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Neocolonialism

The West Wants Nigeria To Invade Its Northern Neighbor

August 5, 2023 Andrew Korybko, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , ,
Last week’s military coup in Niger could be a game-changer in the New Cold War if the junta cuts off the uranium exports upon which France’s nuclear energy industry depends, kicks out its former colonizer’s troops from their last regional bastion, and/or requests Russia’s “Democratic Security” assistance. Unlike the patriotic military coups in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso, which were condemned by the West but not considered a threat to its neocolonial stranglehold over Africa, the one in Niger is ringing alarm bells. France and the US strongly condemned this latest regime change, with the first suspending all aid in parallel with the EU while the latter is preparing to follow suit.

Niger Is The Fourth Country In The Sahel To Have An Anti-Western Coup

August 2, 2023 Vijay Prashad and Kambale Musavuli, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , ,
At 3 a.m. on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew. The coup d’état was immediately condemned by the Economic Community of West African States, by the African Union, and by the European Union. Both France and the United States—which have military bases in Niger—said that they were watching the situation closely. A tussle between the Army—which claimed to be pro-Bazoum—and the presidential guard threatened the capital, but it soon fizzled out.

International Community Must Reject US/UN/CARICOM Plan For Haiti

July 19, 2023 The Black Alliance for Peace. , , , , ,
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is alarmed that representatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are at the forefront of the call for armed intervention in Haiti calling on Rwanda and Kenya to help lead the charge. Once again the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) calls on the international community to reject U.S., UN, and CARICOM plans for an armed intervention in Haiti. We have been consistent in our support for Haitian people who view the presence of the United Nations Integrated Office (BINUH) and the Core Group as a foreign occupation. Since 2004, they have suppressed Haiti’s independence and sovereignty.

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.

Reclaiming African Liberation Day, 60 Years On

May 26, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
60 years ago, on May 25, Ghana’s first prime minister and president, the anti-colonial revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah stood before 31 other heads of African states in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and declared, “[T]he struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence.” “Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs…unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.” “We must unite or perish,” Nkrumah had emphasized, recognizing that while countries across the African continent were “throwing off the yoke of colonialism,” these successes were “equally matched by an intense effort on the part of imperialism to continue the exploitation of our resources by creating divisions among us.”

Argentina Adopting US Dollar To Fight Inflation Would Be ‘Insane’

May 26, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , ,
The South American nation sometimes suffers from a current account deficit, and relies heavily on imports of oil, technology, and medical equipment. Low revenue from its mostly agricultural exports means that Argentina faces a chronic shortage of foreign currency – and most of the dollars it gets end up flowing out of the country to paying interest on the unsustainable external debt, draining the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and making it difficult to stabilize the national currency, the peso. National elections are approaching in October, and among the presidential hopefuls is far-right politician Javier Milei.

Biden ‘Brings’ Selected African Leaders To US To Expand Neocolonialism

December 19, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
President Biden "brought" leaders of selected African nations to the United States for a summit to “demonstrate the United States’ enduring commitment to Africa," the White House claims. But just days before the meeting, the Biden administration imposed more economic sanctions on members of some excluded nations, a likely attempt to send a warning of what happens to those who do not comply with the US' imperialist demands. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) organized a week of actions to coincide with Biden's summit. Clearing the FOG speaks with Rose Brewer of BAP's Africa Team about the long history of US intervention to exploit Africans, steal resources, and suppress liberation movements and how this comes home to impact people and social movements in the US.

Haiti: Neocolonial Dictatorship, Paramilitary And Police Terror

December 4, 2022 Seth Donnelly, Counterpunch. , , ,
On October 7th, in the face of massive and ever-growing demonstrations all across Haiti demanding the uprooting of the right-wing Haitian Tét Kale Party (PHTK) dictatorship, Prime Minister Ariel Henry exploited the fiction of a war between his regime and “gangs” to call for the intervention of foreign troops to expand the colonial occupation of Haiti. In doing so, he was echoing the tweet made the day before by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. Within days, the Biden Administration proceeded to draft a UN Security Council resolution calling for the expanded deployment of foreign troops in Haiti. To date, the UN Security Council has not yet passed this resolution, due to concerns voiced by the governments of Russia and China.

Brazil: More Fascism, Neocolonialism Or A Path Back To Self-Determination?

September 28, 2022 Danny Shaw, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. , , ,
When you arrive in another country, there is nothing more precious than new friends who adopt you, protect you, and teach you about their language, music, culture, and traditions. For an open-minded traveler, ethnographer and anti-imperialist organizer, this new family is more valuable than any air-conditioned hotel,  amount of comfort or money. When I moved to Brazil in May of 2003, Binho, Mateuszinho, Thiago and their family and neighborhood crew took me in and put me up in O Morro do Santo Cristo and O Complexo da Penha, the heart of Río de Janeiro’s favelas and drug war. They walked me through the complex landscape of Rio’s corrupt brutal police who shoot first and rarely ask questions later, their violent blitzes (Río slang for stop and frisks), and a maze of morros (ghettos spread across hills) divided between two major paramilitary drug gangs: O Comando Vermelho and O Terceiro Comando (The Red Command and The Third Command).

Puerto Rico: Major Protest Over Energy Privatization

July 21, 2022 Reuters. , , ,
Hundreds of people marched on Wednesday in Puerto Rico's capital San Juan to demand that the island's government cancel its contract with power grid operator LUMA Energy over chronic power outages and frequent rate hikes. Demonstrators including union leaders and community activists say LUMA has steadily increased power rates despite frequent outages including one in April that left more than one- third of the island in darkness. read more Protestors shouted slogans including "There goes LUMA, there goes LUMA with another increase" and "LUMA, a bunch of morons who burn substations." Power rates have gone up five times since LUMA began operating Puerto Rico's transmission and distribution system on June 1, 2020. The last rate hike, which took effect at the start of July, pushed rates up by 17.1%.

G7 Or Failed Colonial Powers Telling The World What To Do

May 10, 2021 Prabir Purkayastha, Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
The Foreign Ministers of G7 countries met in London this week and issued a communique painting Russia as a “malicious actor” and China as a “bully”. It had little substance apart from ticking all the “right” boxes in its anti-China and anti-Russia campaign: Uyghurs, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Crimea, Ukraine, etc. It ended with arrogating to itself the mantle of being the “rules-based international order”, distinct from what the real, lawful international order is, the United Nations and its Security Council. This is why India’s willingness to be a part of “invitees”, to wait in the antechamber with Australia, South Korea and South Africa, while the imperial powers of the G7 decide on the weighty matters of the world, is mystifying. Self-respect would have demanded that if you do not get a seat at the table, do not go, and not wait outside the meeting room.

A Guide To US Empire In Africa

March 15, 2021 AbMartin, Empire Files. , , ,
Abby Martin speaks to Eugene Puryear to discuss the big picture of US imperialism in Africa: From the Berlin Conference to the subversion of liberation movements to neocolonial puppets and the current sprawl of AFRICOM "counterterrorism."

Racial Capitalism And The Betrayal Of Haiti

March 8, 2021 Yves Engler, Canadian Dimension. , , ,
The day after his already paper-thin constitutional legitimacy completely eroded, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse gave significant amounts of the country’s land to a light-skinned tycoon working with Coca-Cola. According to most Haitian constitutional authorities and institutions, Moïse’s presidential mandate ended on Sunday, February 7, 2021. But the next day, Le Moniteur—the official journal of the Republic of Haiti—published a presidential decree gifting 8,600 hectares of the country’s agricultural land reserves to produce stevia, a main ingredient in Coca-Cola’s zero-sugar beverages. Alongside land in the Artibonite and Plateau Central regions, Moïse put up US$18 million for a new Free Agro-Industrial Export Zone run by the Apaid family. It is outrageous, notes civil society group Le Regroupement des Haïtiens de Montréal contre l’occupation d’Haïti, that the state would offer land to a firm producing for Coca-Cola rather than invest in local food production in a country where nearly 42 percent of the population, or four million people, are experiencing acute hunger.

Venezuela’s Legislative Elections

December 6, 2020 Carlos Ron, Valdai Club. , , ,
Latin America has caught the world’s attention as it has become the electoral battleground between progressive movements and the neo-colonial aspirations of the Washington Consensus. In Bolivia, Luis Arce, the candidate from Evo Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism, won the presidential election, reverting the bloody coup that, to the convenience of transnational lithium interests, had forced the indigenous leader out of office only a year before. A week later, neoliberalism’s birthplace became its next burial ground, as Chileans approved a historic referendum to change the Constitution left in place by Augusto Pinochet’s military regime.

What Recent Struggles In Gambia And Zambia Teach Us About Neo-Colonialism Today

August 16, 2018 Mohammed Elnaiem, Towardfreedom.org , , , ,
On June 20th, a fatal mining accident in Black mountain, an infamous mining zone in Zambia, killed 10 miners, and injured 7 others. Mining is the lifeblood of the country’s economy, and accidents happen far too often. Mining accounts for eighty percent of Zambia’s export earnings and about 12% of its GDP. It is also the source for the largest number of industrial accidents since Zambia won its independence in 1964. The recent mining tragedy and a longer history of exploitation raises the question: Did colonialism ever end in Zambia? Shortly after independence, Zambia’s first President, Kenneth Kaunda spoke of an African path towards socialism. The West Indian intellectual C.L.R. James said that Kuanda realized African development would not come through “the attempt merely to ape European ways.”
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