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Sovereignty

Panama: Self-Determination And National Popular Unity

The peoples have the right to decide their own collective destiny as established by the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, which was not gratuitous but a product of the struggle of the peripheral countries for their decolonization. Amid this reality, the United States never gave up extending the Monroe Doctrine to the present day. Making the situation worse, imperial irredentism becomes explicit with President Donald Trump. The Panamanian people’s distrust of the political elite at this juncture is being reproduced in the collective imagination in a marked disinterest in Trump’s imperial irredentism.

Sahel States Exit ECOWAS, Launch Regional Passport And Joint Military

Just a year ago, on January 28, 2024, the military leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger publicly declared their intent to withdraw from the regional economic bloc. This announcement was a historic point in the Sahel’s political shift, as the three countries continue to push for sovereignty, regional security, and economic autonomy. The withdrawal took effect on January 29, 2025, as confirmed by ECOWAS. On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, came alive with celebration as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) marked the first anniversary of their historic decision to leave the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Panamanian Movements Vow To Resist Trump’s Threats

Panamanian movements have expressed their readiness to resist US President Donald Trump’s threats to Panama’s sovereignty. On January 20, as part of a mobilization of trade unions and social movements in Panama City in defense of the public pension system, they will also denounce the expansionist threats of Trump. At a rally in December, Trump said that the fees being charged at the Panama canal are too high and that if they did not come down, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question.”

Why Be A Doormat?

US President-elect Donald Trump recently referred to Canada as the “51st State” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as its “governor.” While on one level, such ridiculous statements are part and parcel of Trump’s political persona, they reveal something deeper about the role that Canada occupies in the American economy and political imagination. This is an issue that the Canadian Marxist historian Stanley B. Ryerson explored in a pamphlet entitled “Why Be a Doormat?” published by the Labor-Progressive Party in 1948. “Canadians need complete and permanent union with the US… Since Canada has shown that she cannot fiscally operate in today’s world, and since Britain is fiscally impotent, it is up to the US to act.”

The Maori People’s Ongoing Battle For Self-Determination

People within the Indigenous Māori community of “New Zealand” have been protesting a racist bill that was recently introduced by that country’s right-wing government. On Nov. 14, Minister of Regulation David Seymour introduced a bill known as the “Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill” or the “Treaty Principles Bill.” The controversial bill would reopen a historic treaty, signed in 1840, known to the Māori people as “Te Tiriti o Waitangi,” commonly referred to as the “Treaty of Waitangi.” The binding agreement is part of New Zealand’s national Constitution, and it features terms and conditions that grant land rights and special recognition to the Māori people.

ALBA-TCP Condemns Trump’s Statements About Panama Canal

On Tuesday, the member states of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) expressed their strongest condemnation of United States President-elect Donald Trump’s statement in which he threatened to take control of the Panama Canal. Through a statement published on Telegram, the multilateral bloc condemned this new threat to the Latin American and Caribbean region. It also reaffirmed its support for the Republic of Panama in defending its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and self-determination.

Hope In Turbulent Times: Native Leaders Take The Long View

Representatives from three tribes discuss how their communities have learned to endure by celebrating connections. In the wake of the 2024 election, Barn Raiser talks to prominent Native leaders and mentors, who tell us in edited interviews how and why their communities have long endured, even in divisive and unsettled times. Right now, all of us who live together on this earth face not just political instability but the “dual crises of climate change and social injustice,” according to Fawn Sharp, citizen of the Quinalt Indian Nation, in Taholah, Washington, and former president of the National Congress of American Indians.

Haiti: Resistance Under Attack, Calls For International Solidarity

VIV ANSANM (the paramilitary gang strangely named “Live Together”) has plunged our population into a terrible darkness in Solino, Fò Nasyonal, Nazon, Kriswa and other nearby popular neighborhoods or ghettos in Port-au-Prince. None of us are free to leave our homes. We don’t know which way to go. The bloodthirsty death squads kill the poor and unfortunate inside their shacks. They burn through homes and memories. We, the population of Solino, have long resisted this barbarism. Stand with us, We need help! The neocolonial Haitian state and their foreign masters lay the basis of these massacres. We cannot continue in this situation. Solidarity is our only hope. 

AES Interrupts A $50b Shakedown In The Sahel

In the shadow of the Aïr Mountains, along the southern edge of the Sahara, a Nigerien town has been poisoned. The lands around the town of Arlit, home to 200,000 Nigeriens, is scarred by an enormous open-pit uranium mine run by a French company known as Orano. Following the 1960's independence struggle in Niger, Orano, a French state-owned enterprise, entered into a number of joint ventures with the neocolonial government of Niger as well as those of Spain, and Japan. These ventures (known as SOMAÏR and COMINAK) have since extracted over 145,000 tons of uranium from the mines around Arlit.

The Weakness Of Progressive Latin American Governments In These Precarious Times

On 16 August 2024, the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose 1948 formation as a Cold War institution was instigated by the United States, voted on a resolution regarding the Venezuelan presidential elections. The nub of the resolution proposed by the US called upon Venezuela’s election authority, the National Electoral Council (CNE), to publish all the election details as soon as possible (including the actas, or voting records, at the local polling station level). This resolution asks the CNE to go against Venezuela’s Organic Law on Electoral Processes (Ley Orgánica de Procesos Electorales or LOPE): since the law does not call for the publication of these materials, doing so would be a violation of public law.

Battle For Syria’s Oil Pits Local Tribal Forces Against US Occupation

In Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, Arab tribal forces have mounted a determined assault on the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), aiming to reclaim their lands and challenge the U.S.’s de facto control over Syria’s oil-rich regions. The U.S. responded with missile strikes, underscoring the fragile hold Washington maintains over these critical resources, which have been central to its leverage in the ongoing Syrian conflict. This escalation followed the arrest of Arab commander Abu Khawla by the SDF in August 2023 during an anti-Daesh (ISIS) operation in al-Hasakah. The arrest ignited over a month of armed clashes between Arab forces and the SDF, leading to the deaths of approximately 118 people, including ten civilians.

Colombia To Open Embassy In Occupied West Bank

The Colombian government announced on 22 May plans to open an embassy in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the occupied West Bank, under the orders of President Gustavo Petro. “President Petro has given the order that we open the Colombian embassy in Ramallah, the representation of Colombia in Ramallah, that is the next step we are going to take,” Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told reporters on Wednesday. Murillo also said Petro recently led a meeting of Latin American leaders in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where they agreed to implement strategies to recognize Palestine as a full UN member state.

The Global South In The Arctic North

In January, three months into Israel’s attack on Gaza, a group people in the Inuit city of Iqaluit, the capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, rallied and called for a ceasefire. One demonstrator said, “I think Palestinian rights are Indigenous rights to those lands, and we’re on Indigenous land here, and if we’re fighting for the rights of Indigenous people in Canada, in Nunavut, we should be doing the same worldwide.” Bigger rallies took place in the more populated cities of Whitehorse, Yukon, and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. More than 200 people gathered at the Whitehorse waterfront, some of them descendants of Palestinian refugees from the Nakba of 1948.

United Nations General Assembly Backs Palestinian Bid For Membership

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”. The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month. The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained.

Palestine Renews Attempts To Become Full Member Of The United Nations

Ignoring continued US threats, Palestine has revived its bid to become a full member of the United Nations after a gap of almost 13 years. The United Nations Security Council acted on the application and decided to refer the Palestinian application to a specialized committee on Monday, April 8. The president of the Council, Vanessa Frazier from Malta asked the committee of admission of new members to consider the bid on the same day after the Palestinian application received no objection from any member.
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