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Sovereignty

On The Latest United Nations Human Rights Council Report On Nicaragua

In general, practically all reports on Nicaragua by international human rights institutions and organizations fail to check information supporting false claims, omit facts inconvenient to their findings and claim a commitment to transparency even while failing to engage adequately rival versions of events. They make highly selective use of sources and systematically avoid genuinely independent corroboration of accusations by seeking to verify accounts only with sources suffering from these self-same failings. This latest report for the UN Council for Human Rights shares these irremediable defects.

Stubborn Resistance Will Confront Foreign Intervention In Haiti

In the past when the U.S. intervened in Haiti, U.S. forces and its imperialist allies had the guns, and Haitians had machetes — and the guns won. Over the past few years, Haitians have acquired hundreds of thousands of guns, some of them high-powered, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Over 200 armed groups are operating in Haiti. Some of them are engaged in kidnapping and extortion, while others are defending their neighborhoods and providing some security, something the state does not do. Road blockades are common. Official United Nations resolutions, official U.S. statements and the worldwide bourgeois media refer to these groups as “gangs,” which is a racist smear.

Open Letter To CARICOM On The Need To Support Haitian Sovereignty

On September 19, 2022, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) issued a short statement expressing grave concern about worsening conditions in Haiti and pressing for “urgent and immediate attention from the international community.” In light of CARICOM’s more direct engagement in Haitian affairs in recent months, we call on your organization to respect Haitian sovereignty and to support the Haitian masses in their stand against the ongoing occupation of their country by foreign powers. Despite the erroneous representation of the current protests in Haiti as simply “gang violence,” the latest demonstrations are a direct result of two factors. First, they are a response to the everyday economic misery caused by rising inflation, especially through the staggering increase in the price of fuel.

For People In Caribbean, Leaving British Monarchy More Than Symbolic

Born in the Bahamas in the late 1940s when the archipelago was still under the British rule, Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean’s mother was taught in school a version of colonial history that did not focus on the suffering of the slaves who were brought to the islands against their will. "Their version [of the history], I think, more than changing the story was the story of a mission. For example, my mother, who was born as a baby boomer, grew up learning that coal came from a certain part of England. But it was never about the archipelago of the islands of the Bahamas. Their focus of the education was really on creating good Commonwealth citizens. As citizens of this land, you learned about their history, their story, and all the wives that King Henry had.

Inside Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution

Why does the United States behave in that way? And when we say the United States, we are speaking of the North American rulers. Because when they dropped the atomic bomb above Hiroshima, they did not ask the North American people if the bomb should be dropped. And they did a count of how many thousands the bomb could kill. And the higher the number was, that they calculated that the bomb could kill, the happier and more excited they were. And they went ahead and dropped it, and killed, in one blow, hundreds of thousands of civilians, children, adults, because they dropped it on a city. Right there, they killed, murdered many more civilians than all of those who could have died now in this war that the empires have started to try to destroy the struggle that humanity is carrying out to bring about the end of hegemony, and to create multipolarity on our planet. That is the battle that is being fought over there in Ukraine, where Europe and the United States don’t want — they don’t want to see China growing economically.

Ninth Assembly Of Caribbean People Meets In Cuba

Caribbean social movements and organizations, artists, and intellectuals, among others, gathered in Cuba’s Santiago for the IX Assembly of Caribbean People under the theme: “Culture, resistance, sovereignty, revolution.” Participants honored and paid visits to National Hero José Martí; Carlos M. de Céspedes, the Mother of the Homeland, Mariana Grajales, and to the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro. Welcoming remarks were made by René Berenguer Rivera, secretary general of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC) in Santiago de Cuba. Camille Chalmers, organizing secretary of the Assembly of Caribbean People (APC) made the opening speech on behalf of the delegates, stressing the importance of this assembly being a forceful response to the hybrid wars and the new imperialist offensive.

Climate And The Collapse Of World Order

China rises while the U.S. recedes, along with the global order it created at the end of World War II. This has become a common narrative. Historian Alfred McCoy put it forward in his 2017 work, In the Shadows of the American Century. But, as McCoy points out in his latest work, China’s day in the sun may be brief, overwhelmed by cataclysmic climate disruption that could shatter world order itself as the century unfolds. The first truly global order originated when Portugal began the European age of exploration around 1420.

President AMLO Criticizes US Claim It Hosts Russian Spies

Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has criticized the United States for claiming his country hosts more Russian spies than any other. “We need to send them telegrams, informing them that Mexico is not a colony of any foreign country, that Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country,” declared López Obrador, who is known popularly by the acronym AMLO. “More and more this should be known, because sometimes it appears that it is not understood well enough,” the Mexican president added. The leader of US Northern Command (Northcom), General Glen VanHerck, claimed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 24 that Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency the GRU supposedly has more spies in Mexico than anywhere else.

China Plays Crucial Role Supporting Progress, Sovereignty In Latin America

In the last two decades, economic links between Latin America and the People’s Republic of China have been expanding at a dizzying rate. Bilateral trade in 2000 was just $12 billion (1 per cent of Latin American’s total trade); now it stands at $315bn. In the same time period, China’s foreign direct investment in Latin America has increased by a factor of five. Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, 19 of the 33 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region have signed up to the China-led global infrastructure development strategy. Infrastructure projects have been a particular focus for Chinese firms. Writing in Foreign Policy in 2018, Max Nathanson observed that “Latin American governments have long lamented their countries’ patchy infrastructure.”

A Plan To Save The Planet

Four and a half million people died infected by COVID-19. This global tragedy is the prism through which we must analyse how and in whose interest the ruling system on the planet works. In the span of a few months, the pandemic compacted political, economic, and social phenomena, the consequences of which would take years to manifest in other circumstances. Some of the issues that were clearly magnified through the lens of the pandemic are job insecurity, deficits in health systems, inequality, North-South relations, the United Nations’ failure to coordinate a collective effort, the use of unilateral coercive measures as a weapon to control and punish many peoples, global economic vulnerability, and the role of the state.

Why Defending Nicaragua Is Important

Since at least the start of the 21st century, if not earlier, two global trends have emerged very clearly. Firstly, increased North American and European aggression overseas has been accompanied by increased economic and political domestic repression in the US itself and its allied countries. This domestic repression has reached unprecedented levels over the last two years, Secondly, despite the apparent demise of Western led economic globalization, North American and European corporate influence under various guises has co-opted international policy making and governance, as writers from Cory Morningstar  to Iain Davis  have reported in detail for many years. In the context of these and other trends, Nicaragua’s resolute defence of its national sovereignty and its very successful economic, social and environmental policies have made this tiny country of around 7 million people the target of US and allied country aggression.

Honduran Campesino Leader Explains The ZEDEs

A wide range of sectors in Honduras are continuing to mobilize against the Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) with the general election now one month away. Campesino, indigenous and Afro-descendant movements and communities say the large scale territorial concessions amount to a flagrant violation of national sovereignty and will result in mass displacement. Frequent protests against the legislation, like the one held by the National Lawyers Association of Honduras, have called for the repeal of Decree 120/2013, due to its unconstitutionality, and communities are declaring their lands ZEDES free territories. Despite strong opposition, the Honduran state continues to make concessions to transnational capital, surrendering not only land, but also political sovereignty to foreign companies.

Land Acknowledgements To Honor Indigenous People Often Do Opposite

Many events these days begin with land acknowledgments: earnest statements acknowledging that activities are taking place, or institutions, businesses and even homes are built, on land previously owned by Indigenous peoples. And many organizations now call on employees to incorporate such statements not only at events but in email signatures, videos, syllabuses and so on. Organizations provide resources to facilitate these efforts, including pronunciation guides and video examples. Some land acknowledgments are carefully constructed in partnership with the dispossessed. The Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle describes this process: “Tribal elders and leaders are the experts and knowledge-bearers who generously shared their perspectives and guidance with the Burke. Through this consultation, we co-created the Burke’s land acknowledgement.”

Texas, Big Oil Target Indian Children In Bid To End Tribal Sovereignty

If the Supreme Court overturns the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — a federal law that keeps Native children with Native families — tribal sovereignty could soon be a thing of the past in the U.S. Should the Supreme Court rule in the plaintiffs’ favor in the case of Brackeen v. Haaland, we could quickly see a return to blatant, pre-1978 genocidal practices — when Native babies were legally stripped of their families, culture, and identities. It’s critical that every one of us take immediate action. Before you do anything else today, sign our petition telling President Biden and the Department of Justice to defend ICWA, Secretary Haaland, and tribal sovereignty with every available means. In this landmark case, the Brackeens — the white, adoptive parents of a Diné child in Texas — seek to overturn ICWA by claiming reverse racism.

Corporate Media Oppose Afghan Control Of Afghanistan

When President Joe Biden announced the “withdrawal” of US troops from Afghanistan after almost 20 years of occupying the country in violation of international law, corporate media not only misled their audiences on what the US is actually planning to do in Afghanistan, but also somehow made it seem as if withdrawing from the longest overseas war in US history would be premature (FAIR.org, 9/11/19). Establishment reporting over the future of Afghanistan after Biden’s announcement also demonstrated the imperialist mindset of corporate journalists, who presented Afghans controlling their own country as an unacceptable outcome.
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