United Nations General Assembly, anti-imperialist activists rallied outside the UN Headquarters in New York City to demand that France end its imperialist meddling in West Africa and the Sahel. Organizers with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the December 12th Movement, Bridging Africa and Black America, and others denounced the neocolonial policies of the European nation and voiced solidarity and support to Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Niger, which recently underwent coups opposing French neocolonialism. Activists demanded that France end its neocolonial exploits in the Sahel, principally Niger. 

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

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.

Blackrock Is A ‘Modern Day Dutch East India Company’

On August 14, US-based organizations rallied in front of the BlackRock world headquarters in New York City to demand that the massive investment company cancel the USD 220 million it holds in Zambia’s external debt. Organizations that participated in the action include the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, the Peoples Forum, the Debt Collective, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, Friends of the Congo, and Friends of Swazi Freedom. For years, Zambia has been stuck diverting public funds to service its foreign debts.

Poorer Nations Break The Cycle Of Dependency That Has Inflicted Grief

In late July, I visited two settlements of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) on the outskirts of São Paulo (Brazil). Both settlements are named for brave women, the Brazilian lawmaker Marielle Franco – who was assassinated in 2018 – and Irmã Alberta – an Italian Catholic nun who died in 2018. The lands where the MST has built the Marielle Vive camp and the Irmã Alberta Land Commune were slated for a gated community with a golf course, and a garbage dump, respectively. Based on the social obligations for land use in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the MST mobilised landless workers to occupy these areas, build their own homes, schoolhouses and community kitchens, and grow organic food.

Latin America And West Africa – Patterns Of Neocolonialism

The patterns of neocolonial intervention in the majority world by the United States and its allies since their victories over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945 are very clear. Almost immediately the Western countries started a cycle of bloody aggression against peoples resisting colonialism, followed later by the dependence of most African and Asian countries on the ruthless Western economic system. In all this time, the United States and Europe demonstrated the most crude and brutal determination to guarantee at all costs control of the natural resources required by their capitalist system.

Coup In Niger: Old Europe On Trial

Gold, silicon, oil—with reserves estimated at 2 billion barrels—and above all uranium, are essential for both French nuclear power stations and atomic bombs. They are strategic raw materials for imperialism, which needs to consolidate its dominion at the expense of the southern countries. This is the key to understanding the fibrillation provoked in the United States and especially in the European Union, by the coup d’état in Niger. On July 28, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, head of the Presidential Guard, was proclaimed the new leader of Niger and assumed the presidency of the National Council for the Protection of the Homeland (CNSP), after having ousted the Western-backed President Mohamed Bazoum.