Africa

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blindpig
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue May 24, 2022 2:32 pm

The Bloodshed Plaguing the People of the Horn of Africa. What is America’s Role?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 22, 2022
Michael Welch, Elias Amare, and Ann Garrison

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People hold candles and Ethiopian flags during a memorial service for the victims of the Tigray conflict organised by the city administration, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia © Eduardo Soteras/AFP/Getty

“As the Director-General of WHO, I have a duty to protect and promote health wherever it is under threat, and there is nowhere on earth where the health of millions of people is more under threat than in Tigray.” – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, March 16, 2022 [1]

“What’s really shocking about this is that all of the mainstream news is about the suffering in Tigray and how Ethiopia is starving Tigray, and there’s very little word about Amhara and Afar.” – Ann Garrison, from this week’s interview.



While the opinions of people in Europe, Canada and the United States is riveted to footage of the spectacular Ukraine war drawing them to the television sets and internet browser regularly, there is little attention drawn to the situation in Ethiopia. [2]

While casualties in Ukraine are counted in the thousands, the death toll in the one and a half year war in Ethiopia is tallied in the hundreds of thousands. And on top of that, food shortages unparalleled in nearly forty years are beginning to threaten still more lives.[3][4]

According to an article written for the BBC, the government of Abiy Ahmed who became Prime Minister in 2018 made sweeping reforms, including removing the Tigrayan government leaders charged with corruption and repression. He also ended the war with Eritrea. [5]

The critics in Tigray however branded Mr Abiy’s moves as an attempt to centralize power and destroy the Ethiopian federal system. On account of the coronavirus, the Abiy government withdrew the ability for Tigray to host a regional election and withdrew their funds. This was interpreted as an act of war by the Tigrayan administration, and in November 2020, prompted their forces to attack army bases and steal their weapons. Abiy saw this as crossing a “red line,” and forced the Ethiopian federal government into a military confrontation. [6]

Thus began the civil war. [7]

At least one journalist has taken notice of the situation and raises concerns seldom expressed by the mainstream Western media. In particular, she has written several articles documenting the role the so-called Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) played while in power for close to thirty years advancing the interests of the United States. The Tigrayan people, she argued, attacked federal authorities. They were not bullied by Ethiopia and Eritrea. Yet, they are frequently portrayed as the victim, even by the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Given that this branding of the players in a country Americans barely know resembles the approach taken in Yugoslavia in 1999, or Syria in the last decade, it seemed like this journalist would make a valuable contribution in a discussion about yet another “genocidal war.” The journalist in question is Ann Garrison. She has covered African countries as a reporter for community radio station KPFA and also for Black Agenda Report. She was in Ethiopia as part of an investigative tour of the region when she was interviewed, and brings a full half hour report to the Global Research News Hour.

However first off, following an article summary, we heard from the activist originally from Eritrea now in San Francisco, Elias Amare, to relate a little about his concerns about the new developments, and whatever he might be hearing from folks on the ground.

Notes:

1.https://www.who.int/director-general/sp ... march-2022
2.Maher Mezahi (March 6, 2022), ‘Viewpoint on Ukraine: Why African wars get different treatment’, BBC News; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60603232
3.Geoffrey York (March 15, 2022), ‘Tigray war has seen up to half a million dead from violence and starvation, say researchers’, The Globe and Mail; https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/a ... hers%20say.
4.https://www.unfpa.org/news/ethiopias-wo ... orn-health
5.BBC (June 29, 2021), ‘Ethiopia’s Tigray war: The short, medium and long story’, BBC News; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378
6.ibid
7.ibid

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... icas-role/

A History of Naked Imperialism Continues as Biden Approves Somalia Redeployment
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 23, 2022
TJ Coles

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US Marines in Somalia’s Bakara Market during the 1992-93 “Operation Restore Hope” military intervention

Biden has reversed Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US forces from Somalia and will redeploy Special Operations Forces. It is just the latest move in a long history of destructive US-UK meddling in the Horn of Africa.

Almost as soon as the administration of President Joseph Biden announced a redeployment of US Special Operations Forces to Somalia on May 16, the Western media began to spin the intervention.

As the BBC framed it, Biden’s deployment would “support the fight against militant group al-Shabab” (sic). The intervention coincides with the re-election of former Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who governed between 2012 and ‘17.

Similarly, the New York Times (NYT) reported that “Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

But are these motives true? Does Washington really want merely to defeat al-Shabab? Is al-Shabab actually linked to al-Qaeda and, if so, to what degree? As usual, the mainstream state-corporate media reportage is missing context and reference to international law.

As we shall see, the context behind the US redeployment is naked imperialism using counterterrorism as the latest in a long line of excuses to interfere in the politics of the strategically-significant country on the Horn of Africa. In terms of international law, signatories of the UN Charter have legal responsibilities to gain authorization from the Security Council before launching military operations –– something the Biden administration and its predecessors have never done in Somalia, or anywhere else, for that matter.

It is also worth tackling the Trump-era propaganda, which is double-edged. Trump supporters claimed that their hero ended America’s “forever wars,” as he “bombed the shit out of ISIS,” in his words, which often meant dumping munitions on Iraqi and Syrian women and children, while blowing Somalis to pieces via drone operators in numbers greater than during Obama’s term. It is accurate that Trump withdrew US ground forces from Somalia, though it appears to have been both an America First PR stunt and a device to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration.

On the other side, the pro-war, neoliberal, anti-Trump establishment sought to portray Trump’s withdrawal of ground troops as a sign of American weakness in the face of globalized “Islamic” terrorists. By demonizing Trump and inaccurately reporting the motives of his withdrawal, the NYT, BBC and company were essentially clamoring for US militarism in Somalia: Trump bad so militarism good. And as usual, their reporting was absent of any critical or skeptical voices.

The real agenda: “acquire and maintain the capability to respond to any military contingency that could threaten U.S. interests”

Billionaire-backed, self-appointed “fact-checkers” like Snopes, PolitiFact often rate what they call “fake news” as having “missing context,” yet mainstream state-corporate media operate almost entirely on an unspoken doctrine of propaganda-by-omission. Researchers are left to piece together the kind of coherent recent-historical narratives that MSM refuse to provide. Somalia’s “missing context” can be summarized as follows:

In 1997, the US Space Command (which is still operational, though its duties are largely second to the Space Force) committed the Pentagon to achieving “full spectrum dominance” of land, sea, air, and space by the year 2020, “to protect US interests and investment,” which means elite corporate interests. Since then, numerous oil-rich and strategically-important nations have been occupied by the US and its allies. Various Pentagon departments, including the Central Command and Africa Command, divide the world into self-appointed Areas of Responsibility, based on the given region and/or nation’s strategic relevance to the Pentagon. This follows Britain’s colonial model.

In the 1950s, the Colonial Office described Aden—the Gulf between Yemen and Somalia—as “an important base,” from which forces could rapidly deploy to the energy-rich Middle East. In those days, the so-called Scramble for Africa (which began in the late-19th century) was justified under the doctrine of the “white’s man burden”: the mission to civilize the backward black races, as their lands and resources were plundered.

But Somalia gained independence in 1960 before being governed by the one-time CIA-backed dictator Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to ‘91. At the time, US support for Siad—including his killing of tens of thousands of political rivals—was justified as part of American Cold War policy.

With the Cold War over and Siad deposed, successive US administrations tested new “interventionist” doctrines, the first post-Cold War ideology being humanitarian intervention. Operation Restore Hope was launched in 1992 by the outgoing George H.W. Bush administration, supposedly to provide humanitarian relief during the famine triggered by the civil war. But a Fort Leavenworth paper reveals a hidden agenda: “Throughout our involvement with Somalia, our overriding strategic objective was simply to acquire and maintain the capability to respond to any military contingency that could threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East, Northeast Africa and the Red Sea area.”

Under an umbrella of Islamic political parties, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), most of them non-extremist, Somalia enjoyed a short period of peace, stability, and an increase in living standards. Branches of the UN, Amnesty International, and the British foreign policy think-tank Chatham House have acknowledged that the ICU prevented “piracy,” provided schooling for large numbers of children, and reduced malnutrition.

The US and UK wage proxy war on the ICU, infiltrate the movement with Al Qaeda extremists

The attacks of 9/11 in 2001 provided the George W. Bush administration an excuse to sanction Somali banks, even though the 9/11 Commission cleared the banks of wrongdoing. Since then, Somalia has become a testing ground for the imposition of cashless societies.

Convinced that the more right-wing elements of the ICU were “al-Qaeda” fronts, the Joint Special Operations Command and CIA operated covertly in Somalia. Failing to destroy the ICU from within, the US and Britain backed an opposition government in exile comprised of Ethiopian and other warlords.

In December 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia as a US-British proxy war. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled to neighboring Kenyan and Ethiopian refugee camps, while others made the perilous journey in rickety boats to Yemen. The so-called Transitional Federal Government was comprised of killers and torturers funded by the British taxpayer and given homes and citizenship in the UK. The war reversed the ICU’s social achievements and thousands starved in successive famines.

The frightening-sounding al-Shabab simply means “the Youth,” and was the young persons’ wing of the ICU. In 2007, with the non-violent ICU destroyed by a campaign of US-British terror, al-Shabab turned to violence to defend its country against Ethiopian aggressors and Somali collaborators. British intelligence agencies saw their chance to infiltrate al-Shabab with terrorists and transform it from a nationalist militia into an extremist group that could then be used as pretext for more Western aggression against Somalia. And indeed, some of the high-profile terrorists operating in Somalia post-9/11 were US-British intelligence assets.

It is well-known that the British and American militaries helped fuel the rise of what was later known as “al-Qaeda” to battle the Soviets in 1980s’ Afghanistan. One Afghanistan-based terror cell at the time was a Somali group called Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, whose leader Ahmed Abdi Godane went on to lead al-Shabab after the ICU collapsed. In London, an MI5 double agent tasked with spying on mosques tried in vain to alert his handlers to the fact that Osama Bin Laden’s main UK connection, Abu Qatada, was training and sending fighters to half a dozen Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia. TIME had reported that Qatada was an asset of MI5.

A US puppet takes control in Somalia as drone war escalates

In 2010, with war still raging, US President Obama signed Executive Order 13536, describing Somalia — a country nearly 8,000 miles away with a GDP of less than $5 billion — as an “extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” As you wipe tears of laughter away, notice the emphasis on “foreign policy”: non-compliant regimes in Somalia might threaten total US operational freedom along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

That year, the radicalized and infiltrated al-Shabab launched its first foreign attacks (in Uganda and later Kenya), prompting regional governments to join the US in “counterterrorism” operations. A year later, drone strikes against “al-Shabab” and other groups began, killing at least 300 people by 2017; tragedies small in comparison to the hundreds of thousands who died in multiple, human-made famines over the last decade.

In 2011, the group allegedly pledged allegiance to “al-Qaeda.” The 2012 election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud provided the US with a client who was described by Obama’s National Security Council spokesperson, Caitlin Hayden, as committed to “strengthen[ing Somalia’s] democratic institutions and promot[ing] economic development.”

By 2016, Bush and Obama had launched a total of 41 confirmed strikes largely from the US base at Camp Lemonier in neighboring Djibouti. The Shabab leader, Godane, was killed in one such strike. His replacement is supposedly named Ahmad Umar, and is a shadowy bogeyman about whom little is known. By 2020, Trump alone had launched 40 drone strikes against Somalia, eliminating AFRICOM’s accountability protocols.

Exploiting “playgrounds for a new scramble in the Horn of Africa”

We cannot say that corporate-state media do not do their job. They have successfully kept the public ignorant and deluded on virtually every geopolitical issue of significance. Nor can we say that the “war on terror” has failed (i.e., that after 20 years terror groups still operate), because it is not designed to combat terrorism. It is designed to produce an endless cycle of tit-for-tat killings and to create extremist groups where none previously existed. Permanent counterterrorism is a thin smokescreen to justify “full spectrum dominance” to the voting and taxpaying American public whose purse is plundered to fund these wars.

As we see from recent history, professed justifications for bloody US interference in impoverished Somalia shift according to the political climate: countering the Soviets until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, preventing famine under the guise of 1990s’ humanitarian intervention, stopping “pirates” as European ships plunder the starving country’s fish stocks, and, for the last two decades, fighting endless hordes of post-9/11 terrorists; many of them incubated in London by protected intelligence assets.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence recently announced that 70 personnel are training 1,000 Somalis as part of the African Union’s so-called Transition Mission in Somalia, “protecting civilians from Al Shabaab and other terrorist groups.” A more plausible reason for the ongoing US-British involvement is offered by a policy paper published last year by the European University: “Strategic areas of the western shore and the Horn of Africa are being incorporated in the Red Sea geopolitical map and Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea have become playgrounds for a new scramble in the Horn of Africa.”

As excuses change, the geographies of power remain the same. These strategic interests are the real motivations for war. Ordinary people, as always, pay the price.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... eployment/

The Cracking of the Dabaiba Front in Tripoli Places Libya at Risk of War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 23, 2022
Habib Lassoued

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Appeasing militias and distributing illusions of welfare is Dabaiba’s recipe for staying in power.[/i

The failed attempt by the Prime Minister of the Government of Stability, Fathi Bashagha, to enter the capital revealed the extent of the rift suffered by western Libya in general and the armed groups present in Tripoli in particular, which raises fears of a return to fighting in the capital, after two years of relative calm.

The Libyans will face many political and security challenges during the next stage, and the outgoing prime minister, Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, will push into a crisis that may be unprecedented in the ten lean years that the country experienced after it entered the stage of power struggle and competition for the spoils.

Dabaiba, who has become a symbol of the alliance of warlords, symbols of corruption, the hard-line wing of political Islam and isolationist regional leaders, is the same one who aspires to remain in power indefinitely, and who does not hide his desire to turn Libya into a hostage to his familial and factional system after he discovered that there are A mechanism available to achieve this desire is wealth by distributing illusions of well-being to the people at home, and huge contracts to global companies that influence in determining the policies of the countries to which they belong.

In an attempt to cover this up, it is claimed to insist on organizing the elections as soon as possible in line with the scandalous deception practiced by the veteran American diplomat, Stephanie Williams, from her position as political advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, charged with deliberate oversight of overseeing the Libyan file for the benefit of her original administration in Washington at the expense of Its emergency functional management in New York.

Rely on alliances

Dabaiba faced the parliament’s decision to withdraw confidence from him and assign Fathi Bashagha as prime minister of a new government to ignore and indifference. He relied on the map of relations and interests at home and abroad to install himself as a unique ruler over the capital in the absence of any practical role for the Presidential Council, and he knew from his background as a businessman how to hold the strings of the financial game And the economy through his announced alliance with the governor of the Central Bank of Libya, Al-Siddiq Al-Kabeer, and the head of the Audit Bureau, Khaled Shakshak, with his control over the military establishment in the western region through his management of the defense portfolio, which he managed to seize since the announcement of the formation of his government in March 2021, as if he was preparing himself To rebel against his previous pledges, especially those announced before the Forum for Political Dialogue in Geneva and then before a session of parliament granting him confidence in the city of Sirte.

Bashagha effectively controls the reins of power in Cyrenaica and Fezzan and in part of the central region, including its temporary capital, Sirte, which is under the influence of the National Army

Dabaiba relied on two basic ideas: the first is to satisfy the warlords’ and militia leaders’ hunger for money and influence, and to enter into alliances with them for mutual empowerment, in contravention of his previous pledges that his government would be a government of national unity and that its goal would be to achieve national reconciliation, but none of that has been achieved. Its main goal is to focus on the idea of ​​partition and revenge from the eastern region, the army leadership and the House of Representatives, and manipulation of some of the symbols of the former regime, and to allow this to perpetuate its alliance that came out from under the shadow government table in Istanbul, to announce itself in Tripoli, with extremist groups and militias affiliated with Al-Sadiq Al-Ghariani. The Mufti, who represents an epitome of the nature of the division taking place in the country, incites some Libyans against others, rejoices in the killing of some at the hands of others, declares the majority to be infidels to serve the agenda of the minority, and plays the fatwa game to serve his political convictions at the expense of religion.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... sk-of-war/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed May 25, 2022 2:52 pm

African Liberation Day: Imamu Amiri Baraka, 1972
Editors, The Black Agenda Review 25 May 2022

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On this African Liberation Day, we revisit Amiri Baraka’s 1972 communiqué calling for Black people to struggle for Pan-African unity while also registering our anger at the “pathology and traitor mentality” of the Black misleadership class - enemies of Africa and African people.

These pictures are purposely altered by the editors to disorient - as the existence of an imperialist Black misleadership is disorienting.


Should African Liberation Day be a day of celebration or mourning? Since the first African Liberation Day celebrations were held in Washington, Toronto, and Washington, DC., May 27, 1972, most of the African continent broke from colonial rule and became politically independent. But the enemies of African people launched a counter revolutionary war against self-determination immediately after independence. African sovereignty came under attack from a vindictive neocolonialism that would later be intensified by neoliberalism. This neocolonialism would not be successful, however, if not also for the actions of a veritable minstrel show of Black compradors, sell-outs, spooks, reformists, reactionaries, puppets, poodles, and misleaders - on the continent and throughout the African diaspora.

Indeed, the current overseer of US imperial policy is a phenotypically Black man, Lloyd Austin III: a former Raytheon executive who, as the United States Secretary of State, has extended and entrenched the Yankee forever wars on behalf of his former employer and the US military state. While Austin recently requested the deployment of US troops to Somalia, AFRICOM (soon to be under the leadership of another Black comprador, Lt. Gen. Michael Langley ) has resumed its drone strikes, assassinating some sixty people in the village of Fiidow on February 22, 2022, using the San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics’ MQ-1A Reaper (price tag: $56.5 million ). At the same time, and in a throwback to the Cold War, Gregory Meeks, Black Democratic Congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has introduced a bill directing the “Secretary of State to develop and submit to Congress a strategy and implementation plan outlining United States efforts to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa, and for other purposes.” As a result in the years – and perhaps months — to come, Africa will see an increase in US military action. And of course, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman and US ambassador to the United Nations, stands at her imperial pulpit, ready to bully African nations to the will of the US.

In this light, it is worth revisiting Imamu Baraka’s May 1, 1972, communiqué on African Liberation Day, published in the Brooklyn journal Black News. Baraka reminds us that “America is one of the chief oppressors of Africans in the world.” And the way to fight for African liberation is for Africans, globally, to “unify through the political consciousness” of Pan-Africanism. At its core, African Liberation Day fuses Pan-Africanism with anti-imperialism – and that anti-imperialism by necessity involves a critique of US corporate power and foreign policy. It was for this reason that the 1972 African Liberation Day march in DC targeted the State Department among other locations. Moreover, Baraka castigated the Black people in the imperial core for furthering imperial policy and neocolonial rule. Here, Baraka singles out Roy Wilkins, whom he describes as the “puppet head” of the NAACP.

Baraka’s communiqué, reproduced below, should compel all of us living through this moment of increased Black participation in the US imperial project to “register our absolute shock and anger at the pathology and traitor mentality shown by” the likes of Meeks, Thomas-Greenfield, Austin, Langley, and the many other Black enemies of Africa and African people.

African Liberation Day

Imamu Baraka

On Saturday, May 27, thousands of Black People from all over the country will converge on Washington, D.C. to demonstrate our support for African Liberation Day. Ordinarily, African Liberation Day is recognized and celebrated each May 25, throughout the African World, but this year because of the increasing severity of the confrontations encountered by Africans all over the world in our efforts to survive and develop [sic], it was decided that this year’s African Liberation Day program ought to include some dramatic manifestation not only of the African in America's consciousness of PanAfricanism, but also specifically there ought to be some graphic demonstration of support of the struggles of our brothers and sisters on the continent, in their thrust for self determination. Particularly in support of the liberation struggles in southern Africa and Guinea Bissau, where armed struggle rages this very moment, to rid the African continent of the most blatant examples of European Colonialism. The members of the African Liberation Day Mobilization Steering conference, and some of the other names you can recognize on the release, felt that it is essential to the movement for total African Liberation and self determination that Africans living in the western hemisphere (since brothers and sisters from the West Indies and Canada, will also be taking part in the Washington tactic) begin to very openly and dramatically support these struggles on the African continent, because reality teaches us that they are part and parcel of our struggles here in the west. Because at base the enemies of Africans in Africa, are the same people who viciously repress black people all over the world.

African Liberation Day Committees have been formed in most of the 50 states, the West Indies and Canada, who will coordinate the movement of black people into Washington to march in support of African Liberation, and also to reveal to the world that black people are beginning to understand internationally who the enemies of black people are. We will demonstrate in front of the Portuguese Embassy because of the Portuguese continuing nazi repression campaigns and colonialism in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau; in front of the Rhodesian information offices because of the continued illegality of the Rhodesian white settle minority regime, which as in defiance of all the forces of reason, disregarded the needs of the African majority in Zimbabwe; in front of the South African Embassy because the white settler minority government which rules Africans in Azania is in clear violation of all human rights, and the clearest example of nazi-ism in the world today. We should also take the opportunity today to register our absolute shock and anger at the pathology and traitor mentality shown by Roy Wilkins, puppet head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His statement yesterday in Azania, gave real solace to the enemies of black people all over the world. His open support for the financiers of African slavery and oppression in South Africa marks him in open conflict with the majority of the black world. We beg his own so-called constituency within the national association to condemn and disassociate themselves from Wilkin’s [sic] criminally irresponsible statements of support for colonialism. It is time the responsible black people within the NAACP show that Wilkins no longer represents the thinking of the majority of black people.

It is to register the overwhelming opposition of most black people in the world to catatonic statements like Wilkins’ that the Steering Committee of the African Liberation Day are bring black people to Washington, D.C., not only to show our absolute commitment to the struggles of Africans but by marching in the seat of power of the United States of America to demonstrate as well black peoples disgust with American foreign policy towards Africa. This policy showed itself most clearly last week in the movement of Rhodesian chrome ore into the United States, violating sanctions the United Nations placed on the illegal minority white settler government in efforts to get this illegal government to recognize the rights of the African majority in Zimbabwe. The United States through the machinations of Harry Byrd (W. Va.) and the lobbying of Foote Mineral Company and Union Carbide, have begun to import this chrome ore, though we are asking black people all over this country to challenge this racist move, just as black students in Louisiana did last week.

In order for the black majority on the continent of Africa to move swiftly toward complete liberation and self determination, self respect, self reliance and self defense, it is absolutely necessary for Africans wherever we are, to unify through the political consciousness called PanAfricanism. America is one of the chief oppressors of Africans in the world. The foreign policy of America will change toward Africa, when Africans in and around America force that change through the rise of our political consciousness that we are also an African people, by race, culture, history, politics and emotion. The strengthening of Africa is the strengthening of ourselves.

We are urging all black people, all Africans in the western hemisphere to come together near the government of our worst enemies, but paradoxically in a stronghold of black life, Washington, D.C., to move the struggle to yet higher levels. May 27, the march will move from State Department, via demonstrations at the various Embassies, Missions, and information centers, toward Malcolm X Park.

For further information, call National Office, African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee (202)462-3411; or in New York the East in Brooklyn (212)636-9400; or in New Jersey the Committee for Unified NewArk (201)621-2300.

Source: Imamu Baraka, African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee, Black News (Brooklyn, New York) (May 1, 1972), page 5.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/afric ... araka-1972

On African Liberation Day Biden’s Troop Deployment to Somalia Confirms Africa is Not Free
Black Alliance For Peace 25 May 2022

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President Biden and Rep. Gregory Meeks (Photo: Twitter @GregoryMeeks)

The Black Alliance for Peace marks African Liberation Day with a statement condemning the latest US troop deployment to Somalia.

This statement was originally published in Black Alliance for Peace .

For Immediate Release

Media Contact:

press@blackallianceforpeace.com

(202) 643-1136


May 25, 2022 - The Biden Administration's recent decision to return U.S. troops to Somalia represents another effort on the part of the U.S. to deny agency and independence to African people. On the 59th commemoration of African Liberation Day, the Black Alliance for Peace expresses its unequivocal opposition to this redeployment. The 500 U.S. troops sent to Somalia are the latest to violate that nation’s sovereignty. As is the case with all U.S. interventions, the underlying reasons are not only depraved but also indifferent to the constant suffering of African people caused by western-induced militarism and war.

The reintroduction of the U.S. military (AFRICOM ) on the ground is related to a dispute between Somalia and the U.S. oil company, Coastline Exploration Ltd, over the validity of an oil exploration agreement. It is also a signal that the U.S. wants to both reassert its presence in the oil-rich and strategic region, and to directly target its long-time foe, Eritrea.

Netfa Freeman, BAP’s African Team Co-Coordinator states that this decision is “emblematic of the U.S. insistence on keeping Africa in perpetual turmoil and has nothing to do with enabling a more effective fight against al-Shabaab.” Biden’s advisors are certainly aware of various reports exposing that the billions Washington spends on counterterrorism programs, from Somalia to Nigeria , ostensibly to enhance security in Africa, is having the opposite effect.

While the U.S. continues its 30-year long series of interventions against Somalia, H.R. 7311 the “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” passed with the unanimous approval of every Democrat in Congress.

H.R. 7311 was introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman and Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) member Gregory Meeks and passed in the House on April 28, 2022. The bill calls for assessments of Russia’s influence on the African continent and states that the U.S. will “hold accountable” Russia and African governments who are “complicit in aiding such malign influence.” This is reminiscent of the era of the George W Bush administration that declared that any country not with the U.S. is against the U.S.

Margaret Kimberley, BAP Africa Team Co-Coordinator said, “This bill is a racist affront to the right to self-determination of African people.”

H.R. 7311 is a reaction to African nations that refrained from condemning Russia’s military operation in Ukraine; and as a deterrent against African nations acting as Mali has done, by ending the French military presence and turning toward Russian private military company Wagner for assistance. On May 16th the Mali government announced that Wagner played a role in thwarting a failed coup attempt allegedly carried out by a group of local soldiers, foreign mercenaries, and units from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries.

Rep. Meeks and the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) - the “Black misleadership class” - are fully aligned with the Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership, defending every imperialist effort to exercise U.S. dominance in Africa. The U.S. bombed Somalia on February 22, two days before the Russian Federation began its military operations in Ukraine. Yet Somalia has not become a focus of concern of Meeks and the rest of the Black misleaders, despite years of constant drone bombings by the U.S. having caused an estimated 250,000 deaths and the displacement of 3 million people. Meanwhile, these same CBC members won’t address domestic problems, but will lob billions to wage a proxy war against Russia and to support Nazi groups in Ukraine. The U.S. Black misleadership class demonstrates over and over that they do not care about African people - neither on the continent nor at home.

BAP is firm in its anti-imperialist stance and again says, “U.S. Out of Africa!” “Shut Down AFRICOM!”

No Compromise! No Retreat!

https://www.blackagendareport.com/afric ... a-not-free

The U.S. Gives Us Hell but it’s a Liberated Africa that Can Douse the Flames
Mark P. Fancher 25 May 2022

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African heads of state at OAU summit, May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

African Liberation Day is a reminder that African descended people make progress when joined together in international unity. Internationalism is essential.

When U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established in 2007, the only thing more offensive than its use of proxy African soldiers to carry out imperialist missions was the appointment of a Black man, William E. (“Kip”) Ward, to lead AFRICOM operations.

After Ward stepped down, white men assumed leadership of AFRICOM. But now, yet again, AFRICOM will be headed by a man of African descent. Lt. Gen. Michael Langley will assume the role of training and directing the armed forces of African countries to militarize Africa and plunder the continent’s resources for the benefit of foreign governments and corporations. The publication Stars and Stripes reported that for Langley “a top priority will be countering militants in the East African country of Somalia.”

The cynical use of Africans to control and exploit Africa is surpassed in its odiousness only by a willingness of Africans like Ward and Langley to engage in the enterprise. Those committed to Africa’s liberation have long been aware of the importance of ensuring that members of African communities decline such collaboration with oppressors. To that end, in 1963, the Organization of African Unity proclaimed May 25th as African Liberation Day - a day when the African World might orient itself to a serious commitment to achieving Africa’s genuine independence.

Although the commemoration of African Liberation Day throughout Africa and the African diaspora has become an ever-growing tradition, this year, in the wake of the racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, there are no doubt many Africans born and living in the U.S. who can’t bring themselves to think of Africa’s plight when their personal circumstances seem so precarious. If the only problems were violent white supremacists, prospects for survival might not seem so bleak. But the anti-Black hostility has manifested in so many ways that signal that help is not on the way from any of the quarters from whence Africans in America might expect it.

Specifically, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a police bullet was fired into the head of Patrick Lyoya at point-blank range making him one of the latest of a very long series of Africans killed by cops and affirming yet again that not only are Africans unable to look to the police for protection, but that the police themselves are an enemy force.

Less blatant, but no less concerning, is the U.S. government’s seeming indifference to the international dilemma of WNBA star Brittney Griner, a captive in Russia, purportedly for drug-related offenses, even as the U.S. State Department fought more efficiently and vigorously for the release of others. In fact, it took weeks for the U.S. to even acknowledge its belief that Griner had been wrongfully detained. Concern is not limited to the plight of Griner as an individual, but it is also for the unmistakable message that a U.S. government that should presumably protect its nationals can’t be counted on if the person in question is Black.

It is not surprising then that persons of African descent in the U.S. might perceive themselves to be adrift, alone, vulnerable and unprotected even by the government entities charged with keeping them safe. The perceived intensity of the danger means that calls to work for Africa’s liberation may not resonate. While this is understandable, historically, the challenges of Africa’s diaspora have not deterred engagement in internationalist service.

The list of revolutionaries who have emerged from communities under stress but who have nevertheless thrown themselves into Africa’s struggles is long. Frantz Fanon left colonized Martinique to struggle alongside those fighting for Algeria’s independence. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) physically relocated himself from the U.S. where Civil Rights and Black Power struggles raged to become a vital member of the Democratic Party of Guinea. Che Guevara was not content with his sterling service to the Cuban revolution, and he fought in Congo and ultimately Bolivia where he was captured and killed.

In fact, some of the most important internationalist service to Africa has been rendered by Cuba, even in the face of extreme pressure from not only western imperialism but also from the Soviet Union. Of Cuba’s assistance to the efforts to liberate Angola, Piero Gleijeses, a Johns Hopkins University professor explained:

“In early November 1975, as South Africans were advancing along the coast, Angola sent a desperate appeal request to Cubans for help. The military mission also told Fidel [Castro] that the Cubans had to do something, because Luanda was going to fall. On November 4, Fidel decided to send troops to Angola. The Soviet Union was miffed, because it didn’t want the Cubans to intervene. It showed its annoyance by not assisting in the dispatch of Cuban troops to Angola. Until 1975 or 1976, the Cubans arrived by ship and old transport planes.”

Cuba went on to play a vital role in the liberation of Angola and the fall of apartheid in Namibia and South Africa. Cuba’s sacrifices for Africa neither began nor ended in Southern Africa. Even after its military forces withdrew from the region, they were replaced by brigades of Cuban physicians and other medical personnel deployed throughout the continent.

For Black people in America, internationalist service can be not only as noble as that rendered by forebears, but it can also be pragmatic. This is because Africans are not only a numerical minority in the U.S., but also a powerless minority. Meanwhile, Africa’s population is exploding. Foreign Policy columnist Adam Tooze explained that by 2050, Africa’s population will account for nearly 25 percent of the population of the planet. He said:

“In the 2040s alone, it is likely that in the order of 566 million children will be born in Africa. Around midcentury, African births will outnumber those in Asia, and Africans will constitute the largest population of people of prime working age anywhere in the world.”

It just makes good sense for Africans in the U.S. to see themselves as part of that mass of humanity. This does not even consider the potential of Africa to seize control of the continent’s natural resources and to use them for the benefit of Africans worldwide. Such global sharing and collaboration will happen more organically if the African diaspora participates not only in reaping the benefits of the power that flows from control of Africa’s natural wealth, but also in the struggle on the front end to make such control a reality.

While a united and socialist Africa, with all its resources could be a powerful social, economic and political engine for communities throughout the African diaspora, as a practical matter it would need to do nothing to impact them. The mere existence of a powerful, unified Africa would be a deterrent to every police officer inclined to kill brothers like Patrick Lyoya. When the Brittney Griners of our communities might find themselves in international predicaments, the State Department would likely turn somersaults if necessary to assist them because of the need to curry favor with a powerful Africa. In the end, Africans in America need to make Africa a primary focus of their struggles despite the many hardships and challenges presented by the U.S. It just makes good sense.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-gi ... use-flames

US Threatens Ethiopia and Eritrea with Illegal “Legal Designation of Genocide”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 25 May 2022

Image
United Nations World Food Programme trucks in Ethiopia

The US is falsely accusing Ethiopia and Eritrea of hindering food aid and committing genocides in the ongoing war in Tigray. The charges are false and the US has no right to make such a claim on its own. Ann Garrison continues reporting from the region.

During the Obama Administration, the excuse for US wars of aggression shifted from the War on Terror to the so-called humanitarian wars to stop genocide and mass atrocities, which were then championed by top Obama officials Samantha Power and Susan Rice. The US and NATO destroyed Libya and began the relentless bombing of Syria “to stop genocide.”

In November 2020, Ethiopians and Eritreans began to fear—with good reason—that they’ll be next. That fear continues today, as the US threatens them with an illegal “legal designation of genocide” in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region.

I’m still writing from Ethiopia, specifically from Bahir Dahr, the capital of Amhara Region, today. Water politics are essential in the Horn and the wider region, so I hear about them every day. As a result, I’ve only recently learned that, during NATO’s war on Libya, it deliberately destroyed that country’s water infrastructure , a war crime under the Geneva Convention. The destruction of Libya was itself an international crime, the destruction of its water infrastructure a crime within that crime.

Black Agenda Report readers are no doubt aware of this, but before going on, I should nevertheless note that according to international law, only the UN Security Council (UNSC) has the international legal authority to rule that genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity are happening or have happened. According to the UN Charter, the UNSC can then organize a multilateral military response or refer cases to the International Criminal Court. U.S. policymakers’ claim to have the legal right to “legally designate” the international crimes which they themselves are most guilty of is just more of the arrogance of power in pursuit of global hegemony.

As I write this I remember Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asking a State Department official how close they are to a “legal designation” that Ethiopia and Eritrea are committing genocide in Tigray. I remember a State Department official replying, essentially, that they’re still working on that. In other words, that they’re still hanging it over Ethiopia and Eritrea’s heads.

Congressman Brad Sherman can’t wait

In a Congressional hearing last week, California’s 30th District Congressman Brad Sherman repeated his demand that the State Department issue that "legal designation" that both Ethiopia and Eritrea are committing genocide by blocking food aid convoys to the country’s Tigray Region, so as to justify the use of military force against both. Sherman wants Biden to deploy the U.S. Navy to block Eritrea’s ports, Massawa and Assab , which would be an act of war in violation of international law:

“I’ve suggested ways to pressure the Ethiopian and especially, and particularly, the Eritrean government, which has, of course, the ports that could be used, particularly by interrupting sea traffic going, you know, even hundreds of miles away from Eritrea. And I think a determination of genocide would spur our administration to do more than simply send harsh letters to Addis Ababa and Asmara . . . Only the Administration can provide the pressure, and only the Administration can use the US Navy to put additional pressure on the two countries involved.”

There is no siege of Tigray

This week New Zealand journalist Alastair Thompson and I both returned from Ethiopia’s Afar Region, where we saw aid convoys traveling on the Djibouti-Ethiopia Highway to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. In Semara, I spoke to Kenyan convoy drivers returning from Mekelle, who said that they had traveled unhindered from Nairobi to Addis Ababa and then to Mekelle to deliver aid for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I asked Alastair Thompson to describe aid convoys he saw while traveling north to Abala, a town on Afar Region’s border with Tigray Region.

Alastair Thompson: I traveled north on Saturday, the 14th of May, to Abala, which is on the border with Tigray, as you point out, and where there has been significant amounts of conflict. And on the way I saw a large number of trucks driving up. We drove past them because they were traveling more slowly than we were. And on the following day, when we returned, we saw more trucks traveling up and we also saw a large convoy staged at Silsa, about maybe 100 kilometers from Semara that was about to depart from Mekelle.

AG: Did you see any sign that the convoys were being hindered?

AT: None whatsoever. After the convoys depart from Silsa, the security is fairly simple. There are a series of checkpoints, not that many of them, at different intervals along the road manned by the Afar. There's no sign of the Ethiopian army in the area. And there seems to be a very orderly running of the convoys.

And my understanding is that over the past couple of weeks there have been a lot more convoys than there have been in the past.

AG: Are there scanners?

AT: Yes. The scanners are outside Semara at a place called Sardo, which all the trucks have to go through. They’re large scanners that the trucks have to drive through and they're capable of identifying electronic devices and metal and so forth—contraband. All the trucks have to pass through those before they reach Silsa and the staging point and they are guarded from there, and then they depart for Mekelle.

AG: So Brad Sherman's claim that the trucks are being stopped from traveling on to Mekelle seems unfounded to you?

AT: That's completely unfounded in terms of the current situation. To the extent that there have been blockages this year, they were caused entirely by the TPLF’s own invasion and occupation of the northern Afar Region.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri May 27, 2022 1:36 pm

Sudanese communists alert to increase in state repression following arrests

Sudanese forces raided the house of the political secretary of the Sudanese Communist Party, Muhammad Mukhtar al-Khatib

May 25, 2022 by Madaar

Image

On May 19, Sudanese security forces raided the home of the political secretary of the Sudanese Communist Party, Muhammad Mukhtar al-Khatib, and took him to an unknown destination, according to the party’s official page.

After the leaders of the Sudanese Communist Party were arrested in Juba, the Sudanese security forces arrested two leaders of the anti-coup movement of last October. They have since been released, but the incident has been widely denounced within the country and internationally.

The legal sector of the Sudanese Communist Party had explained in a press statement following the incident: “A team from the Security and General Intelligence Services arrested two members of the Central Committee delegation, returning from Juba this afternoon, they are Saleh Mahmoud, who was arrested from inside the Khartoum airport hall, and Muhammed Mukhtar Al-Khatib, the political secretary of the party who was arrested after he arrived at his home, as is the practice of the coup authority in restricting rights and freedoms.”

The sector expressed its denunciation and condemnation of this arbitrary arrest, calling for the immediate release of the two leaders.

Earlier, the Sudanese Communist Party confirmed the arrest of a number of its leaders yesterday by the authorities of South Sudan on their way back to the capital, Khartoum, from the city of Kauda in South Kordofan. The Communist Party delegation had met with a delegation from the Sudanese Liberation Movement, led by Abdel Wahed Mohamed Nour, and the Popular Movement, led by Abdel Aziz El Helou to discuss the party’s document “Sudan: The Crisis and the Way to Reclaim the Revolution”. This meeting was to serve the purpose of continuing the campaign to unify the revolutionary forces in Sudan, in order to overthrow the military coup and establish a democratic state and a just, comprehensive peace.

In a press statement, the Party expressed its strong condemnation of the detention and unjustified investigation of the leadership of a legitimate, legal party. The Party said: “The Communist Party heard from its delegation in Juba, in the state of South Sudan, that after their return from Kauda [the leaders] were arrested, detained, and interrogated by the External Security Service of the Government of South Sudan, about their travel to Kauda without notifying the authorities in the State of South Sudan.”

The official spokesman in charge of the Sudanese Communist Party, Hassan Othman, confirmed during his interview yesterday evening on the Al-Hadath channel that “what happened is not new, as extensive dialogues have been held and are continuing in order to unite the forces of the Sudanese revolution in achieving radical change,” noting that there are many charters proposed for dialogue, and that the Communist Party proposed the building of a unified center for the forces of the revolution, and “in this way, our delegation headed to Southern Sudan after holding a meeting with the militants Abdel Wahed Mohamed Nour [of the Sudanese Liberation Movement] and Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu [the People’s Movement] in Juba and Kauda, ​​to complete the dialogue and sign charters that help the Sudanese political movement build a coalition of forces for radical change in the country.”

It is noteworthy that upon their arrival from the capital of South Sudan, Juba, the participants in the leadership delegation held a press conference, during which they presented the most prominent aspects of the meeting in Kaudua, including visits to the education plan and the health plan.

On the political level, the delegation met with the leader of the popular movement, Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu, and the two parties conducted several negotiations, and reached agreements regarding the current political issues related to the “unity of the revolutionary movement.”

Massive popular protests are still continuing in Sudan against the military’s control of the government, as the country has been experiencing deep political and economic turmoil, since the military coup was carried out last year and civilians were removed from the transitional government.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/25/ ... g-arrests/

Tunisian political parties and trade unions reject president’s move to enact a new constitution

The UGTT, Tunisia’s main trade union, and major left parties gave calls for boycott of the national dialogue initiated by President Kais Saied last week, almost a year after he dismissed the elected government

May 24, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

Image
(Photo: Nacer Talel - Anadolu Agency)

The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), the country’s main trade union, decided on Monday, May 23, to boycott the national dialogue announced by President Kais Saied to enact a new constitution in the country. The union instead decided to go on a general strike to “defend workers’ economic and social rights.”

In a statement issued on Monday after a meeting of its administrative committee, the UGTT said that the decision to start the national dialogue taken by the President “is not the result of prior consultation or agreement and does not meet the national aspirations.” It rejected any dialogue “with unilaterally determined roles and excluding political and civil forces,” TAP reported.

Early in May, Saied had announced that a commission will be formed to carry out a national dialogue with the UGTT, Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicraft, (UTICA), Tunisian Human Rights League, and Tunisian Orders for Lawyers. He had also announced that no political parties and civil society groups would be allowed to be part of the consultation for the creation of a new constitution in the country.

On Friday, Saied announced the appointment of the head of the National Dialogue under the National Consultative Commission for a New Republic. The UTICA and two other groups have already announced their participation.

According to decree number 30 of 2022, the commission has 21 days to finish the consultation with the four groups mentioned by the President. After the consultation, the commission will draft a new constitution which will be put up for referendum.

Workers’ Party announces joint left front against Saied’s rule
The political parties in Tunisia have also opposed the unilateral move by Saied. On Monday, Hamma Hammami, head of Tunisia’s Workers Party, announced that his party will not participate in the elections or the referendum based on the national dialogue. In a statement on its Facebook page, the party claimed that Saied’s move will be “laying the foundations of his autocratic rule.” It added that the so-called consultative committee is an attempt to provide legitimacy to Saied’s pro-rich system.

Ennahda and other right-wing political formations in Tunisia formed a National Salvation Front last month to oppose Saied’s moves. The Front includes parties like the Heart of Tunisia and Al-Amal.

The Workers’ Party has decided to create a broad coalition of left parties in the country to lead the opposition against Saied’s “dictatorial orientation” and “fascist and populist rule.” The proposed front will not join hands with religious and bourgeoisie political formations such as Ennahda and the Free Constitutional Party led by Abeer Mousa, said Workers’ Party leader Ammar Amroussia.

Amroussia claimed to have started consultations with other like-minded parties in the country including the Democratic Current, Block for Labour and Freedom, and Socialist party, among others, for the coalition.

Saied was elected President of Tunisia in October 2019. In July 2021, he dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended the parliament accusing the government of failing to tackle the country’s economic problems and indulging in corruption. Since then, Saied has gradually suspended the 2014 constitution and dissolved the parliament, claiming to start a process to create a new constitution. He has appointed a new Prime Minister and announced a national dialogue and referendum before the adoption of the new constitution.

Saied has been accused by most of the political parties in Tunisia of carrying out a coup against the only surviving democratic system that resulted from the popular uprisings in 2011. The people in Tunisia were the first to come out on the streets in large numbers against the long-term authoritarian rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. The popular protests had forced him to flee the country, which led to the establishment of a democratic government.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/24/ ... stitution/

************************************

US Threatens Ethiopia and Eritrea with Illegal “Legal Designation of Genocide”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 26, 2022
Ann Garrison

Image
United Nations World Food Programme trucks in Ethiopia

The US is falsely accusing Ethiopia and Eritrea of hindering food aid and committing genocides in the ongoing war in Tigray. The charges are false and the US has no right to make such a claim on its own. Ann Garrison continues reporting from the region.

During the Obama Administration, the excuse for US wars of aggression shifted from the War on Terror to the so-called humanitarian wars to stop genocide and mass atrocities, which were then championed by top Obama officials Samantha Power and Susan Rice. The US and NATO destroyed Libya and began the relentless bombing of Syria “to stop genocide.”

In November 2020, Ethiopians and Eritreans began to fear—with good reason—that they’ll be next. That fear continues today, as the US threatens them with an illegal “legal designation of genocide” in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region.

I’m still writing from Ethiopia, specifically from Bahir Dahr, the capital of Amhara Region, today. Water politics are essential in the Horn and the wider region, so I hear about them every day. As a result, I’ve only recently learned that, during NATO’s war on Libya, it deliberately destroyed that country’s water infrastructure , a war crime under the Geneva Convention. The destruction of Libya was itself an international crime, the destruction of its water infrastructure a crime within that crime.

Black Agenda Report readers are no doubt aware of this, but before going on, I should nevertheless note that according to international law, only the UN Security Council (UNSC) has the international legal authority to rule that genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity are happening or have happened. According to the UN Charter, the UNSC can then organize a multilateral military response or refer cases to the International Criminal Court. U.S. policymakers’ claim to have the legal right to “legally designate” the international crimes which they themselves are most guilty of is just more of the arrogance of power in pursuit of global hegemony.

As I write this I remember Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asking a State Department official how close they are to a “legal designation” that Ethiopia and Eritrea are committing genocide in Tigray. I remember a State Department official replying, essentially, that they’re still working on that. In other words, that they’re still hanging it over Ethiopia and Eritrea’s heads.

Congressman Brad Sherman can’t wait

In a Congressional hearing last week, California’s 30th District Congressman Brad Sherman repeated his demand that the State Department issue that “legal designation” that both Ethiopia and Eritrea are committing genocide by blocking food aid convoys to the country’s Tigray Region, so as to justify the use of military force against both. Sherman wants Biden to deploy the U.S. Navy to block Eritrea’s ports, Massawa and Assab , which would be an act of war in violation of international law:

“I’ve suggested ways to pressure the Ethiopian and especially, and particularly, the Eritrean government, which has, of course, the ports that could be used, particularly by interrupting sea traffic going, you know, even hundreds of miles away from Eritrea. And I think a determination of genocide would spur our administration to do more than simply send harsh letters to Addis Ababa and Asmara . . . Only the Administration can provide the pressure, and only the Administration can use the US Navy to put additional pressure on the two countries involved.”

There is no siege of Tigray

This week New Zealand journalist Alastair Thompson and I both returned from Ethiopia’s Afar Region, where we saw aid convoys traveling on the Djibouti-Ethiopia Highway to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. In Semara, I spoke to Kenyan convoy drivers returning from Mekelle, who said that they had traveled unhindered from Nairobi to Addis Ababa and then to Mekelle to deliver aid for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I asked Alastair Thompson to describe aid convoys he saw while traveling north to Abala, a town on Afar Region’s border with Tigray Region.

Alastair Thompson: I traveled north on Saturday, the 14th of May, to Abala, which is on the border with Tigray, as you point out, and where there has been significant amounts of conflict. And on the way I saw a large number of trucks driving up. We drove past them because they were traveling more slowly than we were. And on the following day, when we returned, we saw more trucks traveling up and we also saw a large convoy staged at Silsa, about maybe 100 kilometers from Semara that was about to depart from Mekelle.

AG: Did you see any sign that the convoys were being hindered?

AT: None whatsoever. After the convoys depart from Silsa, the security is fairly simple. There are a series of checkpoints, not that many of them, at different intervals along the road manned by the Afar. There’s no sign of the Ethiopian army in the area. And there seems to be a very orderly running of the convoys.

And my understanding is that over the past couple of weeks there have been a lot more convoys than there have been in the past.

AG: Are there scanners?

AT: Yes. The scanners are outside Semara at a place called Sardo, which all the trucks have to go through. They’re large scanners that the trucks have to drive through and they’re capable of identifying electronic devices and metal and so forth—contraband. All the trucks have to pass through those before they reach Silsa and the staging point and they are guarded from there, and then they depart for Mekelle.

AG: So Brad Sherman’s claim that the trucks are being stopped from traveling on to Mekelle seems unfounded to you?

AT: That’s completely unfounded in terms of the current situation. To the extent that there have been blockages this year, they were caused entirely by the TPLF’s own invasion and occupation of the northern Afar Region.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon May 30, 2022 2:47 pm

US Pressures African Countries into Breaking Away from Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 28, 2022
Valery Kulikov

Image

At the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, Vladimir Putin hosted 43 African leaders — more than the number attending similar events in the UK or France. Even back then, at the Sochi summit, the Russian president criticized the West for imposing “political or other conditions” on African states in order to break them away from Russia.

Today, this pressure is even greater as the West does its best to force countries in Africa to abandon economic and other cooperation with Russia. This notion was stated by Oleg Ozerov, head of the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum and special envoy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, at a round table in the Federation Council on “Inter-regional cooperation of constituent entities of the Russian Federation with African countries” on May 23. “We see tremendous pressure being exerted on our African partners, including South Africa, which results in their hesitation and inconsistency, and all of this is to break them away from Russia, to close any possibility of developing economic relations with us,” he said. Ozerov further remarked: “US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has already toured seven African countries, now German Chancellor Olaf Scholz <…> is going to both South Africa and Senegal <…> to try and push African countries to refuse to cooperate with Russia.”

As reported in the African media, this pressure from the West is not only directed at the political and economic sphere, but also at Africa’s religious relations with Russia. For example, several clerics who defected to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) from the Alexandria Patriarchate are now in prison, Metropolitan Leonid of Klin, the Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, announced at a press conference on May 23 following his first overseas visit to Uganda. Specifically, he noted: “In Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, criminal cases have been filed against our clerics. And only because they stand up for the canonical rules and laws of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.” The African Exarch added that many African clerics who have defected to the ROC have been denied temples in which they could hold services.

Despite such demonstrative pressure from the West on various fronts, half of the African states shy away from condemning Russia over the situation around Ukraine and refuse to join the anti-Russian sanctions. The March 2 vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution condemning Russia’s launching of a special operation to denazify Ukraine showed that out of 54 African countries, only closely aligned countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Gabon, Rwanda, Djibouti, Somalia and the Congo supported the “collective West.” 17 African states abstained and eight did not turn up. One country, Eritrea, even voted openly against. To the West’s particular displeasure, even South Africa, billed as a “showcase of true values,” not only failed to criticize Russia, but introduced an alternative “Western” resolution on the situation in Ukraine at the UN.

By demanding that African countries condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the West has resorted to threats and blackmail, Russian Ambassador to Angola Vladimir Tararov told RIA Novosti. “Take note of the fact that when voting for the anti-Russian resolution at the UN General Assembly, almost all African countries voted neutrally, i.e. abstained. This means that they did not support the resolution but did not dare to vote against it because the pressure was extraordinary,” Tararov said. He called such behavior by Western states immoral.

The Bangkok Post also highlighted in early April that 16 African countries refused to vote or voted against UN condemnation of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. Moreover, African countries such as Mali, Uganda and Eritrea have endorsed the special operation in Ukraine, while the CAR, Benin and South Africa have openly expressed support for the Kremlin’s actions. Among the reasons for this situation, the publication recalled that Russia had been actively providing military and economic aid to a number of African countries in recent years. In addition, many states have strong ties with Russia as a successor to the USSR, which actively helped African countries to fight the imperialism of European states. The liberation parties that still rule Angola, Mozambique (whose flag, incidentally, bears a Kalashnikov assault rifle), Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe saw in Moscow an ally in their struggle to end Western rule. None of the African countries perceive Russia as an enemy, a former colonizer or a potential hegemon, and therefore have not imposed sanctions on Russia. The positions of Russia and most African countries are conceptually similar on many issues.

Western pressure on African countries has led to limited ways for Moscow to engage with partners and states there that are directly dependent on Russian supplies of food and services. In fact, the manipulation of the collective West has provoked famine in many parts of the world, including Africa. This was the opinion of the independent UN expert, Alioune Tine, president and founder of the Senegalese center Africajom. “We call for the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, which are having an utterly disastrous effect on the countries of Africa. I ask Europeans to show some common sense and stop imposing restrictive measures on Moscow, as this leads to hunger, energy problems, fuel shortages. We are already starting to face all these restrictions, so we need to stop what Europe and the US have done,” Alioune Tine concluded.

Foreign Policy also writes about the active desire of the US and the European Union to isolate Moscow and to attract as many states as possible to their coalition, stressing that in Africa such a policy faces a wall of incomprehension. Such Western actions, the publication admits, have already revived discussions in African political circles on the need to bring back the Non-Aligned Movement that existed during the Cold War. This would avoid dragging the two camps into a confrontation.

In their anti-Russian pressure on African countries, the US and its Western allies make no secret of their concern about Russia’s efforts to play a prominent role in Africa, something Moscow has already achieved in the Middle East. There, Russia has already succeeded in building a balanced partnership with all the regional centers of power and has earned the right to take decisions on major regional issues. Such activity by Russia, its successes in Syria, the qualitative strengthening of its partnership with Egypt and its intensified involvement in Libya have opened the door to Africa. The Dark Continent saw Moscow as a player who would not abandon allies and friends, who could help to strengthen sovereignty, diversify foreign policy, avoid becoming dependent on other external players or weakening it, and who did not seek to establish its own hegemony in the Middle East and Africa.

In his Russophobic rhetoric, the President of the European Commission claims that Russia is allegedly a “direct threat to world order.” This is the most serious accusation against Moscow in a very long period and a very dangerous one, demonstrating racial animosity and an affinity with neo-fascism. The same West did not consider the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, or the unceremonious US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the organization of color revolutions around the world to be a “threat to world order.” Nor did it consider as such the killing of Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya.

In its history, Russia has shown that it is capable not only of defending itself and its people, but also of fighting for others, including colonized and plundered peoples. It saved the world from Nazism, paying the terrible price of 25 million men, women and children. However, today, as the efforts of the US and its allies are reviving Nazism in Ukraine, the “collective West” is trying its best to prevent Russia from winning a new victory over the neo-fascist ideology of the Kiev rulers. And in this opposition to Moscow, Washington is trying to involve the African continent by spreading fake information about Russia’s policies and actions, limiting Russia’s political, economic, cultural and religious ties with Africa.

Today, however, the world has changed profoundly and no longer allows a handful of West dealmakers to take back control of the world and the minds of people of the Earth. Therefore, such attempts by the West and its anti-Russian phobias, including on the African continent, are doomed to fail. This is evident in the reaction of the African states, which in this confrontation are siding more and more strongly with Moscow.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... om-russia/

The Rise of NATO in Africa
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 29, 2022
Vijay Prashad

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Civilian casualties of US bombing in Somalia

Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe. In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government. NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.

NATO’s war in Libya was its first major military operation in Africa, but it was not the first European military footprint on the continent. After centuries of European colonial wars in Africa, new states emerged in the aftermath of World War II to assert their sovereignty. Many of these states—from Ghana to Tanzania—refused to allow the European military forces to reenter the continent, which is why these European powers had to resort to assassinations and military coups to anoint pro-Western governments in the region. This allowed for the creation of Western military bases in Africa and gave Western firms freedom to exploit the continent’s natural resources.

Early NATO operations stayed at the edge of Africa, with the Mediterranean Sea being the major frontline. NATO set up the Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) in Naples in 1951, and then the Allied Forces Mediterranean (AFMED) in Malta in 1952. Western governments established these military formations to garrison the Mediterranean Sea against the Soviet navy and to create platforms from where they could militarily intervene in the African continent. After the Six-Day War in 1967, NATO’s Defense Planning Committee, which was dissolved in 2010, created the Naval On-Call Force Mediterranean (NOCFORMED) to put pressure on pro-Soviet states—such as Egypt—and to defend the monarchies of northern Africa (NATO was unable to prevent the anti-imperialist coup of 1969 that overthrew the monarchy in Libya and brought Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power; Gaddafi’s government ejected U.S. military bases from the country soon thereafter).

Conversations at NATO headquarters about “out of area” operations took place with increasing frequency after NATO joined the U.S. war on Afghanistan. A senior official at NATO told me in 2003 that the United States had “developed an appetite to use NATO” in its attempt to project power against possible adversaries. Two years later, in 2005, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, NATO began to cooperate closely with the African Union (AU). The AU, which was formed in 2002, and was the “successor” to the Organization of African Unity, struggled to build an independent security structure. The lack of a viable military force meant that the AU often turned to the West for assistance, and asked NATO to help with logistics and airlift support for its peacekeeping mission in Sudan.

Alongside NATO, the U.S. operated its military capacity through the United States European Command (EUCOM), which oversaw the country’s operations in Africa from 1952 to 2007. Thereafter, General James Jones, head of EUCOM from 2003 to 2006, formed the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, which was headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, because none of the 54 African nations were willing to give it a home. NATO began to operate on the African continent through AFRICOM.

Libya and NATO’s Framework for Africa

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SirteSirte, Libya after NATO bombardment

NATO’s war on Libya changed the dynamics of the relationship between the African countries and the West. The African Union was wary of Western military intervention in the region. On 10 March, 2011, the AU’s Peace and Security Council set up the High-Level ad hoc Committee on Libya. The members of this committee included then-AU Chairperson Dr. Jean Ping and the heads of state of five African nations—former President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Mali’s former President Amadou Toumani Touré, former President of South Africa Jacob Zuma and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—who were supposed to fly into Tripoli, Libya, and negotiate between the two sides of the Libyan civil war soon after the committee’s formation. The United Nations Security Council, however, prevented this mission from entering the country.

At a meeting between the High-Level ad hoc Committee on Libya and the United Nations in June 2011, Uganda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations during that time, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, said, “It is unwise for certain players to be intoxicated with technological superiority and begin to think they alone can alter the course of human history toward freedom for the whole of mankind. Certainly, no constellation of states should think that they can recreate hegemony over Africa.” But this is precisely what the NATO states began to imagine.

Chaos in Libya set in motion a series of catastrophic conflicts in Mali, southern Algeria and parts of Niger. The French military intervention in Mali in 2013 was followed by the creation of the G5 Sahel, a political platform of the five Sahel states—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger—and a military alliance between them. In May 2014, NATO opened a liaison office at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. At NATO’s Wales Summit in September 2014, the alliance partners considered the problems in the Sahel that entered the alliance’s Readiness Action Plan, which served as “[the] driver of NATO’s military adaptation to the changed and evolving security environment.” In December 2014, NATO foreign ministers reviewed the plan’s implementation, and focused on the “threats emanating from our southern neighborhood, the Middle East, and North Africa” and established a framework to meet the threats and challenges being faced by the South, according to a report by the former President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Michael R. Turner. Two years later, at NATO’s Warsaw Summit in 2016, NATO leaders decided to increase their cooperation with the African Union. They “[welcomed] the robust military commitment of Allies in the Sahel-Sahara region.” To deepen this commitment, NATO set up an African Standby Force and began the process of training officers in African military forces.

Meanwhile, the recent decision to eject the French military is rooted in a general sensibility growing in the continent against Western military aggression. No wonder then that many of the larger African countries refused to follow Washington’s position on the war on Ukraine, with half the countries either abstaining or voting against the UN resolution to condemn Russia (this includes countries such as Algeria, South Africa, Angola and Ethiopia). It is telling that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said that his country “is committed to advancing the human rights and fundamental freedoms not only of our own people but for the peoples of Palestine, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, Syria and across Africa and the world.”

The ignominy of Western—and NATO’s—follies, including arms deals with Morocco to deliver Western Sahara to the kingdom and diplomatic backing for Israel as it continues its apartheid treatment of Palestinians, bring into sharp contrast Western outrage at the events taking place in Ukraine. Evidence of this hypocrisy serves as a warning while reading the benevolent language used by the West when it comes to NATO’s expansion into Africa.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... in-africa/

Cameroon and Russia Start Working More Closely Together
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 29, 2022
Vladimir Danilov

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Despite the distances that separate the two regions, Russia and Africa have been bound together by close political, economic and cultural ties for many decades. In the West, African nations tend to be associated with poverty and a lack of development, and receive little media coverage, but in reality many countries on the continent have experienced a great deal of economic growth in the last few years. In addition, a number of integration projects are under development and making rapid progress in Africa. These projects will give African nations more influence in the international community and make them attractive partners for many other countries, not least Russia. Many of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing a rapid growth in GDP, and some have been referred to as African Lions, by analogy with the Asian Tiger economies. The size of the middle class is growing rapidly across the continent.

Russia is interested in developing its diplomatic ties with all African nations. Not a single African country is included on the list of “unfriendly” nations published by Russia in March this year, following the imposition of openly anti-Russian sanctions by the US and a number of its allies. Russia has bilateral contacts with many African nations and also works together with the African Union and with regional international associations on the continent. Russia’s links with certain African countries have been developing particularly rapidly over the last few years. Cameroon is a particularly good example.

More than 2000 management-level staff in Cameroon, including many specialists with senior positions in the state or private sector, have studied in Russia. Russia and Cameroon have established a joint educational institution which provides training in professions related to forestry and wildlife management, as well as a specialist agronomy institute. Cameroon is also home to a number of Russian companies, including LUKOIL, Rusgazengineering, Café de Moscou and Zarubezhvodstroi.

Cameroon has been fighting against militants from Boko Haram (prohibited in the Russian Federation) for many years. On May 22, 2014 the UN Security Council classed Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. It poses a particularly serious threat because the militants’ are able to cross the border between northern Nigeria and Cameroon without obstruction. Ever since it carried out a number of operations in which it captured hostages, Boko Haram militants have regularly crossed the border into northern Cameroon and mounted displays of force (for example by stealing cattle or destroying crops) and then disappearing. These attacks have had a serious effect on the economy in northern Cameroon, forcing tens of thousands of business owners who were dependent on trade with Nigeria into bankruptcy. This region used to be the country’s second most important source of customs duty payments (not counting duties from the oil industry), after the coastal region. But the customs posts were closed and trading discontinued as a result of the terrorist raids, and the region has experienced a catastrophic economic decline. Schools, hospitals and other buildings, and in some cases whole villages have fallen into disrepair, livestock has been stolen and tourism has dried up, causing a significant fall in the region’s GDP. According to national media reports, the national budget is losing $740 million a year in unpaid revenues as a result of this situation.

Cameroon has been forced to take military action against Boko Haram in order to prevent it from causing even more damage. In a bid to stop the group from using Cameroon – which has established itself in Nigeria – as a secondary base for its operations, Cameroon’s government has developed a policy known as Global Threat – Global Response, which involves a partnership between the national army and security forces and local popular militias, plus support from abroad. However, France, the most influential foreign power in the region, failed to provide Cameroon with the hoped-for support for its fight against foreign terrorists. Yaoundé was therefore forced to look elsewhere, and, inspired by Russia’s military partnerships with Mali and the CAR, it turned towards Moscow.

And thus, according to an announcement by Cameroon’s Ministry of Defense, on April 12 “on the instructions of Cameroon’s Head of State Paul Biya and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo and his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu, signed the documents that define this new military cooperation.” In the 13-page document the two parties agreed to exchange views and information on defense policy and international security, and to develop relations in the areas of joint professional training, medicine, cartography and military hydrography. The two countries also agreed to share experience and work together on peacekeeping operations under the aegis of the United Nations, and to cooperate in areas including maritime search and rescue operations, the fight against terrorism and piracy, and other areas agreed on by both parties. Under the agreement, “the Parties agree to cooperate on military and technical matters to meet the defense and security needs of the Parties in relation to: the supply of arms and military hardware, ammunition and other military materials, and the supply of spare parts, assemblies, connections, instruments, special training and support equipment and components for military equipment.” The document also states that Russia will provide military and technical support.

In addition to their military cooperation, in recent years Russia and Cameroon have developed close links in other areas. Moscow has promised, as a matter of priority, to supply Russian wheat to a number of African countries, including Cameroon, despite the West’s claims that Africa is threatened with imminent famine as a result of interruptions in supply caused by the conflict in Ukraine. Even before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Anatoly Bashkin, Russia’s ambassador to Cameroon had already offered to supply Russian wheat directly to Cameroon, thus bypassing Western intermediaries. He also promised to rebuild Cameroon’s strategic oil refinery, which had been destroyed in a fire.

The rapprochement between Russia and Cameroon has been viewed with concern in both Paris and Washington. In France the signing of the military agreement on April 12 was somewhat eclipsed by the first round of the national elections, held the day before, but it did not go unnoticed in America, and three days later, on April 15 Joe Biden “struck back.” He granted special protection to some 40,000 Ambazonian Cameroonian separatists who are seeking asylum in the US – mainly in Washington, DC and California.

The Ambazonians are Cameroonians from English-speaking regions of the country, also known as South Cameroonians, who started a separatist guerilla campaign against the Cameroonian security forces, with support from the US and Britain, and then unilaterally declared independence. In November 2017 Cameroon’s government declared war on the separatists and sent army divisions into the English-speaking regions of the country.

Tibor P. Nagy, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and former Deputy Head of the US mission in Yaounde, was very upset by the deal between Cameroon and Russia, and fired off an angry tweet in response to the news. “Can’t believe Cameroon Govt’s incredibly bad timing of signing military deal with Russia – at height of aggression in Ukraine. This is poke in the eye of US and France, two countries Cameroon may need help from in future.”

To tell the truth, the reactions from the US and France were entirely predictable – both countries have a long record of putting pressure on African states, pursuing a grasping neo-colonial policy that has nothing to do with promoting Africans’ interests and everything to do with geopolitical concerns about the activities of the West’s main rivals, Russia and China. On May 20, the Nigerian newspaper the Premium Times published an opinion piece attacking a draft law on “efforts to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa,” which was considered by the US Congress at the end of April. The Premium Times described the law as an “attempt to punish African countries for aligning with Russia.” And the South African newspaper the Daily Maverick warns that Africa may find itself “caught in the crossfire” as a result of its closer ties with Russia.

In the words of the well-known Turkish proverb, “The dogs may bark, but the caravan goes on.” And, despite the angry reactions of the West, African nations will continue to develop closer links with Russia. Naturally, Cameroon will be at the front of the queue.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -together/

Russian Military Points to Presence of US-Funded Biolabs in Nigeria Amid Global Monkeypox Scare
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 27, 2022
Ilya Tsukanov

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The Russian military has spent over two months now detailing the extent and reach of the US military-biological research effort in Ukraine, revealing that the Pentagon has used the country as a testing ground for the study of deadly bioagents, and uncovering the tangled web of military, corporate, and political interests behind these activities.

Russian Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops chief Igor Kirillov issued a fresh briefing on Friday, providing new information on US military biological activities in Ukraine, as well as details on what his troops know about monkeypox, a smallpox cousin which has caused a global health scare in recent weeks.

The Pentagon, he said, introduced a mandatory smallpox vaccination back in 2003, with US diplomats and medical personnel also required to be jabbed against the infectious disease.

“This indicates that the United States considers the smallpox pathogen a priority pathogenic agent for combat use, and ongoing vaccination measures are aimed at protecting their own military contingents”, Kirillov said.

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Excerpt from 2003 memorandum on Pentagon’s mandatory smallpox vaccination programme.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The complete 2003 US “Army Smallpox Preparedness and Vaccination Program Implementation Plan” document can be found here.

“The Pentagon’s interest in this infection is far from accidental. The return of the causative agent of smallpox would be a global catastrophe for all of humanity”, Kirillov suggested, emphasising that smallpox is 10 times more lethal than COVID-19.

Citing seized documentation, Kirillov revealed that American instructors trained employees of biolabs in Ukraine on how to respond to an emergency smallpox outbreak. Ukrainian-language documents on this training can be found here.

Smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s thanks to global efforts, with vaccinations against the disease subsequently halted by most countries. However, health authorities in countries around the world have recently begun expressing concerns about monkeypox, after cases began to spread earlier this month.

US Biolabs in Nigeria

Kirillov took note of the World Health Organisation’s recent determination that the causative agent of the monkeypox virus being met today originated in Nigeria, and pointed out that this is “another state upon whose territory the United States has deployed its biological infrastructure”.

“According to available information, there are at least four US-controlled biolabs” in the African nation”, Kirillov said.

Kirillov also pointed to media reports on the 2021 Munich Security Conference-Nuclear Threat Initiative simulation modelling the outbreak of a bioengineered, highly deadly strain of monkeypox by terrorists, calling the exercise “an odd coincidence which needs additional verification by specialists”.

The officer emphasised that against the backdrop of repeated US violations of biosafety requirements and evidence of the careless storage of pathogenic biomaterials, including smallpox, the WHO should investigate the activities of US-funded labs in the cities of Abuja, Zaria, and Lagos, Nigeria, and inform the international community on their findings.

The RCB Defence Troops chief also expressed concerns about the safety of smallpox virus samples inside the United States itself.
“The lack of proper control and the violation of biosecurity requirements in the United States could lead to the use of this pathogen for terrorist purposes. Between 2014 and 2021, unaccounted for vials containing the virus were repeatedly found in the laboratories of the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland, and the Centre for Vaccine Research in Pennsylvania”, Kirillov said.

Kirillov stressed that the work of these labs violated a 1996 resolution by the WHO, which prohibited smallpox’s causative agent from being stored in all but one US-based laboratory – the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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1996 resolution by the Forty-Ninth World Health Assembly requiring the United States and Russia to hold smallpox virus samples at only one facility per country.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

New Details on Pentagon-Funded Labs in Ukraine

During Friday’s presentation, Kirillov also provided new documentation on the operation of nearly a dozen military-biological projects organised by the Pentagon in Ukraine, including deadly agents and “economically significant” infections, funded to the tune of over $8.01 million between 2008 and 2019.

The officer drew attention to a 2007 memorandum prepared by the Office of the US Secretary of Defence regarding UP-2, a project mapping dangerous pathogens in Ukraine, whose “main purpose”, in Kirillov’s words, was “to collect information on the molecular composition of pathogens characteristic to Ukraine, and to transfer strain samples”.

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DTRA document on the approval of project concept UP-2 (Multi-pathogen Mapping), to be carried out in accordance with the 2005 “Policy Guidance for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program in Ukraine.”
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The complete six-page “Partner Project Agreement” on UP-2 can be found here.

A similar memorandum was prepared for project UP-1, studying rickettsia and other diseases spread by arthropods, Kirillov said, pointing out that the document required for all of the dangerous pathogens collected to be transferred to the Central Reference Laboratory in Kiev, allowing them to be transferred to the US.

The “Partner Project Agreement” on project UP-1 can be found here.

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DoD Memorandum approving project UP-1 dated 19 February, 2008.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The RCB Defence Troops also published documentation on UP-4, a programme investigating the possibility of spreading dangerous infections through migratory birds, which the MoD has already previously reported on at length. The “UP-4 Project Option Year 2 Quarterly Report” for the period from October 2019-January 2020 shows that a total of 991 specimens from wild birds were collected by researchers.

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Excerpt from Defense Threat Reduction Agency report on project UP-4.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Nine pages of the 50+ page DTRA report, prepared by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp in collaboration with Metabiota, can be found here.

The documents released Friday by the RCB Defence Troops also included a detailed 2019 Black & Veatch report for the DTRA detailing its activities in Ukraine, including work on some 19 separate research projects, and collaboration with a host of Ukrainian and international organisations, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, the USDA, the CDC, several American universities, and Western pharmaceutical giants.

Dozens of pages from the 63-page document, containing a goldmine of important details, can be found and downloaded here.

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Page from 2019 report by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch on some of the company’s many projects in Ukraine.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Ukraine’s Own Security Service Warned About Dangers of Cooperation With US

Friday’s document dump also included a letter by a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer expressing concern about epidemiological threats posed by US involvement in biological activities in Ukraine.

The letter, written by Col. A.A. Lemeshov, deputy head of the SBU Directorate in the Kherson Region and addressed to Col G.I. Kuznetsov, deputy chief of the Anti-Terrorist Centre and Analytical Department head Col. S.I. Shanaida, was sent on 28 February 2017, and focused on the safety of Ukrainian laboratories and the threat of biological terrorism.

Lemeshov bluntly warned that “recently, the potential threat to the epidemiological and epizootic situation in our country has taken on increasing importance, due to attempts by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency through the Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp to establish control over the operations of microbiological laboratories in Ukraine for the study of pathogens of especially dangerous infectious diseases which can be used to create new biological weapons or improve old ones”.

The officer stressed that “in order to maintain the stability of biosecurity in Ukraine, and to prevent attempts to accumulate pathogen samples in its territories under the pretext of ‘studying the specifics of local strains and determining the degree of virulence of the obtained samples among the population’, it is advisable to track the activity of Black & Veatch Special Project Corp’s ‘programmes of involvement in joint biological activities'”.

The original, Ukrainian-language document can be found here. A Russian-language translation can be found here. https://disk.yandex.ru/d/W7QrL3Wo6Md4PA ... 0%BE%D0%B4

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Russian Defence Ministry photograph of document by Ukrainian Security Service officer explicitly warning of the dangers created by US military-biological activities in Ukraine to the nation’s security.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Kirillov’s RCB Defence Troops have spent months briefing media on the extent of US military biological activities in Ukraine, citing seized documents and other materials to reveal how the Pentagon, US government agencies and corporations have cooperated with their Ukrainian counterparts to engage in dangerous research on Ukrainian territory.

Earlier this month, Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev indicated that Moscow intends to initiate a formal probe at the United Nations into possible US violations of the Biological Weapons Convention in Ukraine.

In a document-filled briefing earlier this month, Kirillov revealed that in addition to its use by the US military to study deadly pathogens, Ukraine has acted as a guinea pig for Western drug companies, including Pfizer, Battelle, Gilead, Dynaport Vaccine, AbbVie, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck, Moderna, and others, to test medicines which could not be tested in their home countries for safety reasons.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... pox-scare/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon May 30, 2022 2:47 pm

US Pressures African Countries into Breaking Away from Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 28, 2022
Valery Kulikov

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At the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, Vladimir Putin hosted 43 African leaders — more than the number attending similar events in the UK or France. Even back then, at the Sochi summit, the Russian president criticized the West for imposing “political or other conditions” on African states in order to break them away from Russia.

Today, this pressure is even greater as the West does its best to force countries in Africa to abandon economic and other cooperation with Russia. This notion was stated by Oleg Ozerov, head of the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum and special envoy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, at a round table in the Federation Council on “Inter-regional cooperation of constituent entities of the Russian Federation with African countries” on May 23. “We see tremendous pressure being exerted on our African partners, including South Africa, which results in their hesitation and inconsistency, and all of this is to break them away from Russia, to close any possibility of developing economic relations with us,” he said. Ozerov further remarked: “US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has already toured seven African countries, now German Chancellor Olaf Scholz <…> is going to both South Africa and Senegal <…> to try and push African countries to refuse to cooperate with Russia.”

As reported in the African media, this pressure from the West is not only directed at the political and economic sphere, but also at Africa’s religious relations with Russia. For example, several clerics who defected to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) from the Alexandria Patriarchate are now in prison, Metropolitan Leonid of Klin, the Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, announced at a press conference on May 23 following his first overseas visit to Uganda. Specifically, he noted: “In Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, criminal cases have been filed against our clerics. And only because they stand up for the canonical rules and laws of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.” The African Exarch added that many African clerics who have defected to the ROC have been denied temples in which they could hold services.

Despite such demonstrative pressure from the West on various fronts, half of the African states shy away from condemning Russia over the situation around Ukraine and refuse to join the anti-Russian sanctions. The March 2 vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution condemning Russia’s launching of a special operation to denazify Ukraine showed that out of 54 African countries, only closely aligned countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Gabon, Rwanda, Djibouti, Somalia and the Congo supported the “collective West.” 17 African states abstained and eight did not turn up. One country, Eritrea, even voted openly against. To the West’s particular displeasure, even South Africa, billed as a “showcase of true values,” not only failed to criticize Russia, but introduced an alternative “Western” resolution on the situation in Ukraine at the UN.

By demanding that African countries condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the West has resorted to threats and blackmail, Russian Ambassador to Angola Vladimir Tararov told RIA Novosti. “Take note of the fact that when voting for the anti-Russian resolution at the UN General Assembly, almost all African countries voted neutrally, i.e. abstained. This means that they did not support the resolution but did not dare to vote against it because the pressure was extraordinary,” Tararov said. He called such behavior by Western states immoral.

The Bangkok Post also highlighted in early April that 16 African countries refused to vote or voted against UN condemnation of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. Moreover, African countries such as Mali, Uganda and Eritrea have endorsed the special operation in Ukraine, while the CAR, Benin and South Africa have openly expressed support for the Kremlin’s actions. Among the reasons for this situation, the publication recalled that Russia had been actively providing military and economic aid to a number of African countries in recent years. In addition, many states have strong ties with Russia as a successor to the USSR, which actively helped African countries to fight the imperialism of European states. The liberation parties that still rule Angola, Mozambique (whose flag, incidentally, bears a Kalashnikov assault rifle), Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe saw in Moscow an ally in their struggle to end Western rule. None of the African countries perceive Russia as an enemy, a former colonizer or a potential hegemon, and therefore have not imposed sanctions on Russia. The positions of Russia and most African countries are conceptually similar on many issues.

Western pressure on African countries has led to limited ways for Moscow to engage with partners and states there that are directly dependent on Russian supplies of food and services. In fact, the manipulation of the collective West has provoked famine in many parts of the world, including Africa. This was the opinion of the independent UN expert, Alioune Tine, president and founder of the Senegalese center Africajom. “We call for the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, which are having an utterly disastrous effect on the countries of Africa. I ask Europeans to show some common sense and stop imposing restrictive measures on Moscow, as this leads to hunger, energy problems, fuel shortages. We are already starting to face all these restrictions, so we need to stop what Europe and the US have done,” Alioune Tine concluded.

Foreign Policy also writes about the active desire of the US and the European Union to isolate Moscow and to attract as many states as possible to their coalition, stressing that in Africa such a policy faces a wall of incomprehension. Such Western actions, the publication admits, have already revived discussions in African political circles on the need to bring back the Non-Aligned Movement that existed during the Cold War. This would avoid dragging the two camps into a confrontation.

In their anti-Russian pressure on African countries, the US and its Western allies make no secret of their concern about Russia’s efforts to play a prominent role in Africa, something Moscow has already achieved in the Middle East. There, Russia has already succeeded in building a balanced partnership with all the regional centers of power and has earned the right to take decisions on major regional issues. Such activity by Russia, its successes in Syria, the qualitative strengthening of its partnership with Egypt and its intensified involvement in Libya have opened the door to Africa. The Dark Continent saw Moscow as a player who would not abandon allies and friends, who could help to strengthen sovereignty, diversify foreign policy, avoid becoming dependent on other external players or weakening it, and who did not seek to establish its own hegemony in the Middle East and Africa.

In his Russophobic rhetoric, the President of the European Commission claims that Russia is allegedly a “direct threat to world order.” This is the most serious accusation against Moscow in a very long period and a very dangerous one, demonstrating racial animosity and an affinity with neo-fascism. The same West did not consider the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, or the unceremonious US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the organization of color revolutions around the world to be a “threat to world order.” Nor did it consider as such the killing of Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya.

In its history, Russia has shown that it is capable not only of defending itself and its people, but also of fighting for others, including colonized and plundered peoples. It saved the world from Nazism, paying the terrible price of 25 million men, women and children. However, today, as the efforts of the US and its allies are reviving Nazism in Ukraine, the “collective West” is trying its best to prevent Russia from winning a new victory over the neo-fascist ideology of the Kiev rulers. And in this opposition to Moscow, Washington is trying to involve the African continent by spreading fake information about Russia’s policies and actions, limiting Russia’s political, economic, cultural and religious ties with Africa.

Today, however, the world has changed profoundly and no longer allows a handful of West dealmakers to take back control of the world and the minds of people of the Earth. Therefore, such attempts by the West and its anti-Russian phobias, including on the African continent, are doomed to fail. This is evident in the reaction of the African states, which in this confrontation are siding more and more strongly with Moscow.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... om-russia/

The Rise of NATO in Africa
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 29, 2022
Vijay Prashad

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Civilian casualties of US bombing in Somalia

Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe. In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government. NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.

NATO’s war in Libya was its first major military operation in Africa, but it was not the first European military footprint on the continent. After centuries of European colonial wars in Africa, new states emerged in the aftermath of World War II to assert their sovereignty. Many of these states—from Ghana to Tanzania—refused to allow the European military forces to reenter the continent, which is why these European powers had to resort to assassinations and military coups to anoint pro-Western governments in the region. This allowed for the creation of Western military bases in Africa and gave Western firms freedom to exploit the continent’s natural resources.

Early NATO operations stayed at the edge of Africa, with the Mediterranean Sea being the major frontline. NATO set up the Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) in Naples in 1951, and then the Allied Forces Mediterranean (AFMED) in Malta in 1952. Western governments established these military formations to garrison the Mediterranean Sea against the Soviet navy and to create platforms from where they could militarily intervene in the African continent. After the Six-Day War in 1967, NATO’s Defense Planning Committee, which was dissolved in 2010, created the Naval On-Call Force Mediterranean (NOCFORMED) to put pressure on pro-Soviet states—such as Egypt—and to defend the monarchies of northern Africa (NATO was unable to prevent the anti-imperialist coup of 1969 that overthrew the monarchy in Libya and brought Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power; Gaddafi’s government ejected U.S. military bases from the country soon thereafter).

Conversations at NATO headquarters about “out of area” operations took place with increasing frequency after NATO joined the U.S. war on Afghanistan. A senior official at NATO told me in 2003 that the United States had “developed an appetite to use NATO” in its attempt to project power against possible adversaries. Two years later, in 2005, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, NATO began to cooperate closely with the African Union (AU). The AU, which was formed in 2002, and was the “successor” to the Organization of African Unity, struggled to build an independent security structure. The lack of a viable military force meant that the AU often turned to the West for assistance, and asked NATO to help with logistics and airlift support for its peacekeeping mission in Sudan.

Alongside NATO, the U.S. operated its military capacity through the United States European Command (EUCOM), which oversaw the country’s operations in Africa from 1952 to 2007. Thereafter, General James Jones, head of EUCOM from 2003 to 2006, formed the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, which was headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, because none of the 54 African nations were willing to give it a home. NATO began to operate on the African continent through AFRICOM.

Libya and NATO’s Framework for Africa

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SirteSirte, Libya after NATO bombardment

NATO’s war on Libya changed the dynamics of the relationship between the African countries and the West. The African Union was wary of Western military intervention in the region. On 10 March, 2011, the AU’s Peace and Security Council set up the High-Level ad hoc Committee on Libya. The members of this committee included then-AU Chairperson Dr. Jean Ping and the heads of state of five African nations—former President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Mali’s former President Amadou Toumani Touré, former President of South Africa Jacob Zuma and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—who were supposed to fly into Tripoli, Libya, and negotiate between the two sides of the Libyan civil war soon after the committee’s formation. The United Nations Security Council, however, prevented this mission from entering the country.

At a meeting between the High-Level ad hoc Committee on Libya and the United Nations in June 2011, Uganda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations during that time, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, said, “It is unwise for certain players to be intoxicated with technological superiority and begin to think they alone can alter the course of human history toward freedom for the whole of mankind. Certainly, no constellation of states should think that they can recreate hegemony over Africa.” But this is precisely what the NATO states began to imagine.

Chaos in Libya set in motion a series of catastrophic conflicts in Mali, southern Algeria and parts of Niger. The French military intervention in Mali in 2013 was followed by the creation of the G5 Sahel, a political platform of the five Sahel states—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger—and a military alliance between them. In May 2014, NATO opened a liaison office at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. At NATO’s Wales Summit in September 2014, the alliance partners considered the problems in the Sahel that entered the alliance’s Readiness Action Plan, which served as “[the] driver of NATO’s military adaptation to the changed and evolving security environment.” In December 2014, NATO foreign ministers reviewed the plan’s implementation, and focused on the “threats emanating from our southern neighborhood, the Middle East, and North Africa” and established a framework to meet the threats and challenges being faced by the South, according to a report by the former President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Michael R. Turner. Two years later, at NATO’s Warsaw Summit in 2016, NATO leaders decided to increase their cooperation with the African Union. They “[welcomed] the robust military commitment of Allies in the Sahel-Sahara region.” To deepen this commitment, NATO set up an African Standby Force and began the process of training officers in African military forces.

Meanwhile, the recent decision to eject the French military is rooted in a general sensibility growing in the continent against Western military aggression. No wonder then that many of the larger African countries refused to follow Washington’s position on the war on Ukraine, with half the countries either abstaining or voting against the UN resolution to condemn Russia (this includes countries such as Algeria, South Africa, Angola and Ethiopia). It is telling that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said that his country “is committed to advancing the human rights and fundamental freedoms not only of our own people but for the peoples of Palestine, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, Syria and across Africa and the world.”

The ignominy of Western—and NATO’s—follies, including arms deals with Morocco to deliver Western Sahara to the kingdom and diplomatic backing for Israel as it continues its apartheid treatment of Palestinians, bring into sharp contrast Western outrage at the events taking place in Ukraine. Evidence of this hypocrisy serves as a warning while reading the benevolent language used by the West when it comes to NATO’s expansion into Africa.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... in-africa/

Cameroon and Russia Start Working More Closely Together
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 29, 2022
Vladimir Danilov

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Despite the distances that separate the two regions, Russia and Africa have been bound together by close political, economic and cultural ties for many decades. In the West, African nations tend to be associated with poverty and a lack of development, and receive little media coverage, but in reality many countries on the continent have experienced a great deal of economic growth in the last few years. In addition, a number of integration projects are under development and making rapid progress in Africa. These projects will give African nations more influence in the international community and make them attractive partners for many other countries, not least Russia. Many of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing a rapid growth in GDP, and some have been referred to as African Lions, by analogy with the Asian Tiger economies. The size of the middle class is growing rapidly across the continent.

Russia is interested in developing its diplomatic ties with all African nations. Not a single African country is included on the list of “unfriendly” nations published by Russia in March this year, following the imposition of openly anti-Russian sanctions by the US and a number of its allies. Russia has bilateral contacts with many African nations and also works together with the African Union and with regional international associations on the continent. Russia’s links with certain African countries have been developing particularly rapidly over the last few years. Cameroon is a particularly good example.

More than 2000 management-level staff in Cameroon, including many specialists with senior positions in the state or private sector, have studied in Russia. Russia and Cameroon have established a joint educational institution which provides training in professions related to forestry and wildlife management, as well as a specialist agronomy institute. Cameroon is also home to a number of Russian companies, including LUKOIL, Rusgazengineering, Café de Moscou and Zarubezhvodstroi.

Cameroon has been fighting against militants from Boko Haram (prohibited in the Russian Federation) for many years. On May 22, 2014 the UN Security Council classed Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. It poses a particularly serious threat because the militants’ are able to cross the border between northern Nigeria and Cameroon without obstruction. Ever since it carried out a number of operations in which it captured hostages, Boko Haram militants have regularly crossed the border into northern Cameroon and mounted displays of force (for example by stealing cattle or destroying crops) and then disappearing. These attacks have had a serious effect on the economy in northern Cameroon, forcing tens of thousands of business owners who were dependent on trade with Nigeria into bankruptcy. This region used to be the country’s second most important source of customs duty payments (not counting duties from the oil industry), after the coastal region. But the customs posts were closed and trading discontinued as a result of the terrorist raids, and the region has experienced a catastrophic economic decline. Schools, hospitals and other buildings, and in some cases whole villages have fallen into disrepair, livestock has been stolen and tourism has dried up, causing a significant fall in the region’s GDP. According to national media reports, the national budget is losing $740 million a year in unpaid revenues as a result of this situation.

Cameroon has been forced to take military action against Boko Haram in order to prevent it from causing even more damage. In a bid to stop the group from using Cameroon – which has established itself in Nigeria – as a secondary base for its operations, Cameroon’s government has developed a policy known as Global Threat – Global Response, which involves a partnership between the national army and security forces and local popular militias, plus support from abroad. However, France, the most influential foreign power in the region, failed to provide Cameroon with the hoped-for support for its fight against foreign terrorists. Yaoundé was therefore forced to look elsewhere, and, inspired by Russia’s military partnerships with Mali and the CAR, it turned towards Moscow.

And thus, according to an announcement by Cameroon’s Ministry of Defense, on April 12 “on the instructions of Cameroon’s Head of State Paul Biya and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo and his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu, signed the documents that define this new military cooperation.” In the 13-page document the two parties agreed to exchange views and information on defense policy and international security, and to develop relations in the areas of joint professional training, medicine, cartography and military hydrography. The two countries also agreed to share experience and work together on peacekeeping operations under the aegis of the United Nations, and to cooperate in areas including maritime search and rescue operations, the fight against terrorism and piracy, and other areas agreed on by both parties. Under the agreement, “the Parties agree to cooperate on military and technical matters to meet the defense and security needs of the Parties in relation to: the supply of arms and military hardware, ammunition and other military materials, and the supply of spare parts, assemblies, connections, instruments, special training and support equipment and components for military equipment.” The document also states that Russia will provide military and technical support.

In addition to their military cooperation, in recent years Russia and Cameroon have developed close links in other areas. Moscow has promised, as a matter of priority, to supply Russian wheat to a number of African countries, including Cameroon, despite the West’s claims that Africa is threatened with imminent famine as a result of interruptions in supply caused by the conflict in Ukraine. Even before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Anatoly Bashkin, Russia’s ambassador to Cameroon had already offered to supply Russian wheat directly to Cameroon, thus bypassing Western intermediaries. He also promised to rebuild Cameroon’s strategic oil refinery, which had been destroyed in a fire.

The rapprochement between Russia and Cameroon has been viewed with concern in both Paris and Washington. In France the signing of the military agreement on April 12 was somewhat eclipsed by the first round of the national elections, held the day before, but it did not go unnoticed in America, and three days later, on April 15 Joe Biden “struck back.” He granted special protection to some 40,000 Ambazonian Cameroonian separatists who are seeking asylum in the US – mainly in Washington, DC and California.

The Ambazonians are Cameroonians from English-speaking regions of the country, also known as South Cameroonians, who started a separatist guerilla campaign against the Cameroonian security forces, with support from the US and Britain, and then unilaterally declared independence. In November 2017 Cameroon’s government declared war on the separatists and sent army divisions into the English-speaking regions of the country.

Tibor P. Nagy, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and former Deputy Head of the US mission in Yaounde, was very upset by the deal between Cameroon and Russia, and fired off an angry tweet in response to the news. “Can’t believe Cameroon Govt’s incredibly bad timing of signing military deal with Russia – at height of aggression in Ukraine. This is poke in the eye of US and France, two countries Cameroon may need help from in future.”

To tell the truth, the reactions from the US and France were entirely predictable – both countries have a long record of putting pressure on African states, pursuing a grasping neo-colonial policy that has nothing to do with promoting Africans’ interests and everything to do with geopolitical concerns about the activities of the West’s main rivals, Russia and China. On May 20, the Nigerian newspaper the Premium Times published an opinion piece attacking a draft law on “efforts to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa,” which was considered by the US Congress at the end of April. The Premium Times described the law as an “attempt to punish African countries for aligning with Russia.” And the South African newspaper the Daily Maverick warns that Africa may find itself “caught in the crossfire” as a result of its closer ties with Russia.

In the words of the well-known Turkish proverb, “The dogs may bark, but the caravan goes on.” And, despite the angry reactions of the West, African nations will continue to develop closer links with Russia. Naturally, Cameroon will be at the front of the queue.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... -together/

Russian Military Points to Presence of US-Funded Biolabs in Nigeria Amid Global Monkeypox Scare
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 27, 2022
Ilya Tsukanov

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The Russian military has spent over two months now detailing the extent and reach of the US military-biological research effort in Ukraine, revealing that the Pentagon has used the country as a testing ground for the study of deadly bioagents, and uncovering the tangled web of military, corporate, and political interests behind these activities.

Russian Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops chief Igor Kirillov issued a fresh briefing on Friday, providing new information on US military biological activities in Ukraine, as well as details on what his troops know about monkeypox, a smallpox cousin which has caused a global health scare in recent weeks.

The Pentagon, he said, introduced a mandatory smallpox vaccination back in 2003, with US diplomats and medical personnel also required to be jabbed against the infectious disease.

“This indicates that the United States considers the smallpox pathogen a priority pathogenic agent for combat use, and ongoing vaccination measures are aimed at protecting their own military contingents”, Kirillov said.

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Excerpt from 2003 memorandum on Pentagon’s mandatory smallpox vaccination programme.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The complete 2003 US “Army Smallpox Preparedness and Vaccination Program Implementation Plan” document can be found here.

“The Pentagon’s interest in this infection is far from accidental. The return of the causative agent of smallpox would be a global catastrophe for all of humanity”, Kirillov suggested, emphasising that smallpox is 10 times more lethal than COVID-19.

Citing seized documentation, Kirillov revealed that American instructors trained employees of biolabs in Ukraine on how to respond to an emergency smallpox outbreak. Ukrainian-language documents on this training can be found here.

Smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s thanks to global efforts, with vaccinations against the disease subsequently halted by most countries. However, health authorities in countries around the world have recently begun expressing concerns about monkeypox, after cases began to spread earlier this month.

US Biolabs in Nigeria

Kirillov took note of the World Health Organisation’s recent determination that the causative agent of the monkeypox virus being met today originated in Nigeria, and pointed out that this is “another state upon whose territory the United States has deployed its biological infrastructure”.

“According to available information, there are at least four US-controlled biolabs” in the African nation”, Kirillov said.

Kirillov also pointed to media reports on the 2021 Munich Security Conference-Nuclear Threat Initiative simulation modelling the outbreak of a bioengineered, highly deadly strain of monkeypox by terrorists, calling the exercise “an odd coincidence which needs additional verification by specialists”.

The officer emphasised that against the backdrop of repeated US violations of biosafety requirements and evidence of the careless storage of pathogenic biomaterials, including smallpox, the WHO should investigate the activities of US-funded labs in the cities of Abuja, Zaria, and Lagos, Nigeria, and inform the international community on their findings.

The RCB Defence Troops chief also expressed concerns about the safety of smallpox virus samples inside the United States itself.
“The lack of proper control and the violation of biosecurity requirements in the United States could lead to the use of this pathogen for terrorist purposes. Between 2014 and 2021, unaccounted for vials containing the virus were repeatedly found in the laboratories of the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland, and the Centre for Vaccine Research in Pennsylvania”, Kirillov said.

Kirillov stressed that the work of these labs violated a 1996 resolution by the WHO, which prohibited smallpox’s causative agent from being stored in all but one US-based laboratory – the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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1996 resolution by the Forty-Ninth World Health Assembly requiring the United States and Russia to hold smallpox virus samples at only one facility per country.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

New Details on Pentagon-Funded Labs in Ukraine

During Friday’s presentation, Kirillov also provided new documentation on the operation of nearly a dozen military-biological projects organised by the Pentagon in Ukraine, including deadly agents and “economically significant” infections, funded to the tune of over $8.01 million between 2008 and 2019.

The officer drew attention to a 2007 memorandum prepared by the Office of the US Secretary of Defence regarding UP-2, a project mapping dangerous pathogens in Ukraine, whose “main purpose”, in Kirillov’s words, was “to collect information on the molecular composition of pathogens characteristic to Ukraine, and to transfer strain samples”.

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DTRA document on the approval of project concept UP-2 (Multi-pathogen Mapping), to be carried out in accordance with the 2005 “Policy Guidance for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program in Ukraine.”
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The complete six-page “Partner Project Agreement” on UP-2 can be found here.

A similar memorandum was prepared for project UP-1, studying rickettsia and other diseases spread by arthropods, Kirillov said, pointing out that the document required for all of the dangerous pathogens collected to be transferred to the Central Reference Laboratory in Kiev, allowing them to be transferred to the US.

The “Partner Project Agreement” on project UP-1 can be found here.

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DoD Memorandum approving project UP-1 dated 19 February, 2008.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

The RCB Defence Troops also published documentation on UP-4, a programme investigating the possibility of spreading dangerous infections through migratory birds, which the MoD has already previously reported on at length. The “UP-4 Project Option Year 2 Quarterly Report” for the period from October 2019-January 2020 shows that a total of 991 specimens from wild birds were collected by researchers.

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Excerpt from Defense Threat Reduction Agency report on project UP-4.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Nine pages of the 50+ page DTRA report, prepared by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp in collaboration with Metabiota, can be found here.

The documents released Friday by the RCB Defence Troops also included a detailed 2019 Black & Veatch report for the DTRA detailing its activities in Ukraine, including work on some 19 separate research projects, and collaboration with a host of Ukrainian and international organisations, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, the USDA, the CDC, several American universities, and Western pharmaceutical giants.

Dozens of pages from the 63-page document, containing a goldmine of important details, can be found and downloaded here.

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Page from 2019 report by Pentagon contractor Black & Veatch on some of the company’s many projects in Ukraine.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Ukraine’s Own Security Service Warned About Dangers of Cooperation With US

Friday’s document dump also included a letter by a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer expressing concern about epidemiological threats posed by US involvement in biological activities in Ukraine.

The letter, written by Col. A.A. Lemeshov, deputy head of the SBU Directorate in the Kherson Region and addressed to Col G.I. Kuznetsov, deputy chief of the Anti-Terrorist Centre and Analytical Department head Col. S.I. Shanaida, was sent on 28 February 2017, and focused on the safety of Ukrainian laboratories and the threat of biological terrorism.

Lemeshov bluntly warned that “recently, the potential threat to the epidemiological and epizootic situation in our country has taken on increasing importance, due to attempts by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency through the Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp to establish control over the operations of microbiological laboratories in Ukraine for the study of pathogens of especially dangerous infectious diseases which can be used to create new biological weapons or improve old ones”.

The officer stressed that “in order to maintain the stability of biosecurity in Ukraine, and to prevent attempts to accumulate pathogen samples in its territories under the pretext of ‘studying the specifics of local strains and determining the degree of virulence of the obtained samples among the population’, it is advisable to track the activity of Black & Veatch Special Project Corp’s ‘programmes of involvement in joint biological activities'”.

The original, Ukrainian-language document can be found here. A Russian-language translation can be found here. https://disk.yandex.ru/d/W7QrL3Wo6Md4PA ... 0%BE%D0%B4

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Russian Defence Ministry photograph of document by Ukrainian Security Service officer explicitly warning of the dangers created by US military-biological activities in Ukraine to the nation’s security.
© Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence

Kirillov’s RCB Defence Troops have spent months briefing media on the extent of US military biological activities in Ukraine, citing seized documents and other materials to reveal how the Pentagon, US government agencies and corporations have cooperated with their Ukrainian counterparts to engage in dangerous research on Ukrainian territory.

Earlier this month, Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev indicated that Moscow intends to initiate a formal probe at the United Nations into possible US violations of the Biological Weapons Convention in Ukraine.

In a document-filled briefing earlier this month, Kirillov revealed that in addition to its use by the US military to study deadly pathogens, Ukraine has acted as a guinea pig for Western drug companies, including Pfizer, Battelle, Gilead, Dynaport Vaccine, AbbVie, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck, Moderna, and others, to test medicines which could not be tested in their home countries for safety reasons.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... pox-scare/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 03, 2022 1:50 pm

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Amadou Sanogo (Mali), You Can Hide Your Gaze, but You Cannot Hide That of Others, 2019.

Africa, the collateral victim of a distant conflict: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2022)
By Vijay Prashad (Posted Jun 03, 2022)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on June 2, 2022 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research) |
Globalization, Imperialism, Inequality, State RepressionAfricaNewswireTricontinental Newsletter
Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

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Jilali Gharbaoui (Morocco), Composition, 1967.

On 25 May 2022, Africa Day, Moussa Faki Mahamat–the chairperson of the African Union (AU)–commemorated the establishment of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963, which was later reshaped as the AU in 2002, with a foreboding speech. Africa, he said, has become ‘the collateral victim of a distant conflict, that between Russia and Ukraine’. That conflict has upset ‘the fragile global geopolitical and geostrategic balance’, casting ‘a harsh light on the structural fragility of our economies’. Two new key fragilities have been exposed: a food crisis amplified by climate change and a health crisis accelerated by COVID-19.

A third long-running fragility is that most African states have little freedom to manage their budgets as debt burdens rise and repayment costs increase. ‘Public debt ratios are at their highest level in over two decades and many low-income countries are either in, or close to, debt distress’, said Abebe Aemro Selassie, the director of the African Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook report, released in April 2022, makes for grizzly reading, its headline clear: ‘A New Shock and Little Room to Manoeuvre’.

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Choukri Mesli (Algeria), Algeria in Flames, 1961.

Debt hangs over the African continent like a wake of vultures. Most African countries have interest bills that are much higher than their national revenues, with budgets managed through austerity and driven by deep cuts in government employment as well as the education and health care sectors. Since just under two-thirds of the debt owed by these countries is denominated in foreign currencies, debt repayment is near impossible without further borrowing, resulting in a cycle of indebtedness with no permanent relief in sight. None of the schemes on the table, such as the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) or its Common Framework for Debt Treatments, will provide the kind of debt forgiveness that is needed to breathe life into these economies.

In October 2020, the Jubilee Debt Campaign proposed two common sense measures to remove the debt overhang. The IMF owns significant quantities of gold amounting to 90.5 million ounces, worth $168.6 billion in total; by selling 6.7% of their gold holdings, they could raise more than enough to pay the $8.2 billion that makes up DSSI countries’ debt. The campaign also suggested that rich countries could draw billions of dollars towards this cancellation by issuing less than 9% of their IMF Special Drawing Rights allocation. Other ways to reduce the debt burden include cancelling debt payments to the World Bank and IMF, two multilateral institutions with a mandate to ensure the advancement of social development and not their own financial largess. However, the World Bank has not moved on this agenda–despite dramatic words from its president in August 2020–and the IMF’s modest debt suspension from May 2020 to December 2021 will hardly make a difference. Along with these reasonable suggestions, bringing the nearly $40 trillion held in illicit tax havens into productive use could help African countries escape the spiralling debt trap.

‘We live in one of the poorest places on earth’, former President of Mali Amadou Toumani Touré told me just before the pandemic. Mali is part of the Sahel region of Africa, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Poverty will only intensify as war, climate change, national debt, and population growth increase. At the 7th Summit of the leaders of the G5 Sahel (Group of Five for the Sahel) in February 2021, the heads of state called for a ‘deep restructuring of debt’, but the silence they received from the IMF was deafening. The G5 Sahel was initiated by France in 2014 as a political formation of the five Sahel countries–Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Its real purpose was clarified in 2017 with the formation of its military alliance (the G5 Sahel Joint Force or FC-G5S), which provided cover for the French military presence in the Sahel. It could now be claimed that France did not really invade these countries, who maintain their formal sovereignty, but that it entered the Sahel to merely assist these countries in their fight against instability.

Part of the problem is the demands made on these states to increase their military spending against any increase in spending for human relief and development. The G5 Sahel countries spend between 17% and 30% of their entire budgets on their militaries. Three of the five Sahel countries have expanded their military spending astronomically over the past decade: Burkina Faso by 238%, Mali by 339%, and Niger by 288%. The arms trade is suffocating them. Western countries–led by France but egged on by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)–have pressured these states to treat every crisis as a security crisis. The entire discourse is about security as conversations about social development are relegated to the margins. Even for the United Nations, questions of development have become an afterthought to the focus on war.

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Souleymane Ouologuem (Mali), The Foundation, 2014.

In the first two weeks of May 2022, the Malian military government ejected the French military and withdrew from G5 Sahel in the wake of deep resentment across Mali spurred by civilian casualties from French military attacks and the French government’s arrogant attitude towards the Malian government. Colonel Assimi Goïta, who leads the military junta, said that the agreement with the French ‘brought neither peace, nor security, nor reconciliation’ and that the junta aspires ‘to stop the flow of Malian blood’. France moved its military force from Mali next door to Niger.

No one denies the fact that the chaos in the Sahel region was deepened by the 2011 NATO war against Libya. Mali’s earlier challenges, including a decades-long Tuareg insurgency and conflicts between Fulani herders and Dogon farmers, were convulsed by the entry of arms and men from Libya and Algeria. Three jihadi groups, including al-Qaeda, appeared as if from nowhere and used older regional tensions to seize northern Mali in 2012 and declare the state of Azawad. French military intervention followed in January 2013.

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Jean-David Nkot (Cameroon), #Life in Your Hands, 2020.

Travel through this region makes it clear that French–and U.S.–interests in the Sahel are not merely about terrorism and violence. Two domestic concerns have led both foreign powers to build a massive military presence there, including the world’s largest drone base, which is operated by the U.S., in Agadez, Niger. The first concern is that this region is home to considerable natural resources, including yellowcake uranium in Niger. Two mines in Arlit (Niger) produce enough uranium to power one in three light bulbs in France, which is why French mining firms (such as Areva) operate in this garrison-like town. Secondly, these military operations are designed to deter the steady stream of migrants leaving areas such as West Africa and West Asia, going through the Sahel and Libya and making their way across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Along the Sahel, from Mauritania to Chad, Europe and the U.S. have begun to build what amounts to a highly militarised border. Europe has moved its border from the northern edge of the Mediterranean Sea to the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, thereby compromising the sovereignty of North Africa.

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Hawad (Niger), Untitled, 1997.

Military coups in Burkina Faso and Mali are a result of the failure of democratic governments to rein in French intervention. It was left to the military in Mali to both eject the French military and depart from its G5 Sahel political project. Conflicts in Mali, as former President Alpha Omar Konaré told me over a decade ago, are inflamed due to the suffocation of the country’s economy. The country is regularly left out of infrastructure support and debt relief initiatives by international development organisations. This landlocked state imports over 70% of its food, whose prices have skyrocketed in the past month. Mali faces harsh sanctions from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which will only deepen the crisis and provoke greater conflict north of Mali’s capital, Bamako.

The conflict in Mali’s north affects the lives of the country’s Tuareg population, which is rich with many great poets and musicians. One of them, Souéloum Diagho, writes that ‘a person without memory is like a desert without water’ (‘un homme sans mémoire est comme un desert sans eau’). Memories of older forms of colonialism sharpen the way that many Africans view their treatment as ‘collateral victims’ (as the AU’s Mahamat described it) and their conviction that it is unacceptable.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... -conflict/

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South Africa and the Special Military Operation in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 2, 2022
Dmitry Bokarev

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Relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Africa, which have always been cordial, are now being put to the test. This is due to the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Many countries around the world are engaged in a public debate about Russia’s actions. South Africa, considered one of the leading nations on the African continent and a member of the BRICS, could not help but voice its position on the special military operation.

Soon after the fighting began, much of the South African media became critical of Russian policy, and representatives of the Ukrainian embassy in South Africa made many high-profile statements on the special military operation during televised appearances. This turn of events is largely due to the fact that a large part of South Africa’s news agencies are controlled by Western, including US, companies and therefore cannot objectively portray reality and show the true public sentiment. Representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry who attempt to dispel the lies are not given the proper amount of screen time. However, the official position of the South African leadership differs from the rhetoric of the media.

Based on the UN General Assembly votes on the two anti-Russian resolutions related to the events in Ukraine, most of the African states were neutral towards Russia, with many countries choosing to abstain from voting. South Africa in particular refused to condemn Russia’s actions in both surveys. Moreover, South African representatives have proposed an alternative version of the resolution on Ukraine that makes no reference to Russian aggression against that state and the wording is more restrained. South African diplomats thus called on the international community to be more objective about what is happening.

On March 10, 2022, the Presidents of South Africa and Russia had a telephone conversation. During the conversation between the two leaders, the two countries touched on the expansion of bilateral dialogue, and the reasons and objectives of the special military operation were discussed. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arguments proved compelling, and so South African President Cyril Ramaphosa concluded that this military conflict was the fault of NATO, which continued to expand eastwards, disregarding the growing instability in Europe. The South African leader was one of the few who was able to speak out openly against NATO. Such rhetoric shows that South Africa is able to conduct an independent foreign policy despite a difficult foreign policy environment.

It is interesting to note that this is not the first independent foreign policy move by South Africa, which in February 2020 was the only member state of the UN Security Council to endorse the Russian actions and criticize the British draft resolution that sought to approve the outcome of the Berlin conference to resolve the conflict in Libya.

Of course, in South Africa, as in any pluralist democracy, there are political forces that condemn the Kremlin’s policy on Ukraine. It is important to bear in mind that the Western-controlled South African media exaggerates the number of Russia’s opponents in the country: in reality, their numbers are small compared to those who agree with Russia’s actions.

The special military operation is mainly favored by South Africa’s left-wing parties, the Economic Freedom Fighters and the South African Communist Party. According to the communists, NATO itself provoked the conflict by sponsoring Ukrainian nationalists and sowing discord in Ukraine. Many opposition politicians point out that the US is not taking into account the treaties it has signed and is acting solely in its own interests. Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, endorsed the policy of the Russian Federation and said that the Soviet Union had contributed very much to the struggle of the people of South Africa against the apartheid regime. Malema is convinced that the current world order is outdated and that the global community is tired of Washington’s dominance.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma also voiced his position on the special military operation in Ukraine. He is convinced that the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is part of the global confrontation between Russia and the West. The former president believes that Russia and China are defending their geopolitical interests and trying to pursue independent economic policies. Jacob Zuma’s daughter Dudu Zuma-Sambudla has launched the hashtag #IStandWithRussia on social media to show support for Russia’s policies. Western media attempted to discredit the former president’s daughter by accusing her of co-operating with Russian media holdings, but their efforts were in vain – this was a personal initiative of Dudu Zuma-Sambudla. It should be noted that, in general, pro-Russian sentiments in African countries are quite strong.

There are many reasons why Russia’s position is popular among South African politicians and public figures. First, South Africa’s population of 60 million is well aware of the double standard of the US and its allies. The US military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many other countries are presented by the Washington-controlled media as wars of liberation against tyranny, but condemn Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Second, South Africa is very grateful to the USSR for its many years of assistance in combating the apartheid system. South African politicians remember the actions of the Soviet Union well and are therefore careful not to make harsh statements against Moscow. It is interesting to note that on February 23, the day before the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, the South African minister of defense visited the Russian embassy, where Defender of the Fatherland Day celebrations were taking place. South Africa, aware of Russia’s military might, has for years been strengthening its military and political ties with Russia.

Still, we should not expect the South African leadership to openly defend Russia in the international arena. The country is very economically linked to Western countries. Public support for a special operation could lead to serious economic sanctions, a severe economic crisis and international isolation. It is more likely that if Russia fulfils all of its objectives and thus becomes geopolitically stronger, South Africa will revise its foreign policy more substantially.

Nor will the South African authorities openly condemn Russia’s actions to please Washington. Such a move would not be appreciated by many political forces in the country, and in turn the public would not react favorably to this rhetoric. It is also worth considering that by doing so, South Africa risks damaging relations with Russia and the countries that support it.

South Africa is in a difficult position. Public support for Russia would be painful for the economy and international relations, while condemnation of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine could also lead to extremely negative consequences. In the current situation, the South African leadership has taken the best position for itself: neutrality. By maintaining neutrality, the country maintains normal relations with both sides of the conflict without harming its economy or provoking a negative public reaction.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... n-ukraine/

Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part V
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 2, 2022
Ann Garrison

Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part 5Ethiopian Orthodox Christian monk Aba Gebreselassie explains how he fled when the TPLF invaded Waldeba

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Monastery in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. University of Gondar Professor Menychle Meseret Abebe listens and translates. (Photo: Alastair Thompson)

Ann Garrison ends her reporting from the Horn of Africa with updates on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the conflict between Ethiopia and the TPLF.

Barring anything unforeseen, these will be my last notes from Ethiopia for now. I have been in the Horn of Africa—specifically Ethiopia and Eritrea—for nearly two months. That’s far longer than I’d expected to stay, thanks to all the kind people who offered to host and facilitate my efforts, so that I could see and report more. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without them or without my traveling companions at various stages, US photojournalist Jemal Countess , Ethiopian American multimedia journalist Betty Sheba Tekeste , and Scoop-New Zealand journalist Alastair Thompson , whose insights and photos have all appeared in my reports. Their Twitter accounts are well worth following.

As I scroll through my cell phone snapshots, I come across one taken several days ago from the back seat of a bajaj, aka “tuk tuk,” one of the three-wheeled blue taxis in service all over Ethiopia. Drivers decorate these vehicles with their favorite decals, including the phrases “#NoMore” and “It’s My Dam,” images of Ethiopian Emperors Menelik and Tewodros, and the image of Bob Marley. The driver of this bajaj had affixed a red, green, and gold “RASTA” decal to one side of his front window and a red, green, and gold cannabis leaf decal to the other. Emperor Haile Selassie gave land to a Rasta community in Ethiopia, but smoking the sacred herb is still illegal. This is one of many things I still don’t understand here.

On every leg of the trip I’ve asked myself whether I really understand anything, though I’ve also reminded myself that any self-respecting journalist should. English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Ethiopia, but I’ve often relied on translation from Amharic, the most widely spoken Ethiopian language, and at times on translation from Afar to Amharic to English. Eighty indigenous languages are spoken in Ethiopia, as many as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The state-owned Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) transmits news in the two most widely spoken domestic languages, Amharic and Oromiff, and plans to transmit in Tigrinya, Harari, Wolayetegna, Sidamegna, and Afari. It also transmits news in English, Arabic, and French, and plans to transmit in Kiswahili.

When I called ENA reporter Muse Mulessa to double-check that, he reminded me that I’d promised him speakers’ lists for the Sanctions Kill Coalition and the Black Alliance for Peace .

The Abay River and the unifying force of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

On our way to Bahir Dar for a University of Bahir Dar conference on Ethiopia since 2018, Alastair Thompson and I flew over Lake Tana, the source of what we thought was the Blue Nile River. Lake Tana and the river are both muddy, heavy with sediment, so I asked why the river is called “the Blue Nile” and learned that Ethiopians don’t call it that; it’s the Abay River to them. It becomes “the Blue Nile” only after crossing into Sudan, where it joins the White Nile to become the Nile before crossing into Egypt. It seems that in Sudan the water level is so high during flood times that the river changes color to almost black and, in the local Sudanese language, the word for black is also used for blue.

Egypt claims to own every last drop of Ethiopia’s Abay River because it flows into what they call the Nile and some moldy British colonial treaty deeded all waters flowing into the Nile to them. On these flimsy grounds, Egypt bitterly opposed construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Abay River, just before it flows into Sudan and becomes the Blue Nile. Tension between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over the dam continues, but the dam is built, it began generating electricity in February this year, and the third filling will get underway soon, during the June-to-September rainy season.

Ethiopia’s hopes are heavily invested in the GERD. It’s a source of great pride that Ethiopians and the Ethiopian diaspora have financed its construction by purchasing bonds. Chinese interests are building the electricity delivery infrastructure, and at the outset of the TPLF war, Chinese and Ethiopian officials met to discuss protecting this and other Chinese investments.

Ethiopians are struggling to overcome the enormous damage done during the TPLF’s 27-years of divide-and-rule ethnic politics, backed by the US, and I haven’t seen anything that unites them more than the GERD. An Egyptian engineer, quoted in Al Monitor , described this strength from sore loser Egypt’s viewpoint: “The latter [Ethiopia] is exploiting the GERD project politically at the domestic level, claiming it is a national project unifying all Ethiopian ethnic groups.”

“Because it is! And it will!” said one of my hosts. “Ethiopians at every level leaped to invest in the dam. Even poor Ethiopians working in the Arab countries saved their money to invest in the dam. An attack on the dam would be like the Italian invasion that stirred Ethiopians to unite behind Emperor Menelik to win the Battle of Adwa in 1896.”

Everyone expects the TPLF to escalate the war again soon but not without US support

After the government declared a unilateral, humanitarian ceasefire at the end of December, the TPLF continued its attacks on the 1600-year-old Waldeba Monastery in Amhara Region, displacing 1000 monks. In Gondar, Amhara Region, Alastair and I interviewed a young monk who said the TPLF had demanded to know the positions of the Ethiopian military, the Amhara Special Forces, and the FANO militia, and then refused to accept the monks’ answers that they were not military men, but men of God. He said he had fled while the TPLF fired bullets after him, then jumped into a river to escape.

The Waldeba Monastery is spread out over a very wide area, including forests and caves. The displaced monks say that, with 75% of the monks gone, the TPLF have established a military base, which could be used for a new TPLF offensive into Amhara Region from the east.

Just before the government’s December ceasefire, the TPLF invaded Afar Region, shelling towns indiscriminately and displacing hundreds of thousands of Afar tribespeople, seemingly in an effort to once again threaten the Addis-Djibouti transport corridor, which is both a highway and railway line. However, Afar tribesmen, with some help from Ethiopian Air Force drones, drove them back inside the borders of Tigray Province roughly four weeks ago.

Fighting has been sporadic since, but in early May, the TPLF attacked the Eritrean Army at Badme, resulting in reported but as yet unconfirmed counterattacks.

Everyone we spoke to expects the TPLF to escalate again soon when June rains make it more difficult for the Ethiopian Air Force to operate its drone force. Many believe that TPLF forces amassed in Sudan may try to invade over Amhara Region’s western border.

Despite US declarations that all warring parties are responsible, no one we spoke to believes that the TPLF could keep fighting without the political, diplomatic, and most likely material support of the US, which may include pending sanctions.

I wish I could conclude on a lighter note, but summoning Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” I can only resolve to share what I’ve learned back home and suggest that the US let Ethiopia live.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... ia-part-v/

Congress Passes Anti-Russia Bill Reinforcing Neo-Colonialism in Africa
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 1, 2022
Abayomi Azikiwe

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Africa and Russia Summit during 2019

A United States Congressional bill has been approved by a wide margin that would target and punish African states that maintain political and economic relations with the Russian Federation.

The hostile action by the Congress which is dominated by the Democratic Party continues the efforts to isolate Moscow and intensify the war in Ukraine.

Labeled as the “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act,” H.R. 7311 was passed on April 27 by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan 419-9 majority and will probably be approved by the Senate which is evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. This legislative measure is broadly worded enabling the State Department to monitor the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in Africa including military affairs and any effort which Washington deems as “malign influence.”

Russian military operations in Ukraine are in response to Washington and Wall Street’s efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deeper into Eastern Europe as a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation and its allies. Two other bills have recently been passed to maintain and expand Pentagon military bases around the world along with providing an additional $40 billion to supply weapons to the Ukrainian government which is bolstered by neo-Nazi militias integrated into the armed forces.

During the early phase of the Russian special operations in Ukraine, many African states abstained from two United Nations General Assembly resolutions motivated by Washington to condemn the Russian government for its intervention in Ukraine while completely ignoring the level of fascist infiltration of Kiev military forces and the necessity of reaching a diplomatic solution to the burgeoning conflict. African heads-of-state, such as President Cyril Ramaphosa of the Republic of South Africa, have consistently argued that the African National Congress (ANC) led government in Pretoria will not support the Ukraine war along with the draconian sanctions instigated by the Biden administration. Ramaphosa has demanded that the U.S. State Department and White House support negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, which have been routinely undermined by Biden and his cabinet members.

Long before the February 24 intervention by the Russian armed forces, the U.S. had engaged in repeated threats against President Vladimir Putin and the entire government based in Moscow demanding that it acquiesce to the expansion of NATO. Unprecedented sanctions, with the stated aims of completely blockading Russia from the world economic system, have largely failed to curtail the advances by Moscow in eastern Ukraine.

The only foreign policy towards Eastern Europe that has been devised by the Biden administration, which follows a neocon ideological orientation, is to announce additional sanctions and send in more weapons to the regime of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. The war policy towards Moscow is extended to the People’s Republic of China where Biden has also threatened military intervention in relation to the Taiwan situation. Even within the Western Hemisphere, Biden has sought to isolate the Republic of Cuba and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela from a Summit of the Americas planned for June in Los Angeles.

A leading Nigerian newspaper, Premium, sought to provide a rationale for the legislation now moving through the Senate. The report issued on May 20 reads in part that:

“New York Democrat Gregory Meeks, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the bill was designed to thwart Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to ‘pilfer, manipulate and exploit resources in parts of Africa to evade sanctions and undermine U.S. interests,’ and to finance his war in Ukraine. Mr. Meeks also presented the bill as supportive of Africa, intended to protect ‘all innocent people who have been victimized by Putin’s mercenaries and agents credibly accused of gross violations of human rights in Africa, including in the Central African Republic and Mali.’ It is specifically in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali that Wagner has been accused of committing human rights violations to prop up dubious governments and thwart Western interests. Some African governments suspect there’s more at play than protecting ‘fragile states in Africa,’ as Mr. Meeks put it. ‘Why target Africa?’ one senior African government official asked. ‘They’re obviously unhappy with the way so many African countries voted in the General Assembly and their relatively non-aligned position.’”

‘Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism’

Yet within Congressman Meek’s comments there is no acknowledgement of the centuries-long enslavement and colonization of African people by the western feudal and capitalist states, including the U.S. In fact, there has never been any apology let alone gesture towards paying reparations to the African people on the continent and throughout the globe for the destruction caused by the plunders of involuntary servitude and political domination engendered by international finance capital.

The actual historical record reveals that Russia, even under monarchial rule prior to 1917, never participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade, colonization on the continent or the Western Hemisphere where hundreds of millions of Africans remain up until this day. Contrary to the posture of the U.S. and its NATO allies, the former Soviet Union as well as China and other socialist states supported the anti-colonial, national liberation and civil rights struggles waged by the African people from the period after World I up until the 21st century. It was successive administrations in Washington which gave military and economic solace to the colonial powers operating in Africa and throughout the world. All of the legitimate liberation movements and popular struggles against racism, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism were opposed by the U.S.

Since the advent of independent African states during the late 1950s, the U.S. has become the leading neo-colonial imperialist power on the continent and around the world. Neo-colonialism seeks to maintain economic, political and social control over independent states through the roles of transnational corporations and military apparatuses, with NATO as the leading alliance designed to maintain the global status-quo.

According to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, founder of modern Ghana and Africa, Neo-colonialism is the major threat to African unity and development since the 1960s. Nkrumah states in his book entitled “Neo-Colonialism: The Last State of Imperialism” (1965):

“Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism. Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.”

Consequently, the U.S. Congress at the beckoning call of the Biden administration has no right to dictate what the relations between the Russian Federation and the African Union (AU) member-states should be. The AU governments and more so among the workers, women, farmers, youth and revolutionary intelligentsia, have nothing to gain from the U.S. attempts to prohibit sovereign states from engaging in trade deals and military alliances that Washington deems to be at variance with its own interests.

Moreover, the peace and antiwar movements in the U.S. should be outraged at all of these legislative and administrative measures which will not only harm the people of Africa and other geopolitical regions, these actions by the ruling elites in Washington are a detriment to the working class and oppressed within North America. As U.S. working families face the highest increases in fuel, food, housing and other costs in over four decades, it will not be long before the people understand that the alleviation of the impoverishment among the masses cannot be addressed absent the elimination of the Pentagon budget and dismantling of military bases around the globe.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... in-africa/

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“Security situation in Darfur remains very dangerous”

Reiterating the call for a UN force to protect the displaced who have been “left at the mercy of militias,” Adam Rojal, spokesperson of Darfur’s refugees and IDPs, told Peoples Dispatch that violence in Darfur is part of the military junta’s campaign “to kill the surviving victims of genocide and war crimes”

May 30, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Damaged structures in the city of Kreinik in Sudan's West Darfur from March 2022. Photo by Wilberforce Musombi / NRC.

A month after the deadly armed attacks which started in West Darfur’s Kereinik town and spread to the State’s capital El Geneina, killing at least 200 between April 22 and April 30, the security situation in the Sudan’s Darfur region “remains very dangerous,” according to Adam Rojal, spokesperson of the General Coordination of Displaced and Refugees.

The UN estimated that 85,000 to 115,000 people were displaced in the violence and have been unable to return as “their homes, their livelihood in markets and the local institutions have all burnt down,” he told Peoples Dispatch in an interview.

With an uncertain future ahead, they live in the fear that “another attack will happen and the security forces present there will withdraw and leave the civilians and the displaced at the mercy of the Janjaweed militias, like on April 24, when Kereinik was attacked from all directions.”

The road linking this town to El Geneina “is still closed by the Janjaweed militias who loot, kill and rape civilians trying to pass through,” he added. “Supplies of food, water etc. get into Kereinik only twice a week when the security forces provide escort.”

Rojal maintains that at this point, there is no alternative to a UN-backed “international force under Chapter 7 to protect the citizens and displaced people in the Darfur region. Without this, violence, attacks and killings will continue until there is a civilian government made up of independent professionals who have a record of confronting this military junta and its generals.”

The army, he argues, cannot be relied upon to defend the civilians as it collaborates with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which was involved in the attack on April 24. The RSF, which was formed from the notorious Janjaweed militias in 2013, is led by the military junta’s second-in-command, General Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemeti.

These militias of nomadic herdsmen were armed and trained in the early 2000s under the regime of former dictator Omar al-Bashir to suppress the rebel groups of the marginalized sedentary communities of farmers and pastoralists. Even after the integration of many of these militias into the RSF, those that remain outside are not disbanded and disarmed. RPGs and other weapons used by these militias in the attacks were owned by the RSF, Rojal claimed.

While the media had widely reported the massacres last month as “tribal violence,” Rojal asserted that the “massacres were carried out in a very orderly and systematic manner, using weapons and vehicles from the state’s warehouses. No citizens own these hundreds of large vehicles equipped with the modern weapons that were used in the attack. This is not a tribal war. It is the state which kills, rapes and displaces its citizens and cloaks it as a tribal conflict.”

He argues that the characterization of the violence in Darfur as a tribal conflict is the state’s attempt to conceal “the truth of the matter” that “an attempt is underway to kill the surviving victims of genocide and war crimes, with the aim of eventually seizing their lands” that are “rich in mineral wealth.”

At least 300,000 have already been killed and over 2.5 million displaced in this conflict in Darfur which is nearing two decades. The violence has intensified since the military coup in October 2021. The Janjaweed militias, Rojal said, “have been reassured and further emboldened, because the generals, under whose supervision they had carried out the campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, are the ones who seized power.”

Only four months before the coup, by the end of June 2021, the withdrawal of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), which had begun at the start of last year, was complete. Its mandate, which ended in December 2020, was not renewed because the military and the armed rebel groups had signed a peace agreement in South Sudan’s capital Juba by October that year.

“The government had claimed they would form a joint security force including even the rebel fighters who had signed the Juba peace agreement. UNAMID accepted this and left. But this joint force is totally incapable of acting to protect civilians. So civilians, including those displaced, are left at the mercy of the Janjaweed militias. This is one of the great crimes that happened at Juba,” Rojal said.

Those displaced in the war and the organization representing them “were never consulted when the agreement was signed in Juba. We had said at the time that this Juba agreement – like the agreements in Abuja, Tanzania and Qatar – will only bring more killing, bloodshed, destruction and displacement. But UNAMID and the sponsors of the agreement brought people from the cities to represent our will and speak on our behalf.”

Rojal argued that for “a comprehensive peace process that addresses the roots of this historical Sudanese crisis, the putschists must be overthrown – forced to submit to the demands of the Sudanese people and hand over power to civilians.” He insists that only a civilian government “made up of independent professionals who have a record of confronting this military junta and its generals” can lead a genuine peace process inclusive of all sections.

Peoples Dispatch: Following the massacres in West Darfur in the last week of April, killing at least 200 and displacing about a 100,000, incidents of armed robberies, rapes and murders continue to be reported from various parts of Darfur. What is the current security situation in the region?

Adam Rojal: The security situation in Darfur remains very dangerous – to the extent that you could be walking in the street and be hit by a bullet, because the government has left the citizens and the displaced at the mercy of the Janjaweed militias and Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Killings, rapes, displacement and looting, torture, arbitrary detention and other human rights violations continue in all of Sudan, especially in the states of West Darfur and South Darfur.

PD: What is the situation in El Geniena and Kereinik that witnessed much of the killings last month?

AR: In Kereinik and El Geneina, where more than 200 were killed and 136 wounded, we lost scholars, government employees, health workers, religious elders and others. All local houses, markets and police stations were burnt. The situation in these cities is still frightening. The road linking Geneina and Kereinik is still closed by the Janjaweed militias who loot, kill and rape civilians trying to pass through. Supplies of food, water etc. get into Kereinik only twice a week when the security forces provide escort. We need international protection under Article 7 of the Charter of the United Nations, not by the Sudanese government forces which have failed and appear unable to carry out its primary and first duty, which is to protect civilians and defenseless citizens.

PD: UN OCHA had said at the start of this month that anywhere between 85,000 to 115,000 people were displaced in the violence in the last week of April. How many of them, by your estimation, have been able to return since?

AR: No, the victims have not returned to their areas or to their homes because they have lost everything. How can people return when their homes, their livelihood in markets and the local institutions have all burnt down? How can they return when there is no longer any shelter? To help their return, the state needs to provide them with care and emergency services, food, water, medicine and other daily humanitarian needs. Until now, what has been provided is insufficient, since their number is very large. People are still afraid that another attack will happen and the security forces present there will withdraw and leave the civilians and the displaced at the mercy of the Janjaweed militias, like on April 24, when Kereinik was attacked from all directions. All trust between the people and security forces is lost.

PD: You have pointed out that the heavily armed men in the uniforms of Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is led by the military junta’s second-in-command General Hemeti, were involved in these attacks. This has been well-established in several video footage and eyewitness accounts also. But you have also accused the army and the military junta, which is de-facto the state, of being complicit.

AR: The accusation is 100% correct. The RSF is central to these attacks. There are also indications that the RPGs and many other weapons used by the other Janjaweed militias (not formally integrated into the RSF) were also owned by the RSF. The army and the other Sudanese security forces are also complicit. If there was no complicity and coordination, they would not have withdrawn just as the attack started, leaving the citizens at the mercy of these militias. The massacres were carried out in a very orderly and systematic manner, using weapons and vehicles from the state’s warehouses.

No citizens own these hundreds of large vehicles equipped with very modern weapons that were used in the attack. This is not a tribal war. It is the state which kills, rapes and displaces its citizens and cloaks it as a tribal conflict. From central government to local governments, from the de-facto head of state, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Hemeti to West Darfur’s governor, Khamis Abdallah Abkar – all of them bear responsibility.

PD: Much of the media continues to report on these massacres as “tribal violence.” UN bodies also refer to it in their official statements as conflict between “Arabs” and “non-Arabs”. But you have been arguing that what is unfolding is a state-led depopulation campaign on mineral-rich lands. Can you elaborate?

AR: Yes, the current violence in Darfur has nothing to do with tribal conflicts. The state gives that characterization to the violence in order to divert attention, because the truth of the matter is that an attempt is underway to kill the surviving victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, with the aim of eventually seizing their lands. And these lands are rich in mineral wealth. For the state to benefit from these resources, the indigenous population must be evicted, especially because they object to excavation. So civilians in these areas are targeted in order to force them to flee.

PD: Armed attacks and consequent displacements had never really stopped in Darfur despite the short-lived joint civilian-military government or the Juba peace agreement it signed with most rebel groups. But specifically, since the coup last October, has there been an observable deterioration in the security situation in Darfur?

AR: The joint civilian-military transitional government that was formed after the remarkable overthrow of Omar al-Bashir never really accorded us our natural rights as victims in refugee camps. But it was still better than what we are facing now. When there were attacks by RSF and Janjaweed militias, they were at least documented. But after the coup, these militias have been reassured and further emboldened, because the generals, under whose supervision they had carried out the campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur under Bashir, are the ones who seized power.

PD: Only months before the coup, by the end of June 2021, the withdrawal of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), which had already begun since January, was complete. Its mandate ended in December 2020 and was not renewed. You were among the people who had strongly warned against the withdrawal. An estimated 430,000 were displaced last year alone. Looking back, do you believe the continued presence of UNAMID would have served to deter any of the violence that followed?

AR: We continue to warn about the security consequences even after the withdrawal of UNAMID. There is no longer an alternative to UNAMID protecting the displaced and citizens in the Darfur region. UNAMID was something better than nothing. Although it did not have the ability to use force to protect the victims, it was standing with the victims and submitting periodic reports to the UN Security Council. And these were neutral reports. But after the exit of UNAMID, there was no longer an independent body capable of reporting these violations to international bodies. The government had claimed they would form a joint security force including even the rebel fighters who signed the Juba peace agreement. UNAMID accepted this and left.

But this joint force is totally incapable of acting to protect civilians. So civilians, including those displaced, are left at the mercy of the Janjaweed militias. This is one of the great crimes that happened at Juba. That is why we renew our demand to the United Nations, the Security Council and all free people that there should be an international force under Chapter 7 to protect the citizens and displaced people in the Darfur region because violence, attacks and killing will continue until there is a civilian government, made up of independent professionals who have a record of confronting this military junta and its generals.

PD: A year before the coup, in October 2020, the Juba peace agreement was signed between the armed rebel groups and the military. While no peace followed in Darfur, the rebel groups which were offered a share in state power, went on to support the military coup in October 2021. How do the victims of the war, especially the IDPs, perceive this peace agreement?

AR: We, as the displaced and the general coordination acting on their behalf, were never consulted when the agreement was signed in Juba. We had said at the time that this Juba agreement – like the agreements in Abuja, Tanzania and Qatar – will only bring more killing, bloodshed, destruction and displacement. But UNAMID and the sponsors of the agreement brought people from the cities to represent our will and speak on our behalf. Despite our respect for the state of South Sudan, which is assisting the displaced Sudanese who were forced by circumstances to migrate there, we have to say that this agreement that was negotiated there is not valid. It does not meet the aspirations of the victims, refugees and displaced persons. Rather, it was an agreement to achieve the individuals’ aspirations for power.

PD: When this agreement was signed, it was a joint civilian-military transitional government where state power was shared between military and the civilian representatives chosen by the centrist and right-wing political parties in the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition. This civilian presence in the state had given a certain legitimacy to the agreement, in Sudan and also internationally. How do you assess the conduct of these political parties and their representatives vis-a-vis the IDPs?

AR: These traditional parties, which have existed since 1956, have often shared power to form joint civilian-military transitional governments. Every time, this is followed by a coup in a couple of years or so. The FFC never considered us as victims. After they formed a government with the military, the civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok had come on a visit to the Abu Shouk camp on his Darfur trip. At the time, we had put forth more than 13 demands. These included provision of security, disarming and disbanding the Janjaweed forces, expelling new settlers the regime had brought in to occupy the lands and buildings of the displaced people, and the hand over to International Criminal Court of Omar al-Bashir, his former defense minister Abd al-Rahim, and all the other perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.

We had also demanded compensation – both individual and collective. Individual compensation is necessary for the displaced to have something in hand to start restoring a normal life upon returning to their villages. Because all the wealth we had, all our inheritance from our ancestors, were plundered when the Sudanese army, RSF and the Janjaweed militias displaced us. As for collective compensation, we demanded the construction of model schools and provision of water, electricity and other basic services that the Sudanese people and the people all over the world should have. We had also demanded that the Prime Minister should visit the other camps. But our demands were not implemented. The Prime Minister never returned for a second visit.

PD: Let’s talk about the December Revolution. People of Darfur took a very active part in these protests which led to the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Given that the core circle of Bashir’s generals had managed to hold on to power despite his own overthrow, the nature of the state and its policy in Darfur may not have changed significantly. But has the revolution, particularly as a result of the formation of Resistance Committees in neighborhoods, had an enduring impact on conduct of popular politics and resistance in Darfur?

AR: Of course we, as victims in the camps, have resisted al-Bashir for more than 18 years. Although the Resistance Committees are not in the IDP camps but in the cities, we communicate and closely coordinate with them. Their appearance in Darfur with the December Revolution has indeed brought about a political change in that the people learnt how to confront the regime through peaceful organization of sit-in protests. Even after Bashir’s overthrow in 2019, there were four or five more sit-in protests organized in Darfur. The demands of most of them had to do with security. I will never forget the revolutionary slogans that resonated in these protests. I salute everyone involved in organizing these.

PD: Going forward, what would be a realistic plan to bring peace in Darfur? Are you hopeful about the future of Darfurians?

AR: Existence of a civilian government is essential for peace. In order to reach a comprehensive peace process that addresses the roots of this historical Sudanese crisis, the putschists must be overthrown – forced to submit to the demands of the Sudanese people and hand over power to civilians. After this a government should be formed of independent professionals known for fighting al-Bashir and his military elite now in power. This government should oversee a Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue that brings together all the Sudanese people without exclusion – including nomads, farmers, displaced persons and all other Sudanese people. This government should also undertake a restructuring of state’s institutions.

As for our optimism about the future of Darfur, there will be a beautiful future, but it will take many sacrifices to get there. Because we are now in a situation where the original landowners, forced to flee from their homes only three years ago, are not recognized anymore as the owners because these areas are controlled by militias. But in the end, we will definitely win. Because this is a legal issue, the law must take its course and those behind the horrific crimes must be brought to justice. Then there can be social peace and tolerance.

But at the present time and in the near future, if these things that I have explained are not achieved, it is very difficult to reach common ground. With the current economic and security situation, violence could escalate further, threatening also other of the regions in Sudan and even the other East African neighbors.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/30/ ... dangerous/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 04, 2022 1:36 pm

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African Liberation Day 2022: Smash neo-colonialism!
Originally published: Hood Communist on May 26, 2022 by Ready for Revolution (more by Hood Communist) | (Posted Jun 03, 2022)

The age of classical colonialism in Africa changed the course of history. Exploited trade agreements and pseudo alliances between African nobility and European merchants led to heightened warfare, looting, and genocide across the continent. No mineral or raw material was safe, from gold to palm oil to diamonds. The transatlantic slave trade emptied the continent of capable hands, bodies, and minds to the tune of 12 million Africans. The developing European capitalist class burned their way across Africa from all sides, exploiting every contradiction and weakness they could find. Then came the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, which was an exercise in land carving and border creation for the European powers because the wanton theft of Africa had gotten to be almost too much for even thieves! They needed a more organized manner to pull off their robbery so 14 European nations put aside their differences to sit down at a table and carve Africa up like a turkey. Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Britain, Italy, and Portugal all left the affair with packed to-go plates.

Those Africans trafficked to “The New World” away from their homeland embarked on a devastating and gruesome struggle against the evils of human bondage— forced labor, forced reproduction, and forced family separation. Forced to forget— their names, their customs, their religions, their lovers, and their histories. Formal slavery for them would be “abolished” and morph into a system known as “Jim Crow”. The descendants of those that survived Jim Crow would go on to navigate the terrors of forced assimilation, red-lining, vigilante terrorism, and gentrification. Colonization. Back in Africa where it all began, similar systems and structures put in place by those countries around the table of the Berlin Conference would reign for centuries. Colonialism. But everywhere these Africans were, across Africa herself, and around the world where they had been trafficked, they fought back.

Enter the post-WWII 1960s. The world saw the rise of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, The Liberation Front of Mozambique, The Convention People’s Party, the African Democratic Assembly and African Democratic Rally, and many other organizations across the African world, all with a common agenda: the total liberation of African people from colonialism and all of its vestiges. The post-WWII era would turn history on its head. It saw Spain tossed aside, the British crown reduced to museums and parades, and Portugal written in as a cheap footnote in the common memory. The 1960s were for the dream of revolution in Africa and around the world. For building, for looking to the future, for independence.

But on their way out, these European countries took the same door that they came in. The first people they saw were the last people they saw, the nobility; the chiefs, and the kings who by then had morphed into the national bourgeoisie. Using the power they granted themselves under the Mandate System of WWI, they made their whispers, they made their deals and they exploited the remaining contradictions and left a window open for their return. The royalty went home and some of the militaries fled back to Europe, but what remained was a hand in the cookie jar of the politics and finances of these newly independent countries: neo-colonialism. That was the 1960s. Today there exist 54 “independent” African countries and countless African cultures around the world. And yet, these African nations which fought to the bone more than 60 years ago are no more free from colonization today than they were yesterday. The Africans of now have a historical duty to SMASH neo-colonialism, but before we can fight effectively we must understand the terrain we fight upon. In this statement, we seek to clarify some of the confusion that exists today about neo-colonialism and emphasize why Kwame Nkrumah warned us that unless we can rid ourselves of it, it will drown us.

Neo-colonialism and the Exploitation of Labor

The very definition of neo-colonialism in operation is a system where the human and material resources of the exploited country/people are set up to be the main conduit for the benefit of the outside colonizing power. A primary example of this is cocoa production in Ghana. In 2022, chocolate products produced from Ghanaian cocoa account for 75% of all chocolate products consumed within the U.S. The benefactors of this system are the multinational corporate entities that dominate cocoa production in Ghana. From Cargill International to Hershey, Nestle, and Godiva, these companies hold complete control over cocoa production all throughout Ghana. Receiving slave wages to produce cocoa, the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian cocoa workers, who toil for 10 to 12 hours daily, seven days per week, will never themselves generate enough cash flow to afford to enjoy even one Nestle chocolate bar in their entire lifetime.

Another example is the production of columbite-tantalite, or coltan for short, in the Congo. Coltan is the rare earth mineral that is absolutely necessary for ensuring devices that give and receive a signal are able to function. Coltan, when ground down into a powder, has the capacity to hold an electrical charge. This ability makes it valuable in serving as the necessary conduit to facilitate the giving and receiving of signals that are required for internet devices like laptop computers, cell phones, and flat-screen smart televisions. Upwards of 70% of the world’s reserves for coltan exist in Central Africa with the majority of that being in the Congo. Children as young as eight years old work in Congolese mines digging coltan out by hand. These children are paid no more than about $35.00 U.S.D. per week, working seven days per week and at least 12 hours daily. Just like chocolate from Ghanaian cocoa, none of these children will ever be able to afford internet, not to mention a cell phone. What they will receive is the black lung disease that results from working in poorly ventilated mines for long hours each day. These terrible conditions are the reason that the medium life expectancy for Congolese mine workers hovers around 40 years old.

Meanwhile, like Nestle, Godiva, and Hershey in Ghana, multinational corporations like Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Sony, and RCA make billions from exploiting the labor of African youth in the Congo. Another similarity between this exploitation of labor in Ghana, the Congo, and all of Africa, is that all of this cheap labor (and cheap resources) are bled out of Africa and into the hands of these capitalist corporations, who are based in Europe and the U.S., on a daily basis.

This is the simple and irrefutable explanation for why Africa is poor and the Western capitalist world holds all of the wealth. And this all results from the mechanisms of control that were established by the colonial systems hundreds of years ago and the subsequent establishment of neo-colonial gatekeeping to ensure capitalism continues to reign supreme at the end of the day while Africa and her children continue to suffer.

Neo-Colonialism and Re-Conquest Through Debt
Neo-colonialism operates primarily through tactics of soft power and indirect control. For this reason, it can often be difficult to recognize its hand at work. What can look on the surface like a generous act of solidarity between Western capitalist countries and poor African and global south nations— whether an aid package, loan or foreign investment, is most often a clever concealment of what Thomas Sankara described as debt-driven reconquest:

“The debt in its present form is a cleverly organized reconquest of Africa under which our growth and development are regulated by stages and norms totally alien to us. It is a reconquest that turns each of us into a financial slave—or just plain slave—of those who had the opportunity, the craftiness, the deceitfulness to invest funds in our countries that we are obliged to repay.”

Thomas Sankara


If we understand that the African continent and the earth’s poorest nations are not poor by accident; that their underdevelopment is a consequence of a campaign of looting and destruction by the capitalist-imperialist system and its agents that has spanned centuries, we can also understand, as Sankara explains, that the practice of wealthy countries swooping in with checks to “save” poor countries is a farce. These wealthy countries, the ongoing colonizers and exploiters of the majority of life on this planet, are doing nothing less than creating and maintaining the problem while at the same time posing as the solution.

One of the most powerful institutions of the debt-driven reconquest of Africa and poor nations is the IMF or International Monetary Fund. The IMF is an international financial institution (a giant bank) headquartered in the U.S. that is sustained by dues paid by 190 member countries. Because the amount of dues paid are determined by the size of a country’s economy, wealthy Western capitalist countries pay for the largest proportion of the IMF’s budget and get proportionally more voting power within the institution. This means that wealthy countries, first and foremost the U.S., are able to set the agenda and policies of the IMF. In spite of this clear bias, the IMF is responsible for the management of the global monetary system and thus has operations in or some kind of financial agreement with the majority of countries on the planet. On paper, the IMF is a special wing of the United Nations with the objective of preventing global economic crises. In practice, it is, alongside the World Bank, the finance arm of global imperialism.

The IMF distributes trillions of dollars in aid and loans to nations around the world annually but that money is never freely given. IMF deals always come with strings, most famously in the terms of SAPs (structural adjustment programs) that are essentially conditions nations must meet before receiving any kind of funding from the IMF. The conditions are always developed with the intention of “liberalizing” the economy of the country seeking aid. In layman’s terms, this means destroying social programs, privatizing industries, and disempowering poor and working-class people in order to make a targeted nation more hospitable for exploitative foreign investment. We can see this clearly using the example of Ukraine.

In 2014, democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych turned down a $17 billion IMF agreement that came with an SAP that would have required his government to pass harsh austerity measures. Yanukovych, correctly describing the agreement as an attack on the nation’s sovereignty, instead turned to Russia who offered a $15 billion aid package that included the cancellation of Ukraine’s debt and a 25% discount on Russian natural gas. Yanukovych’s refusal to play ball with the institutions of Western finance capital proved to be a fatal blow to his capacity to hold on to power. A color revolution broke out and within months he was deposed in a neo-Nazi and fascist-led coup orchestrated by the U.S.and NATO powers. After Yanukovych was safely out of the picture, the hand-picked by the U.S. far-right post-coup government wasted no time in returning to the table with the IMF and agreeing to the deal he had declined. The terms of that deal included:

*Closing 60% of Ukraine’s public universities
*Privatizing its nationalized healthcare
*Raising the retirement age for Ukrainian workers and making their pensions smaller
*Raising household heating taxes by 40%
*Raising household gas taxes by 56%
*Reducing Ukraine’s federal budget for social assistance programs

It was nothing less than the systematic economic destruction of Ukraine and a clear attack on the capacity of the masses of Ukrainian people to resist domination. In the years since their safety net was dismantled, Ukrainian workers have suffered through the banning of workers’ organizations and progressive parties, violent attacks on their ability to organize and unionize, and the forced imposition of rule by militarized fascist forces. In this example, we can see the soft power strategies of neo-colonialism at work—the conditioning of aid to poor countries on their committing acts of economic suicide and the orchestration of destabilization to discredit and dispose of leaders that refuse to play along.

As Kwame Nkrumah explains:

In the first place, the rulers of neo-colonial States derive their authority to govern, not from the will of the people, but from the support which they obtain from their neo-colonialist masters. They have therefore little interest in developing education, strengthening the bargaining power of their workers employed by expatriate firms, or indeed of taking any step which would challenge the colonial pattern of commerce and industry, which it is the object of neo-colonialism to preserve. ‘Aid’, therefore, to a neo-colonial State is merely a revolving credit, paid by the neo-colonial master, passing through the neo-colonial State and returning to the neo-colonial master in the form of increased profits.

Kwame Nkrumah in Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism


Neo-Colonialism & Military Domination

With over 800 military bases in more than 80 nations, the U.S. has carved up the entire world into military commands. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), as a U.S. neo-colonialist occupation force in Africa, shows that “flag independence” on the continent is starkly different from sovereignty. Established under George W. Bush in 2007 and expanded under the first Black president, Barack Obama, AFRICOM has situated itself as a neo-colonial occupying force utilizing both hard and soft power to expand U.S. hegemony. And as the so-called purveyors of truth and justice, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has held no quantifying objection to the expansion of AFRICOM, instead going along with the underlying subtext of protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.” But the true neo-colonial mission of AFRICOM is more sinister. “Let there be no mistake,” Vice Admiral Robert Moeller wrote in 2010, “AFRICOM’s job is to protect American lives and promote American interests.” Currently, there is an AFRICOM presence in 53 out of 54 nations on the African continent. The broad network of AFRICOM military bases, in collusion with NATO nations like France and the UK, illuminates the ways African government’s relationships with the West are developed through the surrender of sovereignty. For instance, AFRICOM’s role in guaranteeing the “free-flow” of resources includes U.S. interests in fostering “water security”. As Salome Paul notes, over 1/3rd of the permanent and semi-permanent AFRICOM bases are in the Horn of Africa region.

The intense presence of AFRICOM in the Horn serves as a means to circumvent China’s approach to infrastructure-led economic development with its railways and water pipelines. AFRICOM’s mission statement insists that its purpose is to counter “transnational threats and malign actors.” However, in the G5 Sahel countries, it is all about the capture and maintenance of African resources and Western interests. How else could it be explained that in spite of heavy western military presence and joint training operations between the French military, the U.S., and locals, Africa’s Sahel is no more stable than when NATO-backed the collapse of Libya in 2011? The G5 Sahel is rich in oil and while U.S dependency has declined, that is not the case for its NATO ally, France. As members of NATO, the military presence of France and the U.S. in the Sahel is a reminder of the western hegemonic bloc across the region.

Another reminder? The most recent HR 7311 bill, sponsored by the Black comprador U.S. Congressman Gregory Meeks, pushed through the House of Representatives with unanimous support from the bootleg Rainbow Coalition fondly known as ‘The Squad’ (including proud Somali Ilhan Omar), to eventually become law. While Africans in the U.S. are thrust into the brink of austerity with zero safety nets during an ongoing and increasingly devastating pandemic, The CBC and ‘The Squad’ rushed through a bill that is set to target African nations that did not condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and also ward off any more actions like those which forced out the French military in Mali. And for what? As the bill states in Sec 2, “It is the sense of Congress that the United States (1) should regularly assess the scale and scope of the Russian Federation’s influence and activities in Africa that undermine United States objectives and interests.” What interests does the U.S. have in Africa? Africans in the U.S. must understand the importance of struggling against a Black Misleadership Class that is currently obstructing our own paths towards liberation by tying itself and colonized communities to U.S. colonialism. At every turn, this class is justifying their collaboration with the enemy state obstructing the liberation of Africa. The only objective and interest the U.S. has is maintaining a stronghold on Africa and its resources. Africa is their interest NOT African people, neither in the U.S. or abroad.

As the contradiction of a dire material reality for Africans continues to sharpen, $40 billion has been signed off unanimously by the CBC for the Nazi militia, Azov Battalion in Ukraine, to continue a war that has huge ramifications for the African world. As these class collaborators give political cover to ultra-nationalism in Ukraine that is making its way back to haunt Africans in the U.S., African nations are being punished for having clarity on the geopolitical situation and the role NATO has played in creating it. It should be noted that while condemning an “invasion” of Ukraine, the U.S was simultaneously drone striking Somalia. Currently, it’s seeking to invade Somalia again with the approval of the new Western-backed Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, with not one African member of congress speaking against it. The African world is in a crisis as the contradictions of “independence” under Western rule come to a head. For Africans in the U.S. and globally, the war against neo-colonialism and its agents must be organized, must be fought, and must be WON together because it is one colonial-capitalist system.

Put the “Liberation” Back in African Liberation Day

Since its founding in 1958, there has been a concerted effort to take the “Liberation” out of “African Liberation Day,” with many around the world pushing the promotion of a depoliticized “Africa Day”, designed to celebrate the “beauty of Africa and African people.” But we must understand that while romantic, these celebrations are not realistic. How do we, as African people, close our eyes to the ongoing theft, exploitation, and military occupation of our homeland? How do we continue to wrap ourselves in neo-colonial flags to participate in online diaspora wars, while tangible xenophobic movements are attempting to take off in places like occupied Azania? How long will Africans in the U.S.continue to vote for the “lesser evil” which has only found ways to accelerate the evil in our homeland? There is no amount of cryptocurrency, Africa-themed Spotify playlists, or capitalist resort vacations to Ghana branded as “returning home” that are going to end this current phase of our struggle. This year we must fight to put the “Liberation” back in “African Liberation Day” because Africa is not free and neither are we.

On this African Liberation Day, we must recommit ourselves to the task of organizing the masses of our people toward the objective of true Pan-Africanism: one unified socialist Africa. This means that every African, everywhere in the world MUST JOIN AN ORGANIZATION that is fighting for justice. Our ability to unify around common political objectives is strengthened when we stop navigating the world as individuals and become serious bodies of people. Organizations must also begin to coalesce and work together where relevant, as in the example of the Pan-African Congress of Azania (PAC) and the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO). In February, the two organizations came together and signed a declaration of cooperation agreement, with the aim to contest future elections together and champion the needs of the people on the ground. This move demonstrates an awareness among African people of the need to unify. It is only the organized masses that will liberate themselves from neo-colonialism today.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/03/african ... -day-2022/

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Black Skin, White Mask
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 3, 2022
Jeremy Kuzmarov

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Lt. General Michael Langley [Source: nytimes.com]

Lt. General Michael Langley is poised to become the first Black commander of AFRICOM—a neocolonial force whose main purpose is to enable Western corporate pillage of Africa.

We have seen Blacks assist in the subjugation of their own people before and it is not something to cheer about.


In his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks, Algerian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon warned about the emergence of post-colonial African leaders who would do the bidding of the former colonial powers.

Were he still alive, Fanon would not be surprised at how the last remaining imperial power is poised to appoint a Black man—Michael Langley, a 37-year army man who served overseas in Afghanistan, Somalia and Okinawa—to head its Africa military command (AFRICOM).

It was the first Black U.S. President, Barack Obama, who expanded the number of AFRICOM military bases in Africa from three to 84, contributing to the effective recolonization of Africa.

AFRICOM today sustains ties to 53 African nations and provides a cover for an estimated 9,000 U.S. troops in Africa.

AFRICOM founder Vice Admiral Robert Moeller admitted that one of AFRICOM’s guiding principles was “protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.”

In April, AFRICOM announced that it would open an office in copper-rich Zambia as part of its ongoing expansion.

Zambia’s former representative to the African Union (AU), Emmanuel Mwamba, considered AFRICOM’s expansion a betrayal of previous Zambian leaders’ efforts to remain non-aligned.

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A map of U.S. military bases—forward operating sites, cooperative security locations, and contingency locations—across the African continent from declassified Fiscal Year 2015 U.S. Africa Command planning documents. [Source: theintercept.com]

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[Source: : smithsonianmag.com]

The AU and Southern African Development Community (SADC) for years had tried to resist the establishment of U.S. and other foreign military bases in Africa, and to develop their own standby military forces and security architecture designed to prevent a return to the era of colonialism.

A Historic Appointment?

The New York Times gushed about Langley’s potential appointment—he has been recommended by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to become the next AFRICOM commander—calling it “historic.”[1]

But historic for whom?

The U.S. military to be sure has an abysmal record of promoting African-Americans: The Marine Corps has never had anyone other than a white man in its senior leadership and four-star posts, and only 30 Blacks have ever obtained the rank of General.[2]

Retired Lieutenant General Ronald L. Bailey, the first Black man to command the First Marine Division, was quoted in The New York Times as saying that the promotion of Langley, whom he has known since he was a First Lieutenant, “is bigger than Langley. This is for our nation. It’s been a glass ceiling for years, and now Black Marines will see that this is possible.”[3]

The fact that a glass ceiling has been broken, however, does not erase the fact that Langley is now in a position to hasten the exploitation of Black people throughout Africa.

And he can do so more effectively than a white by helping to give the illusion that U.S. policy is designed to help Africans.

In his 2020 book Understanding the War Industry (Atlanta: Clarity, 2020), Christian Sorensen emphasizes how the U.S. war industry has sustained a progressive veneer through more minority appointments and by emphasizing the diversity of its workforce.

Langley’s likely appointment is but the latest example. It is of little solace to Africans who suffer the humiliation of having their countries occupied by a white foreign power.

Notes

Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, “A Historic Endorsement for U.S. Commander in Africa,” The New York Times, May 21, 2022, A19. ↑
Idem. ↑
Idem. ↑

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... hite-mask/

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Sudan’s emergency has been ‘lifted’ but protesters continue to face repression

While international bodies, including the EU and UN, have welcomed the lifting of the state of emergency, little has changed on the ground, according to pro-democracy activists

June 03, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Security forces flooded the Burri neighborhood in Khartoum with tear gas on May 31

Four days into the lifting of the state of emergency in Sudan on May 29, the nation-wide pro-democracy protests and the violent crackdown against them by the security forces of the military junta show no signs of waning.

At least 40 protesters were injured in the crackdown on the mass demonstrations demanding civilian rule on May 30 and 31, according to reports by the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD). 14 were shot with live ammunition. Many others sustained injuries from direct hits by tear gas canisters and from asphyxiation due to inhalation.

“On ground, there is no difference made by the lifting of emergency. It was only done on paper to pull a wool over the eyes of the international community, which anyway was only asking the junta to make some gesture of good will to start what they call dialogue,” Rashid El Sheik, member of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), told Peoples Dispatch. “The junta is dangling this small carrot, while still using the stick.”

By the time the state of emergency was formally lifted on May 29, security forces had injured over 4,500 demonstrators and killed at least 98 since the military coup on October 25, 2021. 35 demonstrators have lost limbs or organs, and eight are paralyzed. At least 464 gunshot wounds have been documented since the coup from the records in 15 hospitals. 57 of these shots are to the head, 57 to chest and 59 to abdomen.

Over 550 of the injured are still undergoing treatment, according to the Hadhreen organization. A data analysis published in February showed that more than 42.5% of injuries to protestors until then were caused by tear gas: 22.5% by direct firing of canisters to heads and other parts of bodies, and 20% due to inhalation.

In the aftermath of the violent crackdown on May 31, thick clouds of tear gas hung low over the entire neighborhood of Burri Al Mahas in Khartoum. Many deemed it to be a “collective punishment” against all residents for supporting the pro-democracy protests, even if they themselves did not take part in it.

“Does my blood look like water to you?”

“Does my blood look like water to you?” opened a statement issued by the Resistance Committees (RCs) of the Burri district the next morning of June 1. The statement called on residents to take to the streets to prevent the deputy chairman of the military junta, General Mohamad Hamdan Daglo aka ‘Hemeti’, from visiting their area to inaugurate the 39th Khartoum International Fair.

Hemeti is the head of the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Constituted from the militias that were used to commit alleged war crimes and genocide in the Darfur region in the course of the civil war, the RSF is repeatedly deployed against unarmed pro-democracy protesters.

“Two days from now is the third anniversary of the massacre by RSF of (over 100) protesters outside the army HQ (on June 3, 2019),” read the statement, reaffirming that the memory of the “martyrs” will not be forgotten, and that Hemeti will be resisted.

Enduring more violence by the security forces, the pro-democracy protesters led by the Burri RCs made it to the gates of the venue of this fair and set up burning barricades, whereupon Hemeti canceled his plan to inaugurate the fair.

The RSF announced that Hemeti’s plan was canceled because an emergency meeting had been scheduled with Volker Perthes, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) for Sudan and head of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS). Meanwhile, more bullets and tear gas were fired at the protesters outside this international fair.

“At every march, we lose a comrade, either to death, injury or arrest”

Omdurman, Madani, Atbara and several other cities and towns across Sudan have also been protesting. In Khartoum alone, multiple protests were underway in several different neighborhoods.

In the Al Kalakla neighborhood, the RCs held the streets on June 1 for the fourth consecutive day since May 28, when one protester was shot dead in the chest, and another suffocated to death on tear gas. The situation in this area is tense, with heavily armed security forces amassed at all key intersections by the afternoon of June 2, Al Kalakla’s RCs said in an update.

“At every march, we lose a comrade, either to death, injury or arrest,” Suleyma Amir, spokesperson of the RCs in Al Kalakla, told Peoples Dispatch. “All the repressive machines of the state that were directed against us during the emergency continue to increase their brutality even after the emergency is lifted. So, we do not see any difference.”

Of the 33 arrested from Al Kalakla on May 28, six remain in custody according to an update on May 31. Custodial torture is widespread.

Minor hung upside down, beaten, deprived of water and hammered with nails
On the very day the emergency was lifted, the trial of three teenagers — including the minor 17 year-old Mohamad Adam aka ‘Tupac’ who was subjected to severe torture — began. Security forces, who had arrested him from a hospital while he was undergoing treatment for a bullet wound to his leg during the protests on January 13, accused him and his two companions of stabbing a police brigadier.

During the interrogation, however, officials did not ask Tupac about the stabbed policeman. Instead, he was questioned about the source of funding of the protests and the names of the members of the local RC, according to the lawyers who are arguing his innocence.

During the first three weeks of his custody, when he was held incommunicado with no access to family members, lawyers or doctors, Tupac was reportedly hung upside down from his injured leg, continuously beaten and deprived of water.

His lawyers and human rights groups say that his torturers had removed the plaster on his gunshot-injured leg, without medical care. When his mother was finally able to see him in custody later in February, he was unable to walk. She reported that nails had been hammered onto both his legs.

Appearing for their trial’s first hearing on May 29, Tupac and and his companions, including 18-year-old El Fateh who suffered back injuries from torture, raised the victory gesture to supporters who had flocked to Khartoum court in solidarity – chanting slogans in praise of their courage. Radio Dabanga reported that the first detective in the case failed to appear in court, and the hearing was postponed to June 12.

In the meantime, security forces attacked the vigil that was held in solidarity with the tortured activists outside the Judicial Sciences Institute in eastern Khartoum. Four protesters from the vigil were detained for a day, two of whom reported custodial abuse.

While coup leader and head of the military junta General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had promised on lifting the state of emergency that all political prisoners will be released, over 70 remain in prisons, and 12 others in the custody of the criminal investigations department, according to Emergency Lawyers. The organization also reported “continued arrests of children” and “enforced disappearances”.

“They will not pass”

However, despite the continued violence and arrests by security forces over the subsequent days, the UN welcomed the supposed lifting of the state of emergency on May 31. Lauding it “as commendable first steps in creating the much needed conducive environment for dialogue,” the EU called upon all forces to engage in a dialogue with the military junta.

The UNITAMS, the African Union (AU) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) had together launched the Tripartite Mechanism on May 12 to initiate a dialogue. Only right-wing and centrist political parties are showing interest in these negotiations. The pro-democracy protest movement has denounced these parties for sharing power with the military junta to form the joint civil-military transitional government in 2019, after the December Revolution overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir.

These civilian political forces willing to compromise once again with the military include three relatively small parties, along with the leadership of the National Umma Party (NUP), which is thought to be among the largest in the country, Sheik said. “However,” he added, “the rank-and-file of this large party are standing with the protesters on the streets, so NUP is giving mixed signals.”

Even though the US and its Western and regional allies have been hard at work to bring about an agreement between the military and these parties to resurrect the joint civil-military transitional government dissolved in the coup, Sheik remains confident that “they will not pass”. No government, at this point, will be able to rule without the approval of the revolutionary forces which lead the majority on the streets, he argues.

“The revolutionary forces include the Resistance Committees, the Communist party, the trade unions and the civil society organizations. None of them accept any government in which the military has political power. All revolutionary forces remain adamant that sitting and discussing the future of Sudan with the military gives the coup a legality which it does not and should not have. And you simply cannot convince the generals to hand over power so that we can use it to prosecute them for their crimes,” Sheik reasons.

“This is the third coup d’etat to abort the democratic revolution in Sudan. But this time, the people of Sudan are determined to put an end to military rule once and for all. Although the price is going to be higher than in the past,” he argues, “this is the only way to firmly place our feet on the road to a democratic civil state.”

Omer Zahran, spokesperson of the Coordination of RCs in Khartoum added that the continuation of the “repressive campaigns” after lifting the emergency reaffirms the correctness of slogan raised by the RCs that there can be “No negotiation, no compromise and no legitimacy given to the coup authorities.” The only correct action with regards to the military junta is to bring about its “downfall”, he insists.

Preparations are underway across the country for mass demonstrations on June 3 to commemorate the “martyrs” on the third anniversary of their massacre in Khartoum in 2019. Hundreds of thousands are expected to participate in the barricading of key roads, marches, sit-in protests and other actions planned for the day.

The uncompromising position vis-a-vis the military junta was reiterated in a joint statement issued ahead of this anniversary protest by the RCs – over 5,200 of which are organized in neighborhoods across Sudan, forming the backbone of the resistance.

The Sudanese people, it read, will not relent before dealing the “decisive” blow to “overthrow the coup authority, completely remove the military from the political process, and prosecute all those responsible for violence… against peaceful revolutionaries and innocent citizens.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/06/03/ ... epression/

Tunisia’s largest trade union calls for national strike against President Saied’s economic policies

The government led by President Kais Saied has proposed massive cuts in basic subsidies and a freeze on wages of public sector employees to fulfill the main conditions for a fresh USD 4 billion loan from the IMF

June 01, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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National strike in Tunisia UGTT (Photo: TAP)

On Tuesday, May 31, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), Tunisia’s largest trade union, announced a general strike on June 16 against the government’s proposals to withdraw crucial food and energy subsidies and freeze wages of public sector employees.

In a statement, the UGTT National Administrative Board demanded that the government led by President Kais Saied withdraw its circular number 20 issued on December 9 which restricts negotiations between the government and the trade unions.

The UGTT has over one million members. According to its statement, employees of all 159 public sector firms will participate in the strike on June 16.

The union has demanded the rollback of the proposal to cut back public spending, including a freeze on the wages of public sector employees and further privatization. It also demanded that the state take effective measures to control price rise and abolish the 1% solidarity contribution in government funds made from employees’ salaries.

The UGTT has been demanding wage increases for some time now, claiming that the current wages are not adequate to cover the rise in prices of essential commodities that is affecting the workers’ purchasing power.

Tunisia has been witnessing an inflation rate above 6% for the last six months. In April, the official inflation rate rose to 7.5%.

The Tunisian government led by President Saied has been trying to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a USD 4 billion loan in order to face the growing financial concerns of the country.

Tunisia now has a 100% debt-to-GDP ratio. Slow recovery from the slump during the COVID-19 pandemic has put an additional burden on the country’s fiscal situation.

The IMF has refused to proceed with the fourth such grant of loans to Tunisia since 2011 until the government takes measures to reduce subsidies on food and energy and freezes the wages of public sector employees.

The UGTT announced in May that it will oppose any unilateral move by the government to impose economic hardships on people at a time when most of them are already suffering due to the high price rise and lack of employment.

The UGTT had earlier also announced its boycott of the national dialogue initiated by the Saied government to frame a new constitution for the country by July 25. The government is planning to conduct a national referendum on the proposed constitution.


In July last year, President Saied dismissed the country’s elected government and dissolved the parliament alleging that politicians had indulged in corruption and were responsible for the country’s financial problems.

Tunisia’s political parties have termed Saied’s takeover as a coup and have been conducting public protests against it for the last one year. Some of them, including the Tunisian Workers’ Party, have announced that they will not participate in the proposed national referendum.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/06/01/ ... -policies/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:10 pm

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Lumumba's tooth: Belgium's unfinished reckoning with its colonial past

The remains of Congo's independence leader are forcing the country's colonizer to confront its brutal history.

By Camille Gijs and Stephan Faris

Illustration by Lee Martin for POLITICO

June 2, 2022 4:03 am

The tooth’s journey begins in the Belgian Congo in the 1930s. In the Katako-Kombe region, not far from the colony’s geographic center, it pushes through the gum and into the mouth of a young, precocious boy.

For the first part of its history, the tooth does what teeth do. It plays its part in eating and speaking — helping to enunciate Catholic prayers, amateur poetry, declarations of love and anger, the daily patter of everyday life. Later, it forms part of a dazzling smile and shapes the syllables of political speeches, oratory that transforms the history of its country. At some point along the way, it gets damaged or decayed and is capped with a glittering golden crown.

Then comes a darker period. The tooth’s owner is Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of Congo, a man many want dead. In 1961, Lumumba is assassinated, his body is buried, disinterred, dismembered and dissolved in acid. The tooth is preserved — brought to Belgium by a Belgian police officer named Gérard Soete as what he later describes as “a type of hunting trophy.”

For nearly 40 years, the tooth is out of public sight, until Soete goes on television to admit his participation in Lumumba’s murder and displays it. Years later, it is seized from the house of Soete’s daughter and its next — and most likely final — chapter begins.

Today, Lumumba’s tooth is the center of attention, as the Belgian government gets ready to hand it over to his family as the independence leader’s only known remains. For now, it sits in a “custom-made box” in a safe in the offices of the Belgian federal prosecutor in downtown Brussels, according to Eric Van Duyse, spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office.

But on June 20, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will formally hand it over to Lumumba’s descendants, in what is planned to be the first step on its journey back to the country of its origin.

For Lumumba’s children, the ceremony is an opportunity to finally lay their father — one of the great figures of the African independence movement — to rest.

“For us, as Africans, the mourning started about 60 years ago,” said Roland Lumumba, one of Patrice Lumumba’s children. “With the return of a part of him, … it’s his body, we can finish the mourning and move on. It’s a relief for us.”

Asked whether he had ever seen the remains of his father, he responded, “not yet.”

For Belgian authorities, the handover is part of an ongoing effort to smooth relations with its former colony. The prime minister travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the king and queen of Belgium and other officials next week.

But Lumumba’s tooth, and its troubled, terrible history, is also an unpleasant reminder of a history Belgian authorities were reluctant to take responsibility for — and still appear to want to keep at arm’s length.

In 1999, the Belgian sociologist Ludo De Witte published a book “The assassination of Lumumba” that spurred a national reckoning, including a parliamentary inquiry into the independence leader’s death. Since then, however, progress has been “quite disappointing,” De Witte said.

“We need to concretely recognize the responsibility in this affair, to draw practical conclusions on all levels, to give Lumumba a place worthy of his fame, of his importance for the history of Africa,” De Witte said.

Belgium’s role, he added, should be clearly expressed, “on all levels: political, ideological … and financial.”

Morally responsible

Lumumba’s time as head of his newly independent country lasted less than three months.

On June 30, 1960, as part of the ceremony marking the end of Belgian rule, King Baudouin gave an address in Kinshasa praising the benefits of colonialism and wishing for warm relations between Belgium and its former territory.

Lumumba, just installed as prime minister, responded with a speech denouncing the atrocities committed under Belgian rule. Congo’s freedom, he reminded his listeners, had been achieved not through its colonizer’s magnanimity but through a fight for which the Congolese spared neither their “force” nor their “blood.”

Coming at the height of the Cold War, Lumumba’s ascendency sparked fears in the West that he could turn his country toward the Soviet Union, to the extent that the CIA plotted to assassinate him.

His brief, tumultuous tenure was followed by a coup in September and his arrest later that year. He was killed in January 1961 by the authorities of Katanga, a breakaway Congolese state, after being tortured in the presence of Belgian officers.

For decades after Lumumba’s murder, Belgium maintained an official silence on the circumstances surrounding his death. But in 2001, as the country began wrestling with its brutal history as a colonizer, a parliamentary inquiry found the Belgian government was “morally responsible” for Lumumba’s assassination.

The inquiry found “no single document” that proved the Belgian government gave the order to kill Lumumba, but it concluded Belgian officials had previously plotted to kidnap and possibly assassinate him in the months leading up to his death, and the government did nothing to try to stop his murder when he was transferred to Katangese authorities.

It also found King Baudouin was informed in a letter that there were plans to “physically neutralize” Lumumba but did not act on the information.

The parliamentary commission “tried in a way to limit the damages with its conclusions” and shied away from linking Belgium directly to the assassination, De Witte said, “because the diplomatic, ideological and financial consequences would be extremely great.”

In 2002, then Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Louis Michel expressed “sincere regrets” for Belgium’s role in the murder.

Nadia Nsayi, a political scientist specialized in Congo, said Belgium’s assumption of responsibility had been slow, but it was nonetheless welcome.

“Lumumba has become a symbol of the struggle against colonialism, the struggle for freedom, not only for Congolese but for Africans as a whole,” Nsayi said. “Belgium has recognized moral responsibility. It also includes political responsibility. The crux of the matter is that Belgium did not give the Congolese a fair chance of independence.”

National hero

For many Congolese, Belgium’s attempts at reconciliation fall far short of atoning for the country’s colonial past. Congo’s occupation, first by King Leopold II and then by the Belgian state, is considered one of the more brutal in African history, featuring forced labor, systematic mutilation and the death of up to 10 million people.

And while Belgium has slowly started to try to make amends, its efforts have largely been small and symbolic. Last year, King Philippe — an indirect descendent of King Leopold II — broke his silence on the country’s colonial past. He expressed his “profound regret” for the “acts of violence and cruelty” committed in Congo under Belgian rule.

And in February, Prime Minister De Croo agreed to discuss the return of 84,000 artifacts to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Belgian government’s treatment of Lumumba’s tooth is in some ways indicative of the slow, halting progress.

It was only in 2016 — after Lumumba’s children filed a complaint against 12 Belgian officials suspected of participating in his murder — that his tooth was recovered from the family of Soete, the police officer who had disposed of his body.

In 2020, during the global Black Lives Matter movement, Lumumba’s daughter Juliana addressed a letter to the king asking him to hand over her father’s remains.

That prompted the prosecutor’s office to notify the family the tooth was at their disposal. But rather than simply being allowed to collect the remains, the family and others in the diaspora campaigned for an official handover ceremony.

“We really wanted to return the [remains] of Lumumba with honor and all the recognitions on behalf of Belgium,” said Jean-Marie Mosengo, a Congolese artist currently living in Paris who has argued for a ceremony to mark the occasion.

“Lumumba is a part of Congolese heritage to this day,” he said. “Everyone knows him, he is a national hero.”

When the royal couple travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo it will be their first visit in 10 years. But the fact that the king is keeping his distance from a ceremony considered of high importance by many in Congo and Belgium has some questioning the sincerity of his remorse.

Asked whether the king’s absence was a way to put some distance between the monarchy and the process of restitution, De Witte, the author of the book on Lumumba, said, “Yes, of course.”

“It’s already a big concession from the Belgian establishment that De Croo is going to speak” during the handover, he added.

The king’s trip was separated from the restitution of Lumumba’s remains because the Congo trip is a response to an invitation from the Congolese president, said François Bailly, spokesperson for De Croo, whose team is in touch with the Congolese to organize the tooth’s repatriation.

Bailly said that because the tooth was held by the prosecutor’s office, it was a matter for the government to handle, rather than the king in his role as head of state.

Relations between Brussels and Kinshasa in the restitution process are “positive,” according to the Congolese Embassy in Brussels. “There is no cloud. It’s good … There is good feedback, a good feeling between the two countries.”

The tooth was originally scheduled to travel to the DRC last year, but its return was delayed because of a spike in COVID cases there.

‘Still pending’

Further complicating matters is the unfinished investigation into Lumumba’s assassination. Prosecutors have said they are treating the act as a war crime and are investigating whether they can charge the two suspects who are still alive.

“It is a relatively complex investigation,” said Van Duyse. “With time passing by, many witnesses have disappeared, there are not many survivors left. Even among the potentially incriminated persons, there are not many survivors left.”

Soete, the police officer who carried the tooth to Belgium, died in 2000.

“Almost until 2020, justice has not really moved,” De Witte said, pointing out that prosecutors took more than nine years to request access to the relevant documents held by the parliament.

“During this period, they just wanted to wait until all 12 [incriminated] had died, and then they could close the case without any further action,” he added.

Earlier this year, the Belgian parliament rejected the request by prosecutors to access the documents, ruling they were off-limits because the discussion had been held behind closed doors. “I don’t want to hinder the investigation, quite the contrary, but I am the guarantor of compliance with the rules of the assembly,” said Eliane Tillieux, the president of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives.

Prosecutors say they will ask an arbiter to determine whether they should be able to use the commission’s private deliberations.

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One of the last photos to show Patrice Lumumba, alive before his murder in 1961 | Horst Faas/Associated Press


Van Duyse, the spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, pointed out that no DNA test has been carried out to prove the tooth was Lumumba’s and said that doing one would have destroyed it. During his television appearance, Soete said he had also taken another tooth and a piece of a finger. The whereabouts of those is not publicly known.

Perhaps inevitably, given the man it once belonged to, the tooth is at risk of becoming embroiled in Congolese politics. The country is scheduled to hold a presidential election next year.

“Everyone wakes up on the eve of the elections and puts forward their links with Lumumba’s thinking … It is a classic; it does not surprise anyone in Congo … It is the game of all parties,” said Marie Omba Djunga, a Congolese consultant working on the remains restitution.

One of Lumumba’s sons, Guy-Patrice, opposed the return of the remains last year, accusing the Congolese leadership of seeking to “reap political gains” out of the restitution.

Following the handover ceremony, the tooth is expected to remain a day in Brussels to allow the diaspora to pay their respect at the Congolese Embassy and at Place Lumumba, a square in central Brussels.

After that, it will be taken on a tour of Congo, traveling first to Lumumba’s home village, then to Kisangani in the north, where he spent most of his political career. It will then go to Shilatembo, the village where Lumumba was killed, before finally traveling to the capital Kinshasa, where a mausoleum is being erected to hold it.

Then, if all goes according to plan, 62 years after Lumumba led his country into freedom, his tooth will finally be laid to rest.

https://www.politico.eu/article/lumumba ... nial-past/

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#ToHellWithShell: Indigenous peoples in South Africa resist oil and gas exploration

Indigenous coastal communities and environmental organizations in South Africa argue that Shell did not consult affected communities, and did not obtain environmental authorization

June 04, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh

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(The Green Connection/Twitter)

On Monday, May 30, communities from South Africa’s Wild Coast gathered in front of a court in the city of Gqeberha. The day marked the beginning of a landmark 3-day legal challenge brought by these communities against gas and oil multinational Shell, Impact Africa, and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE). The case is the culmination of a long struggle to protect the Wild Coast against oil and gas exploration. In 2014, the DMRE granted Impact Africa an exploration right off the East Coast. Impact Africa then sought to develop an Environment Management Programme (EMPr) required under the Mineral and Petroleum Services Development Act (MPRDA).

This was done just months before South Africa implemented the One Environment System, which streamlined mining regulations and environmental authorizations under the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA). According to legal non-profit Natural Justice, Impact Africa did not conduct an environmental impact assessment, and did not obtain an environmental authorization under NEMA. This authorization works to identify the potential impacts of a project on the environment, social and economic conditions, and cultural heritage as well as allowing for an assessment of mitigation measures.

Over the next few years, the exploration license was renewed twice. In August 2021, Shell acquired the exploration right from Impact Africa in a farm-out agreement. In October, Shell announced that it would commence seismic surveys off the Wild Coast, starting December 1. The process would involve a vessel firing air guns every 10 seconds through 6,011 square kilometers of ocean surface, for five months. These shock wave emissions would penetrate three kilometers of water, into 40 kilometers of the Earth’s crust below the seabed.

The announcement sparked widespread outrage across South Africa, with protests held in nearly 100 towns. The government’s decision to grant the exploration right was heavily condemned by Indigenous peoples in the Wild Coast, who hold spiritual and cultural ties to the ocean. These communities also hold customary, small-scale fishing rights in the area. Not only would seismic testing cause immediate damage and destruction in the Wild Coast, it would potentially pave the way for major environmental disasters in the future if oil extraction were to indeed take place, these groups claimed.

The legal battle against Shell: November, 2021- present

On November 29 2021, Greenpeace Africa, Natural Justice, Kei Mouth Ski Boat Club, and the Border Deep Sea Angling Association approached the court to seek an urgent interim-interim interdict against Shell’s plans to conduct seismic testing in the Wild Coast. Filed at the Eastern Cape Division of the Grahamstown High Court, the application was based on the grounds that seismic exploration activities were prima facie unlawful until Shell applied for, and received, the necessary authorization under NEMA. The applicants also argued that there was no meaningful consultation with the affected communities in the Wild Coast, and that they had not been informed about the exploration rights.

The organizations said Shell’s activities would cause irreparable harm to the sensitive marine life in the area. They would have a direct impact on the rights of the communities of Xolobeni, Nqamakwe, and Port Saint Johns. The applicants sought the urgent interim-interim interdict to stop the seismic surveys pending a full hearing on the case. They noted that they would require time to collect and present expert evidence on the matter. The application was rejected by the court on December 3, 2021, with the judge also ordering the applicants to pay Shell’s legal fees. The applicants appealed the cost order and a judgment is still pending.

Meanwhile on December 2, the Legal Resources Center and Richard Spoor Attorneys approached a court seeking a second urgent interim interdict. The application was filed at the Grahamstown High Court on behalf of the Amadiba, Cwebe, Hobeni, Port Saint Johns, and Kei Mouth communities (Sustaining the Wild Coast and others). The case was split into Parts A and B. Part A sought an interdict to halt the Shell’s seismic testing and Part B was a broader case which argued that Shell did not have the necessary authorization in terms of the NEMA to undertake seismic testing, the company had failed to properly consult the affected communities, and that the seismic testing would violate the communities’ constitutional rights.

Part A was successful, with Judge Gerald Bloem issuing an interdict on December 28th, pending a finalization of Part B. Shell was ordered to immediately cease seismic blasting in the Wild Coast. Ahead of the hearings on Part B, Greenpeace Africa and Natural Justice filed an application in February requesting their application be combined with that of Sustaining the Wild Coast and Others. The full hearings on Part B were initiated in the Port Elizabeth High Court in Gqeberha on May 30th, 2022.


Sustaining the Wild Coast and Others v Minister of Mineral Resources, Shell and Others

The applicants’ arguments were presented before a three-member bench of Judge President Selby Mbenenge, Deputy Judge President Zamani Nhlangulela, and Judge Thandi Norman on Monday. The joinder application is being represented by the Cullinan & Associates environmental law firm. The court will determine whether Shell required an environmental authorization under NEMA and whether the exploration right was granted lawfully. Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC argued that the affected communities had not been consulted. He added that the process itself had been outsourced to consultants, and that the identification of interested parties was not a public process.

None of the notices for consultation were in the isiXhosa language, and in cases that they had been, the newspapers carrying these notices were not in circulation among the affected Wild Coast communities. They were also in English and Afrikaans. Speaking during a post-hearing discussion on June 1st, Nonhle Mbuthuma from the Amadiba Crisis Committee highlighted that Shell only consulted the monarchies within the communities. South Africa has also introduced the Traditional and Khoi San Leadership Bill which allows monarchies to make deals with private companies. Shell’s own papers also show that the traditional leaders it did consult with had stated clearly that a meaningful consultation with the communities was required. Mbuthuma added that the use of newspapers was an insult in a rural context where Indigenous people did not have access to newspapers, and instead relied on forms of communication such as word of mouth, for information.


Adv. Ngcukaitobi SC then argued that Shell should not be allowed to conduct seismic blasting without environmental authorization under NEMA. The company has accepted that it does not have this authorization, arguing that it does not need it. Representing Greenpeace Africa and Natural Justice, Advocate Nick Ferreira added that decision-makers had not considered the climate impacts and key legislation in issuing the exploration right and its renewals. He further stressed that [Mineral Resources] Minister [Gwede] Mantashe had conceded that he had not taken the provisions of the National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management Act into account. The NEM:ICMA mandates all government officials to take into consideration the interests of the entire community, future generations, and the environment while deliberating decisions related to coastal public property and activities.

“Not only were many impacted community members unaware of the seismic testing due to the inadequate public participation process, but registered interested and affected parties were not even informed of the granting or subsequent renewals of the exploration right,” Ferreira said.

The Respondents’ claims

Proceedings resumed on May 31st, with arguments from Counsel representing Impact Africa, Shell, and the Minister of the DMRE. Jeremy Gauntlett SC, representing Impact Africa, argued that Greenpeace Africa and Natural Justice added nothing new to the case. He added that the applicants were using a legal “knobkierie” to undermine the Minister’s decision-making authority. He further stated that the precautionary principle was not relevant to the case, and the relevant question was whether the harm was serious and irreversible.

Meanwhile, representing the DMRE, advocate Albert Beyleveld SC argued that the notification published in the newspaper was adequate according to the MPRDA. He added that the applicants should have directly challenged the regulations as inadequate. Finally, he argued that applicants were required to first resort to internal remedies under the MPRDA before approaching the court. Shell’s representative, Advocate Adrian Friedman stated that an environmental management programme (EMPr) under the old MPRDA was the equivalent of an Environmental Authorization (EA) under the One Environment System. As such, he reiterated Shell’s claim that it did not require an EA for its seismic testing.

These arguments were refuted by Ngcukaitobi. First, he highlighted the differences between an EMPr and an EA under NEMA, stating that a plain reading of the laws and regulations undercut the respondents’ “circular and untenable” arguments. On the question of internal remedies, he pointed to Minister Mantashe’s biased public commentary against the applicants, and the fact that an entity associated with Shell had donated money to the African National Congress in 2021. Advocate Ferreira also argued that Greenpeace Africa and Natural Justice had requested copies of the decisions from the DMRE, but did not receive a response until March 2022.

Ngcukaitobi also rejected Shell’s claims that a “tick-box” exercise of the MPRDA’s bare minimum requirements constituted adequate consultation. He stressed the necessity of applying a precautionary principle to the case, arguing that experts had told the court that harm from the offshore exploration was inevitable. Meanwhile, Ferreria also told the court that an environmental authorization (EA) was a legal requirement, independent of an exploration right. Shell needs an EA prior to conducting a seismic survey, which is a listed activity under NEMA. Importantly, while Minister Mantashe could deem an EMPr as an EA, he did not exercise this power in this case.

The Court has reserved judgment and adjourned the matter.

“Are the Wild Coast communities anti-development?”

Speaking at the post-case reflection discussion, Wilmein Wicomb also addressed the narrative that the Wild Coast communities were “anti” or opposed to development. She argued, “if we accept that these communities are anti-development, that is not relevant. The law does not require Minister Mantashe or Shell that companies consult only those people who agree with their development. That would make a farce of consultation. The fact that they are completely opposed to these surveys is irrelevant, they must still be spoken to and their concerns taken on board.”

Wicomb added that a question which then emerged was, had the communities in fact stated that they did not want the seismic surveys under any circumstances, would this then bind Minister Mantashe. However, the applicants did not make this case here. Instead they stated that they had to be consulted, and their opposition had to be understood. Wicomb added that these communities are not anti-development. Rather, “they are against this kind of development, which is decided in Pretoria and benefits a few, largely the companies. These communities are pro sustainable development, bottom-up development, and participatory development.”

Nonhle Muthumaba stated importantly, “We are for development. But the question they failed to ask [the communities] is ‘if you do not want this, then what do you want?’ They do not want to ask this question, because they believe in an imposed, top-down approach.”

Summary of arguments accessed from Natural Justice

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/06/04/ ... ploration/

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Libya and the Option of Division
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 3, 2022
Habib Lassoued

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The Dabaiba government has no legitimacy and operates outside the framework of the law, but enjoys international recognition, while the Bashagha government, which enjoys full parliamentary legitimacy and expresses the will of most Libyans, finds itself banned from entering the capital.

In the absence of national unity the situation in Libya still requires serious efforts to overcome the crisis of governance and the struggle for wealth. Today, two weeks before the end of the legal term for the transitional phase emanating from the Forum for Political Dialogue, there is no indication that a political solution is about to crystallize. Elections, which the outgoing Prime Minister, Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, claimed would be held this June, turned out to be an illusion in keeping with influential Western capitals and the UN mission, with the apparent collusion of regional powers, as well as internal ones, represented by Mr. Dabaiba and his active team.

Libyan oil is still prohibited from production and export, which wastes important daily income for the state in light of the rise in energy prices in global markets as a result of the situation in Ukraine and Western sanctions imposed on Moscow. In mid-April, tribal activists closed a number of fields and ports in the south and east of the country in reaction to the policies of Mr. Dabaiba, who shifted his authority from a government of national unity to a government of national division, searching for the closest means to provoke the General Command of the Army in Benghazi and partners in governance in the the eastern and southern regions. He focused on gaining the support of warlords, militia leaders, regional leaders, political Islam, and corruption networks that would thrive on the continuation of the current situation, relying on them to support his emerging dictatorship.

Oil will not return to flow in the closed areas until an agreement is reached on the mechanism for distributing the revenues between the three regions, as agreed by Washington, a country trying to control all aspects of the Libyan file, and the United Nations mission whose positions echo American ones. This was announced by several parties, including Ambassador Richard Norland, after his last meeting in Cairo with Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh. Meanwhile, it was officially announced that the government emanating from the House of Representatives will carry out its duties from Sirte, the center of the country, the closest city under the influence of the National Army to the capital, Tripoli, which represents the historic unity of Libyans before Libya appeared in the mid-thirties and the establishment of the national state at the beginning of the fifties of the last century.

The House of Representatives will hold a general session in the city, during which it will ratify the state budget for 2022, and although the outgoing government uses all available means to prevent a quorum from being completed, the issue of division has become a reality as Dabaiba refuses to peacefully hand over the reins of power to Fathi Bashagha.

Dabaiba had his hand on all the sovereign institutions, but Aqila Saleh is aware that the heads of these institutions refused to accept his invitation to attend the Sirte meeting due to the influence of external forces. Yet, they jumped at the invitation of the American ambassador in Tunisia.

With the Governor of the Central Bank, Al-Siddiq Al-Kabeer, the head of the National Oil Corporation, Mustafa Sanalla, the head of the Administrative Control Authority, Suleiman Al-Shanti, and the head of the Audit Bureau, Khaled Shakshak, refusing to attend the Sirte meeting, they have paved the way for a new stage of institutional division, similar to what the country knew after the Brotherhood’s militia coup over the results the June 2014 legislative elections, which lasted until March 2021 when an illusion of unification was perpetuated by the Government of National Unity that came into power fraught with corruption cases documented from Tunisia to Geneva.

The new government arrived as a last attempt to end division and declare national reconciliation in preparation for free and democratic elections. We have to remember that its president, Fathi Bashagha, was one of the most hostile opponents of both the House of Representatives in Tripoli and the army leadership in Benghazi. He had to take practical steps in this direction, but the opponents of the idea of ​​one Libya and the reconciliation project strongly opposed him, whether in his city of Misrata or in the capital, from which he was exercising his duties as Minister of the Interior for the last two years in the Government of National Accord.

Today, many voices have begun calling for a return to the 1951 constitution, without the 1962 amendments, to federal Libya, and the advocates of secession now discuss the possibility of dividing the country, suggesting a geographical distribution according to the interests of external forces.

Meanwhile,the Dabaiba team is active at all levels to remain in power, and they are unceasing in their internal and external incitements against the Bashagha government, the army and parliament.

The UN mission and the US are unable to find a solution because they are involved in a game of interests that serve foreign countries, not the Libyan people. Internal and external forces of corruption systematically obstruct a political solution, blocking any effort to transcend the internal conflict and unify institutions towards comprehensive national reconciliation and fair, pluralistic, democratic elections.

Weeks ago, Dabaiba discussed elections this June, and the American ambassador said elections that may be organized soon, but none of that will happen, and the earliest possible date for legislative elections will be Spring of 2023.

The Dabaiba government lacks legitimacy and operates outside the framework of the law, but it enjoys international recognition resulting from the inability of the United Nations to dismantle the network of confrontation open to the sharing of external influence in the country.

Some say that there are no serious efforts to reach a political solution in the country, and this is partly true. External and internal parties believe that guaranteeing their interests lies in maintaining the situation as it is. The Dabaiba government is currently best able to perpetuate crisis for the forces that benefit from the absence of the state.

The state of division has become an option for internal and external parties that do not accept national unity. Only on the day the state regains its sovereignty and the people’s will, will Libya be able to protect itself, fortify its capabilities and confront those who covet its natural, economic, financial and strategic wealth.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... -division/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:43 pm

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Two young girls return to their homes after drawing water from a stream that the farm dwelling community shares with wild animals, 29 July 2020. (Photo: New Frame / Magnificent Mndebele)

Dossier no. 53: This land is the land of our ancestors
By Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Posted Jun 08, 2022)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on June 6, 2022 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research) |

Introduction
Growing up on a farm in Nyarha, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, I experienced the best childhood.1 There are several reasons for this. The first was the innocence of childhood, just being a little girl running freely and playing with oonopopi (‘dolls’), iraysisi (‘racing’), undize (‘hide and seek’), upuca (‘the stones game’), and ugqaphsi (‘jumping rope’). The sense of community, freedom, and interdependence in communal living was another joy. My parents could send me to a neighbouring homestead without any fear for my safety. My mother would often send me to the neighbour’s house to ask for igaqa le beef stock (‘a cube of beef stock’) to season our food if she didn’t have any, or intwana ye swekile (‘some sugar’) if she ran out.

The only time when I felt the absence of that freedom and the sense of belonging begin to dwindle was at the sight of the white farm owner. Instantly, I became overwhelmed by a great fear. The fear was both a learned and taught behaviour; we were taught that it was a form of respect. While taking instructions from the farmer, my grandfather would be deferential, bowing his head to avoid eye contact. When my father heard the sound of the farmer’s motorcycle approaching, he would quickly hide his beer.

The relationship I have described between the farm owner and farmworkers and dwellers is part of the social fabric of the farm. Farms are not just units of production; they ‘are structured by paternalist discourses–practices that weave power relations into the very fabric of social identity and daily life’.2 As a form of control and display of his power, the white farm owner needed to get the sense that you feared him. Appearing fearless was viewed as a sign of disrespect, especially if it meant that you were ready to question anything that the farm owner said or did.

As a child, I found it peculiar when my father used to tell me that all of the vast farmland around eNyarha belonged to white people. None of the Black people had any land. As an adult, I was enraged to learn that five generations of my family had worked for the same family, but we had no claim to that land whatsoever. I questioned why my family’s decades of labour bore fruit only for the wealthy white landowners and their descendants. I could not reconcile the story of five generations of hard labour with the life we were living: a life of poverty.

The labour relations on South African farms continue to maintain race, gender, and class inequalities as a central character of work and life. Large-scale commercial farmers, like all other capitalists, maintain cycles of servitude which result in the generational poverty of their workers and engage in exploitative labour practices such as coercing employees into long hours of manual labour and paying them slave wages. As workers spend most of their time working, they rarely have the time, physical strength, or mental energy to practice other methods of subsistence, undertake recreational activities, or travel away from the farm. Both the land and the workers themselves are sites of exploitation. Farmworkers are paid poorly: as of 2022, their salaries range from R2000–R6000 (about $136–$408) per month. Their paltry wages are not enough to sustain them, forcing them into a life of minimal subsistence, and they often complain that they can’t afford to purchase food or pay for their children’s education.

Many farmworkers and intellectuals alike have pointed to the unpaid, undervalued, and often invisible labour of reproducing and sustaining life, such as the birthing and rearing of children, maintaining the household, caring for the sick, cooking, cleaning, and so on, also known as reproductive labour. This labour is at the base of our economic system, as it reproduces not only our existence as a species and society but also provides workers for the capitalist class. In the words of Susan Ferguson:

… our understanding of capitalism is incomplete if we treat it simply as an economic system involving workers and owners and fail to examine the ways in which the wider social reproduction of the system–that is, the daily and generational reproductive labour that occurs in households, in schools, in hospitals, in prisons and so on–sustains the drive for accumulation.3

In the context of farms, workers’ meagre incomes hinder social reproduction for their families. Under this system, in which farmworkers are tied to the land yet retain no ownership over it for several generations, their employment encompasses all aspects of their world: to work the land, to live on the land, to nurture and sustain the land, to raise children on the land, to bury family and loved ones on the land, to have a connection with the land, to love the land, and to call the land home, but never to own the land.

Bab’Kubheka, a 71-year-old retired farmworker and farm dweller in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, explains how his parents’ social class has impacted his life and the lives of his siblings. He says:

We were crippled by the system. Our fathers were labour tenants who had no money to send us to school.4 They were also told how many cows they could keep and where to keep them. They did not get any renumeration, hence they are known as labour tenants … we could not be educated at the tertiary level because our parents had no money. We lived on the food they used to grow. We did not sell anything. They woke up to go and work for white people without any remuneration. Today we have a problem that our people–Black people–still do not have land.5

Bab’Kubheka’s account exemplifies Walter Rodney’s assertion that ‘To mark time or even to move slowly while others leap ahead is virtually equivalent to going backward’.6 Poverty transfers and reproduces across generations.7

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In addition to farm work, women like Nozibonelo Mavis Dayi are largely responsible for the social reproduction of the family in the form of unpaid care work in the household, 21 March 2021. (Photo: New Frame / Bonile Bam)

About This Dossier
Departing from the assumptions that have shaped the way that the land question is framed as an elite nationalist project in South Africa, this dossier focuses on farmworkers as key contributors to the land debate. It makes two main arguments. The first is that one of the main reasons for the enduring generational poverty of Black farmworkers is the exploitation of their labour. The farm, like many other capitalist endeavours, relies on the devaluation of the labour of Black people. Landowners treat Black people’s labour as cheap and maintain a kind of serfdom in which landless workers are tied to the owner’s land and compelled to be loyal. Threats of job loss and evictions are a few ways that farm owners extract loyalty, which has serious implications for the farmworkers: to question anything is to risk everything.

Secondly, this dossier argues that those who work the land deserve to be its primary beneficiaries, but, instead, they have been excluded from the profits and stability of owning land for generations. They have also largely been made invisible in labour statistics and excluded from the land debate and in national discussions on land redistribution policy. Understanding their perspectives is important for advancing a land reform programme that benefits those who work the land, which is why this dossier centres their contributions to the land debate, and why Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research conducted interviews with farmworkers from the South African provinces of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, and Western Cape for this dossier.

The land question in South Africa has several dimensions, including the role of white-owned farms, traditional authority in the former Bantustans, and the urban land question. This dossier is devoted the former.

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Women farmworkers face additional inequities in land distribution and working conditions. Former labourers Freeda Mkhabela, Lucia Foster, and Gugu Ngubane (from left to right) are among the activists struggling against landlessness as well as poor pay and working conditions, and for better treatment of farmworkers, 26 May 2021. (Photo: New Frame / Mlungisi Mbele)

Our History Has Become Our Present

‘Time does not pass or progress; it accumulates, even in the work of forgetting or ending, even in the immense labour it takes to surrender what-has-been, or to make reparation on it, or to address its ill effects’.8

– Ian Baucom


Writing about the plight of farmworkers in South Africa in 1990, historian Wendy Davies showed how one can track land distribution along racial lines as well as the devaluation of the labour of Black people through history. Davies detailed how Black pastoralist and farming communities were dispossessed of land by sequential waves of white settlers from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. White settlers gained ‘ownership’ of new territory by winning frontier wars against Black chieftainships and kingdoms. Through a process of drawing up bogus treaties and deeds of sale, they ensured that the terms were vastly in their favour. Although there was significant resistance to their advance, the white settlers’ use of violence enabled the success of their occupations.9

British and Dutch (‘Boer’) settlers in South Africa required labour for their farms, plantations, and mines on the land that they had appropriated from Black South Africans.10 In Davies’ words, White farmers emphasised that ‘only if blacks toiled for the white man could their presence be tolerated’.11 The British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes displayed this view in his 1894 speech to the Cape House Parliament, pronouncing that ‘it must be brought home to them [Blacks] that in the future, nine-tenths of them will have to spend their lives in daily labour, in physical work, in manual labour’.[12] This process was carried out by coercing Black people to work for white farmers by taking their land away from them, by destroying their livelihoods, and by introducing taxation in order to drive them into the labour economy.13

Davies explains that, ‘when white farmers had gained control of virtually all the land, Black farmers began to enter into sharecropping or tenancy arrangements with their white “owners”’.14 Sharecropping meant that those who worked the land shared a portion (typically 50 per cent) of their crop with the ‘owner’ in return for land access.15 Farms were and still are home to labour tenants, another group that provides free labour to farm owners in return for land access, typically by working for free for six months of the year. There are also Black farm dwellers who reside with their families on farmland that they own, some of whom are employed in farm work on a part-time or full-time basis.16

This process of accumulation by dispossession has had an enormous impact on social and class formations across the African continent. As Issa G. Shivji explains, ‘the disparity we see between workers and owners, between rural and urban areas and between colonised and metropolitan countries is the result of a process of unequal exchange that goes back several centuries’.17

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Elderly and retired farm dwellers and farmworkers carry memories of their ancestors through oral histories. Nomabhaso Skenjana points to the site where her family’s graves had been located from the 1880s until they were destroyed during apartheid, when the farm was seized by white people, 4 August 2021. (Photo: New Frame / Bonile Bam)

Land Distribution by Race and Gender

The agricultural sector in South Africa is a key driver of economic growth; in the final quarter of 2020, the agricultural GDP grew by 13.1 per cent, and, in the same calendar year, the country’s agricultural exports were worth R151.7 billion ($10.2 billion).18 However, one of the problems with the current distribution of land in South Africa is that farmworkers and farm dwellers are excluded from the wealth produced by agricultural exploits. In 2017, the total land used in commercial agriculture accounted for 37.9 per cent of the total land area of South Africa.19 As seen in table 1, most agricultural land is still privately owned by white male farmers, though white people make up less than 10 per cent of the population. Meanwhile, individual men own 72 per cent of the total farms and agricultural holdings with individual owners, compared to women, who own only 13 per cent.20 However, these statistics only record landowners and not those who work land, who are made invisible, thereby erasing the reality on the ground that there are two players in agricultural production: the farm owner and the farmworker.

Table 1: Individual farm and agricultural
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It is worth noting that the gender inequities on South African farms are in line with continental and global trends. Zakithi Sibandze of the Swaziland Rural Women’s Assembly describes how, in order to have access to land, women in rural Swaziland must either be married to a man or have a son or brother in whose name the land must be registered. Similarly, in Kenya, as Perpetua Wambui Karanja writes, ‘Women’s economic well-being has continued to depend largely on their rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance, and their rights to land ownership as an instrument of social and economic transformation has increasingly been neglected’.22

In the Northern and Western Cape of South Africa, many women are seasonal workers employed in vineyards and orchards during the harvest, generally for six months at a time. This causes both job and food insecurity for many of the women farmworkers and, consequently, for their entire families. MamNywabe, a farmworker from Nyarha, in the Eastern Cape, explains how gender inequality exists even when women are permanently employed: ‘At my workplace, we get treated differently as women because, even if something concerns us, it only gets discussed and concluded by the men but when it comes to us, we know nothing about it’.23 At the household level, women are also largely responsible for facilitating the social reproduction of the family in the form of unpaid care work in addition to farm work. The men, meanwhile, are more often employed on a long-term or permanent basis and secure better paying jobs as foremen, supervisors, and bakkie (‘pick-up truck’) drivers.

Given this reality, when discussing the agrarian question in South Africa, it is essential to address the gender inequities in land ownership and the career progression for women farmworkers, as well as the invisible work that women undertake in their households.

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The graves of Black people are proof of the labour of generations of their families on South African farms. This is the site of the ancestral graveyard of the Phyllis family on which Yvonne’s father Jacob and his family worked, 6 June 2021. (Photo: New Frame / Andy Mkosi)

Umhlaba wookhokho Bethu! The Land of Our Ancestors!

‘Nature did not produce property-less labourers on the one side and owners of property on the other’.24

– Issa G. Shivji


Farmworkers relate to the land with a sense of belonging and cultural heritage, often referring to it as umhlaba wookhokho bethu (‘the land of our ancestors’). This phrase has multiple meanings in the context of farming communities. Not only do they think of the land of their ancestors through a historical lens; they also conceive of it as an unresolved question of injustice, understanding it to be deeply rooted in history and in generations of exploitation by white farm owners – a history that continues to the present day. Farmworkers see the land as being stolen from their forefathers through the process of colonial dispossession and deception that advanced the development of capitalism. In their articulation, this not only led to the loss of land and livestock, but also a disruption of pre-colonial African conceptions of land relations and land use. The understanding of the land as a commons–that it can be held communally–was largely destroyed.

As we know, primitive accumulation was a crucial component of colonial rule in Africa. Farmworkers are critical of the white minority’s illegitimate acquisition of land and argue that it is the root of racial inequality. In countries that experienced the tragedy of settler colonialism, Shivji explains how massive amounts of land were alienated and how these countries experienced initial processes of land grabbing.25 He refers to this as ‘primitive accumulation par excellence’, the original process by which the conditions of capitalist accumulation were created.26 This process also produced a ‘surplus population’ of landless people who held neither formal nor customary rights, leading to the proletarianisation of a large sector of the population. This created a set of people who had nothing to use for subsistence and reproduction except for their own energy and muscle power.

Over time, agricultural land ownership has become even more racialised. The acquisition of land is a costly process that is more easily afforded by white people who have the generational wealth and resources to purchase land. The wealth that farmers gain from the land in turn allows them to acquire more land and make further investments on their existing property. Farmworkers, by comparison, have no share in this prosperity. They create wealth for the white farm owners while remaining impoverished, and their children inherit their parents’ poverty. This is how the wealth gap becomes more entrenched, as expressed by the fact that the richest 1 per cent of South Africans hold roughly 40.8 per cent of the country’s total wealth while the bottom 90 per cent hold a 20.1 per cent share.27

Emerging from the historical processes of radicalised dispossession, land ownership and enrichment from it have enormous implications for power relations in which farm owners continue to have far more rights than the workers over whom they exercise control. As Carmen Louw of the feminist initiative Women on Farms Project explains, ‘The farms in the Western Cape stem from colonial times. The people working on the farms today are descendants of the slaves that started these farms and, therefore, they have a right to land redistribution’.28 It is clear that farmworkers do not view their historical dispossession as separate from the current land and labour struggles.29

On the most basic level, farmworkers are concerned about securing their own housing and shelter to make better lives for themselves, their families, and future generations. Oom Boetman, a farmworker who specialises in agricultural fencing in Colesberg, in the Northern Cape, explains: ‘Ons soek beter bly plek, dan sal ons ook beter lewe’(‘We want better housing so that we too may live better lives’).30 Similarly, Tanie Leana, a farm dweller in the same province who has six children and one grandson, wishes that the government would develop their community. ‘Ons soek net huise’ (‘We just want houses’), her daughter says.31

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Keeping livestock, ukulima (‘crop farming’), and ukufuya (‘animal husbandry’) are sources of survival for farmworkers like Ephraim Muggibelo Simelane, 30 July 2020. (Photo: New Frame / Magnificent Mndebele)

Generational Labour

‘We will never address the dignity of farmworkers if we don’t get the land.

The land question is non-negotiable!’

– Trevor Christians, secretary-general of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural, and Allied Workers’ Union (CSAAWU)


Though the Freedom Charter promises that ‘the land shall be shared among those who work it’, and section 25 (5) of the Constitution of South Africa promises equitable access to land, these promises have yet to be fulfilled. Several generations of landless farmworker families have used their labour in service of the productivity and maintenance of farms across the country. In the process, they have contributed immensely to the generational wealth of farm owners. Farmworkers tie this process to the labour struggles of their forefathers; long-term generational labour on farms should be considered a sufficient reason not only to justify farmworkers’ tenure, but also to claim land ownership.

Farmworkers Baw’uSukwini and Baw’uMkwayi both touch on this point. A fifth-generation farmworker, Baw’uSukwini, talks about the case of his family on a livestock farm in Nyarha, in the Eastern Cape:

I think that my dad is the fourth generation on that farm … My dad was over 80 years old when he died. My dad never went to school; he was born [on the farm and] … he grew up there and worked there. He reached old age and died there. All eight of us siblings … grew up on that farm and we worked on that farm … farmworkers are the ones who have worked that land until their hair turns grey. Why is it that the government doesn’t buy a farm? After buying the farm, they could go around the farms looking for people who are living on the [white-owned] farms. The government could indicate that a farm has been bought for them to live on so that they wouldn’t have to go to the township.32

Baw’uMkwayi, a retired farmworker on another livestock farm in Nyarha, in the Eastern Cape, shares her story:

all of them [my family] worked on the farm … I also worked there for 20 years … [and] my wife also worked on that farm … for 20 years in the kitchen at the farm owner’s compound. When we left, she too got nothing; she left empty handed.3

Most farmworkers have no formal employment contracts or benefits. As Baw’uMkwayi and Baw’uSukwini describe, it is common for workers to end up with no pension or way to support themselves in old age, making them reliant on younger generations. In this way, the cycle of labour is perpetuated as younger people work on farms to support dependents of various ages.

Ryno Filander, president of the CSAAWU, a farmworker’s union in the Western Cape, shared that he, his father, and his mother all work on the same wine farm in Langeberg. He explores two parallels on the farm: the multi-generational wealth and power of farm owners and the multi-generational poverty and powerlessness of farmworkers. ‘If you have land, you have power’, he says. The other problem, Ryno explains, is the ‘dop system’.34 With the dop system, employers pay their employees with cheap wine, or dop. Though the dop system was outlawed in South Africa in the 1960s, in the late 1990s researchers estimated that anywhere from 2 per cent to 20 per cent of wages in the Western Cape were still being issued in alcohol.35 Alcoholism remains one of the major challenges facing public health across South Africa–particularly in the Western Cape.

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Members of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural, and Allied Workers’ Union (CSAAWU) protest in Cape Town against poor working and living conditions on farms, 21 September 2019. (Photo: New Frame / Barry Christianson)

Grave Matters

Farms have also become places of great spiritual significance for farmworkers whose ancestors were buried on that land. For farmworkers, their ancestors’ graves are in many instances proof of the intimacy between work and life on the farms. The concepts of home and belonging are also influenced by the ancestral connection between the living kunye nezinyanya (‘and ancestors’). This is one of the main reasons why families live on farms for years despite exploitation and abuse. As MaNkomo, a farmworker we spoke to in Mooi River, KwaZulu-Natal, explained, ‘We don’t want to leave these farms because our parents and grandparents are buried here’.36

The loss of the ‘intangible’–the vital spiritual connection between the living and the dead–is a significant consideration if we are to ensure restorative reparation and justice for farmworkers. Dineo Skosana’s work examines protests against the relocation of 1,000 African graves from Tweefontein Farm in Ogies, Mpumalanga to a new site, leading living descendants to report feeling ‘spiritually vulnerable and disconnected from their ancestors’.37 By examining this phenomenon, Skosana highlights the failures of post-apartheid objectives to remedy past injustices. She argues that inadequacies in the legal system have created the conditions for market-friendly laws, such as the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (2002), to override the protection of heritage enshrined in The National Heritage Resource Act (1999), resulting in new forms of exclusion.38

Currently, land governance does not take cultural or historical aspects into consideration and continues to reproduce pain and trauma for the landless. This contributes to the dismal failure of the land reform programme that is currently being implemented by the state. Farmworkers see ancestral graves as both proof of labour and a political claim–that scores of people buried on farms were once labour tenants and exploited workers who ensured the farm’s flourishing. These graves are a testimony to the lives of those who bore the brunt of racial capitalism. Bhut’Ben, a second-generation farmworker in Mooi River, KwaZulu-Natal spoke to this point more broadly: ‘Umphakathi wa-la awukho esimeni esi-right ngokwe nkululeko, kuthiwa sisenkululekweni. Cha as’kabi khona thina. Sisagqilazekile’ (‘The community here has not experienced freedom. We are said to have freedom but no, we have not yet achieved it here. We are still in slavery’).39

Addressing Food Insecurity

A report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations shows that food insecurity is already a global crisis, meaning that people do not have, ‘at all times, … physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.40 This report estimates that, in 2020, anywhere from 720 to 811 million people across the globe faced hunger while one in three (2.37 billion) lacked adequate food access.41

Despite the fact that farmworkers in South Africa – and around the world – provide food for society, they are one of the groups most vulnerable to food insecurity.42 What we eat, drink, and wear is all thanks to farmworkers. Though their skills and expertise are crucial to the economy, their labour continues to be devalued. Seasonal farmworkers (usually women) who are often employed for only half the year regularly face the challenge of job insecurity given that they do not have access to their own land to produce food year-round. Climate change has also rendered farming an increasingly precarious field, mainly for frontline and low-income communities around the world.

One of the main critiques presented to argue against the redistribution of land is the dangerous myth that it will negatively affect food security. This myth not only disregards the fact that billions of people around the world already experience food insecurity, but also relies on large-scale production and manufacturing under capitalism as the only path forward. Rather than centring a concern to guarantee food security for all, capitalist paranoia fixates on its fear that redistributing land will disrupt profit revenues generated by large-scale farming and food production. While some farmworkers, mainly the elderly, are asking for the recognition of peasant landholdings, where small landholders survive from and produce on the land, ukulima (‘crop farming’) and ukufuya (‘animal husbandry’) are not limited to familial subsistence.43 Generally, farmworkers are critical of the myth that white farmers are the only ones capable of farming with superior technology and are the only efficient producers, while Black farmers only farm for subsistence and contribute minimally to the economy.44

A genuine concern for food security would take into account other means of producing food, such as growing crops ukusiphilisa (‘for our livelihoods’). Along these lines, the idea of food sovereignty was developed in the 1990s to advocate for ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems’.45 Prioritising food sovereignty is an alternative way of organising our food system that gives those who work the land a say in how the agricultural industry is organised and what its productive priorities should be.

However, food sovereignty and ukusiphilisa – alongside farmworkers’ relations to land–are disregarded by the capitalist solution to food production. Farmworkers’ land aspirations are greater than producing food for themselves and their families; they see themselves as farmers in their own right, as workers of the land, as producers of food, and as farmers of livestock, and they strongly believe in their ability to contribute substantially to domestic and continental markets. An effective land redistribution programme must support their ambition.

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Sbongile Tabhethe works in the food garden at eKhenana, a settlement supported by the shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo in Cato Manor, Durban, 9 June 2020.
(Photo: New Frame / Mlungisi Mbele)

Conclusion
Land reform in South Africa has failed miserably at addressing the injustices of colonialism and apartheid. Post-apartheid governments have adopted a market-oriented approach to land redistribution by prioritising the willing-seller, willing-buyer model, which has only deepened inequality. The beneficiaries of land are still elites and large agricultural corporations who can access bank loans. Land reform as it stands has not led to restorative justice, nor has it solved the problem of land hunger amongst the masses or among the Black farmworkers who have built up the wealth of farm owners for generations.

Land redistribution is an urgent need to remedy ‘historical wrongs’ and address existing social and economic inequities in order to secure an egalitarian future for all.46 Today in South Africa, farmworkers live under the most dehumanising conditions. In all of the country’s nine provinces, they regularly face eviction despite the existence of laws such as the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997, which is intended to prevent displacement. In cases where farm dwellers resist eviction, landowners have been known to cut off basic services like water and electricity in an effort to push them off the farms. Labour and living conditions on farms are appalling, and the people who live and work there have limited access to education and healthcare services, keeping them trapped in poverty.

Descendants of the forgotten workers from centuries past call for reparation. A land redistribution discussion which deliberately ignores African modes of being and relationality to land upholds the colonial project and portends dehumanising exclusion. Any land redistribution programme which ignores these claims is insufficient.

The following demands from farmworkers and farm dwellers are key components of an effective land reform programme:

1.The government of South Africa must consult farmworkers and farm dwellers to incorporate their contributions into the development of a land reform programme which addresses their land needs.
2.Labour tenants’ claims to land ownership should be given priority in order to avoid land reform that solely enriches Black elites.
3.The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development should facilitate the process of white farm owners apportioning some of their farmland to lifetime employees and descendants of families who have worked on farms for several generations.
4.The government must purchase farms for farmworkers and assist them with capital for start-up costs, farming equipment, and agricultural skills.
5.Land reform in South Africa must take into account the social factors that contribute to food insecurity and acknowledge the opportunities to rectify it through land redistribution.
6.The process of land reform must address the marginalisation of women workers in the agricultural industry and the lack of land ownership by women farmers to ensure gender parity in both spheres.

Loo ngumhlaba wookhokho bethu! This is the land of our ancestors! Land to those who work it; it is high time that those who work the land get to own the land.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/08/dossier ... ancestors/

Bibliography and end Notes at link.

I do not see why the SA government should pay the 'Boers' anything for the land they expropriated. "Good for the goose, good for the gander", expropriate without compensation!

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Somalia: Mohamud Inaugurated as President Amid Peace Pledge

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Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Mogadishu, Somalia, June 9, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @HassanSMohamud

Published 10 June 2022 (22 minutes ago)

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud pledged to deal vigorously with corruption, tackle the severe drought which is ravaging the country, and reduce poverty across the country.

On Thursday, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was inaugurated as the country's tenth leader amid tight security in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The ceremony was graced by leaders from Ethiopia, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya, and representatives from over 20 countries.

In his speech, Mohamud promised to stabilize Somalia which has been facing terror threats and spearhead efforts to bring peace and cohesion to the country. The 66-year-old Mohamud, who was elected on May 15, pledged to deal vigorously with corruption, tackle the severe drought which is ravaging the country, and reduce poverty across the country.

He appealed to the international community to help Somalia overcome the current drought, the worst in at least 40 years, that has forced more than half a million people to abandon their homes in search of food and water in the last four months.

Mohamud will promote peace, remain neutral in global affairs, and cooperate with countries that do not violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. "Somalia is ready to have a relationship with any country. However, the country must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia," he said.


Mohamud, who served as Somalia's president between 2012 and 2017, promised to prioritize reconciliation and strengthening of institutions to give hope to the citizens. He will initiate appropriate reforms to promote trade and economic cooperation.

"The Somalian people are known to be very good at trade, having large businesses in many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the West that play a major role in the economic development of those countries," he said.

Former President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, also known as Farmajo, congratulated Mohamud on his inauguration and assured him of his unwavering support as the new president embarks on his four-year term.

"We celebrate your success and commit to offering you our strongest support to deliver your vision. We are truly proud of ourselves for our longstanding tradition of democracy as this day signifies victory for our nation," Farmajo said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Som ... -0006.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 14, 2022 3:06 pm

4.1 Million Kenyans Facing Starvation Due to Drought

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A woman in a makeshift camp for climate refugees. ​​​​​ | Photo: Twitter/ @USAIDSavesLives

Published 14 June 2022

Over a million livestock that comprise camels, cattle, goats and sheep have died in the regions due to drought.

On Monday, the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) informed that the number of people facing hunger and starvation in Kenya due to drought increased to 4.1 million in June from 3.5 million in May.

The government agency noted that the drought situation continued to deteriorate, with the majority of those affected being in 19 out of the 23 arid and semi-arid areas.

"This is attributed to the poor performance of the 2021 short rains coupled with previous two failed consecutive seasons and early cessation of the 2022 long rains season," NDMA said.

Six of the affected counties namely Laikipia, Mandera, Marsabit, Wajir, Isiolo and Samburu are in alarm drought phase. Thirteen regions including Kilifi, Turkana, West-Pokot, Meru (North), Garissa, Kajiado, Kitui, Taita-Taveta, Tharaka-Nithi and Tana-River are in alert drought phase.

Acute malnutrition has also been noted across the counties with 942,000 cases of children aged 6-59 months acutely malnourished and 134,000 cases of pregnant or lactating women acutely malnourished in need of treatment.

Over a million livestock that comprise camels, cattle, goats and sheep have died in the regions due to drought, with NDMA warning that mortalities will increase as the drought situation assumes a worsening trend.

Millions of people across the Horn of Africa are facing starvation and death, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the Famine Early Warning System Network, with the worst affected countries including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/4.1 ... -0001.html

Burkina Faso: Allegedly Jihadist Raid Leaves 50 Casualties

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Burkina Faso authorities reported 50 casualties in the attack on the Seytenga village. Jun. 13, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@DefensePost

Published 13 June 2022 (9 hours 21 minutes ago)

On Monday, Burkina Faso authorities reported at least 50 death resulting from an allegedly jihadist attack.

Lionel Bilgo, Burkina Faso Government spokesperson, announced on Monday that 50 people died from the attack reportedly carried out by jihadists in a village in the north of the country.

After the Saturday night's attack of the Seytenga village, "the army has so far found 50 bodies," said Bilgo, suggesting that the toll might increase. According to a Reuters security source, the death toll is more than 100.

The UN released a statement on Monday, condemning the event that "claimed many victims." The report urged the country's authorities to take responsibility for such a massacre to justice. Last week, Seytenga was the scenario of bloody fighting.

On Thursday, eleven gendarmes were killed, which unleashed a military operation, resulting in the deaths of around 40 jihadists, according to the army's statements. "The bloodshed was caused by reprisals to the army's actions," said the spokesperson. "The country has been hit, but the army is doing its job."


After a seven-year-old jihadist insurgency, Sahel has lost more than 2000 people and displaced more than 1.9 million people. Those attacks have been centered on Burkina Faso's north and east.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bur ... -0028.html

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At least 49 killed in armed attacks in Sudan’s West Darfur over the past week

Earlier major armed attacks by the Janjaweed militias in the last week of April had targeted West Darfur’s Kereinik town and the capital city of El Geneina, killing at least 200 and displacing around 100,000

June 14, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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Damaged structures in the city of Kreinik in Sudan's West Darfur from March 2022. (Photo by Wilberforce Musombi / NRC)

At least 49 people were killed in armed attacks in the Kulbus locality in Sudan’s restive State of West Darfur last week, Radio Dabanga reported on Sunday, June 12.

Several more have been wounded in the multiple attacks by the Janjaweed militias. These militias allegedly continue to be backed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF is led by Sudan’s military’s junta’s deputy chairperson, General Mohamd Hamdan Dagalo aka Hemeti, who has a large stake in mining operations in the region of Darfur where a de-population campaign is allegedly underway.

Previous major armed attacks by these militias in the last week of April had targeted West Darfur’s Kereinik town and the capital city of El Geneina, killing at least 200 and displacing around 100,000.

Further displacement is to be expected as at least eight villages were burnt down in the armed attacks last week.

Reports of these militias engaging in armed robberies, looting and rapes – particularly targeting Internally Displaced People (IDP) who have already lost all their possessions to the war – continue to emerge from several other parts of West Darfur and North Darfur.

The Janjaweed militias involved in all these attacks were armed and organized under the regime of former dictator Omar al-Bashir from among the nomadic herdsmen communities in the region. They were meant to suppress the armed rebel groups of the marginalized sedentary farmers and pastoralists who were standing in the way of extracting the mineral wealth in the area.

Accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the course of suppressing the armed rebel groups, several Janjaweed leaders, along with al-Bashir himself, stand trial in the ICC after his ouster in 2019 by the December Revolution. The trial of Ali Muhammad Ali Abdelrahman, aka Ali Kushayb, resumed in Hague on Monday, June 13.

The Juba peace agreement of 2020, which critics argue is merely a power sharing agreement between the military and leaders of armed rebel groups, has brought no respite to the violence. Armed attacks have further increased since the military coup in October 2021 because “after the coup, these militias have been reassured and further emboldened,” Adam Rojal, spokesperson of the General Coordination of Displaced and Refugees, told Peoples Dispatch in an interview last month.

“Because the generals, under whose supervision they had carried out the campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur under Bashir, are the ones who seized power,” he had said.

Nearly eight months since the coup, mass-protests across the country demanding full civilian rule have continued despite unceasing repression by the security forces. At least 101 protesters had been killed as of June 7. More than 4,500 have been injured, over 400 of whom are still undergoing treatment. At least 35 have lost limbs or other organs and eight are paralyzed.


However, unfazed by this brutal repression, several pro-democracy marches continue to take place in Sudan. More country-wide demonstrations and protest actions have been scheduled for June 16, 20, 27 and 30.

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https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/06/14/ ... past-week/

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Arise, Africa! Roar China! Interview with Gao Yunxiang
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 13, 2022
Liu Zifeng

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‘Arise Africa, Roar China’ is an important book exploring aspects of the historic linkages between progressive African Americans and the Chinese revolution. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in December 2021, the author, Dr. Gao Yunxiang was born and grew up in the People’s Republic of China and is now Professor of History at Canada’s Toronto Metropolitan University. Her book explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies during World War II and the Cold War—journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo, and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen. Charting a new path in the study of Sino-American relations, Gao Yunxiang foregrounds African Americans, combining the study of Black internationalism and the experiences of Chinese Americans with a transpacific narrative and an understanding of the global remaking of China’s modern popular culture and politics. Dr. Gao reveals interactions between Chinese and African American progressives that predate those that flourished in the 1960s and early 1970s in particular.

To introduce the book, we are pleased to republish this two-part interview with Dr. Gao conducted for the popular Sixth Tone website by Liu Zifeng, a doctoral candidate in Africana Studies at Cornell University in the US.

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The cover of “Arise, Africa! Roar, China!” Courtesy of Gao YunxiangLiu Zifeng: How did you get interested in the ties between Chinese and African Americans? What inspired you to write “Arise Africa! Roar China!”?

Gao Yunxiang: While conducting research on my first book, “Sporting Gender,” I came across laudatory articles on W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois in The People’s Daily. They reminded me of some things I read in my childhood: specifically, an old newspaper article and a propaganda poster.

In my childhood home in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, our ceiling was a flat lattice of wooden boards pasted over with old newspapers purchased in bulk. After I learned to read and write, I was confronted every night by a headline pasted right above my pillow — until it was covered by a new layer of old newspapers the following Lunar New Year. Since I read those words daily, they were inscribed in my brain: “Robert Williams and Madam Du Bois Fervently Acclaim Chairman Mao’s Statement Supporting Black Americans’ Struggle Against Violent Repression.”

That title is in turn connected to the memory of a poster that hung in our little classroom for 18 students between grades one to three. Advocating solidarity in the liberation struggle, the poster featured indignant men and women of various ethnicities, all dressed in vibrant clothing and charging forward, with a muscular Black man holding a gun at the center.

“Sporting Gender” was released in 2013. Around the same time, I published an article in the journal Du Bois Review that explored how W. E. B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois’ endeavors in Maoist China added new dimensions to Sino-American relations and Black internationalism. Working on that article, I naturally came across Paul Robeson, a close ally of the Du Boises. Then, while researching the fascinating yet unknown dynamics between Paul Robeson and China, I came across his Chinese allies: Liu Liangmo and Sylvia Si-lan Chen.

Of course, I was immediately curious about who they were. While looking into Chen, I learned that Langston Hughes was her lover. So, I traced these figures just like interlocked chains.

Liu: What attracted African American intellectuals, artists, and activists to China? How did they encounter Chinese and China? What were their impressions of these encounters?

Gao: Solidarity between people of color globally and their shared destiny of anti-racism and anti-colonialism attracted these figures’ attention to China. As a minority facing overwhelming state-imposed systematic racism and white supremacy, Black intellectuals and activists looked toward the similarly oppressed China for inspiration and strength.

These figures’ ties with leftist Chinese and China were built on a profound emotional and intellectual foundation. They shared a faith in Sino-Afro racial, linguistic, philosophical, and artistic kinship. Hughes observed Chinese to be “a very jolly people, much like colored folks at home”; Du Bois lauded Chinese as “my physical cousins.”

Both Du Bois and Robeson consistently articulated the linkage between African and Chinese civilizations and cited famous Chinese cultural giants such as Confucius and Laozi to argue for the sophistication of African civilization, counter negative stereotypes associated with perceived African “primitivism,” and debunk white supremacism.

Cultural kinship necessitated a political alliance. By embracing China’s revolutions as vehicles for the social and economic uplift of nonwhites, Black intellectuals directly linked the struggles of African Americans with those of nationalist Chinese. Hughes’ 1933 journey to “incredible” Shanghai made him the first Black intellectual celebrity to set foot on Chinese soil. He was profoundly sympathetic to China’s suffering under colonial oppression, especially Japan’s latest aggressions. Hughes would pen a passionate poem, “Roar, China!” following Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937, lionizing China’s resistance.

The Communist victory in 1949 made China a pillar of nonwhite peoples’ revolutionary struggles and a model for millions to beat colonialism. Robeson romantically imagined that the nonwhite world would view the rising China as a “new star of the East… pointing the way out from imperialist enslavement to independence and equality. China has shown the way.”

During his epic China trip in 1959, Du Bois repeatedly proclaimed Chinese and African dignity and unity in the face of Western racism, colonialism, and capitalism: “Africa, Arise, and stand straight, speak and think! Turn from the West and your slavery and humiliation for the last 500 years and face the rising sun … China is flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood.” He predicted that the “darker world” would adopt socialism as “the only answer to the color line,” and that the status of African Americans would thereby be elevated.

Despite withdrawing from radicalism due to anti-Communist hysteria in the United States, Hughes nevertheless remained confident of the power of the People’s Republic of China. His suppressed inspiration, drawn from the Chinese Communist Party, resurfaced in his fury at the brutal racial violence African Americans suffered. “Birmingham Sunday,” Hughes’ eulogy to the four Black girls killed in the dynamiting of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963, connected his rage with the rage one once felt by oppressed Chinese.

Liu: How about the Chinese intellectuals and activists you profile? Who were they? What prompted them to reach out to African Americans and what did they do to build Sino-Black solidarity?

Gao: The Chinese intelligentsia had, through literature and drama, long connected the shared “enslavement” of the Chinese nation as a semi-colony state and the enslavement of African Americans. In the introduction to their 1901 translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Lin Shu and Wei Yi argue that the tortures “yellow” people faced were even worse than those endured by Black Americans. Chinese people needed to read the book, Liu and Wei write, because “slavery is looming for our race. We had to yell and scream to wake up the public.”

In the face of harassment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as racial terror and segregation, Liu Liangmo’s and Sylvia Si-Lan Chen’s brave journeys to the United States brought Sino–African American cultural alliances into new historical settings. Liu was a talented musician, prolific journalist, and Christian activist who initiated the trans-Pacific mass singing movement for war mobilization during World War II. He was a pioneer among Chinese for his close collaboration with African Americans, lauding Black greatness without reservation and later facilitating the reception of the Du Boises and Robeson in the People’s Republic. Among the numerous areas in which Liu and Robeson collaborated, they helped to globalize the signature piece of the mass singing movement: “Chee Lai” or “March of the Volunteers.”

In 1941, Robeson, Liu, and the Chinese People’s Chorus, a group Liu had organized among members of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in New York City’s Chinatown, recorded an album for Keynote Records titled, “Chee Lai: Songs of New China.” Liu’s liner notes for the album relay that he saw the collaboration as “a strong token of solidarity between the Chinese and the Negro People.”

Robeson’s notes read: “Chee Lai! (Arise!) is on the lips of millions of Chinese today, a sort of unofficial anthem, I am told, typifying the unconquerable spirit of this people. It is a pleasure and a privilege to sing both this song of modern composition and the old folk songs to which a nation in struggle has put new words.”

The song would be adopted as the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Chen was the world’s first “modern Chinese/Soviet dancer-choreographer” with an international reputation, according to contemporary American media accounts. She was a daughter of Eugene Chen, China’s foreign minister in the 1920s, and his French Creole wife. She was also a cousin of Dai Ailian, the acclaimed “mother of China’s modern dance.”

The Chens and Dai were all born in Trinidad and barely spoke Chinese. Chen encountered Hughes romantically in Moscow, fanning his interest in China, connecting him with the international Communist network, and helping to propel him into Shanghai’s leftist cultural circles. Chen captured the fanciful imaginations of Hughes and Robeson, who saw her as personifying the “perfect” union of Black and Chinese. Meanwhile, her own journey to choreograph and dance ethnicity, war, and revolution around the globe illustrates the complex racial and political twists of such an interracial union.

Liu: How did the African American intellectuals profiled in your book shape Chinese perceptions of Blackness and visions of the world order? And how did China’s engagement with the Africana world, at least in the cases of Liu Liangmo and Sylvia Si-Lan Chen, inform African American understandings of Chinese politics and culture and Black radical thought more generally?

Gao: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson’s presence in China and their alliances with Chinese sojourners helped facilitate a shift in the dynamics of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Asianism and ultimately inspired the “color line” of Mao Zedong’s Third World theory.

The transformative process started with gradual changes in the images of Blacks in the Republic of China (1912-1949). Stung by its humiliating reputation as the “sick man of Asia” and alarmed by Nazi racism and Japan’s imperialist ambitions, China was acutely frustrated by the repeated defeats of Chinese athletes at the 1932 and 1936 Olympics. Thus, Chinese media celebrated the “natural” physical prowess of the boxer Joe Louis and track-and field athlete Jesse Owens on behalf of the world’s people of color.

The front cover of an issue of China’s leading cartoon magazine, Modern Sketch, devoted to the 1936 Olympics, drew inspiration from Owens’s triumph. The magazine’s back cover featured a drawing of a muscular Black woman resembling the American chanteuse Josephine Baker, clad in a banana skirt, captioned, “Victory of Colored People at the Olympics.”

Those two images exemplified Chinese portraiture of African Americans. Du Bois, who visited China around that time, announced that the race “must be represented, not only in sports, but in science, in literature, and in art.” Jazz musicians in nightclubs, who were dismissed as “foreign musical instrument devils” — yangqin gui — or else caricatured in advertisements for toothpaste and white towels, dominated Black representation in Republican Chinese media. The presence of Du Bois, Hughes, and Robeson, whose intellectual capacities Chinese critics described as “genius,” started to alter such stereotypes.

During his trip to Shanghai, Hughes was quickly embraced by the city’s leftist cultural circles, led by the author Lu Xun. Their magazines hailed him as the “first established Black revolutionary writer,” who was “howling and struggling for the oppressed races.” Hughes’ visit triggered ongoing interest in his work and Black literature in China.

The final step of connecting Blackness with revolution occurred during the People’s Republic of China. The narrative on the globally famous Robeson was quickly transformed from that of an exotic entertainer to a heroic model and inspiration for the country’s socialist citizens. He was introduced in state media as “the Black King of Songs” for the oppressed masses in the world, who “embodied the perfect marriage between art and politics.”

After Du Bois shifted his favorable gaze from Japan to the People’s Republic of China as the new pillar of the colored world, he was treated as an icon by a China aspiring to leadership in the “Third World.” During their visits, he and his wife received unprecedented state hospitality. The couple frequently rubbed shoulders with China’s top leadership, became the first Westerners to grace the Tiananmen Square podium during the country’s National Day celebrations, and frequently occupied the front pages of major newspapers. Du Bois’ birthdays were celebrated as major state events.

Liu and Chen, meanwhile, linked the burning issues facing Chinese Americans and African Americans — such as the poll tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow laws, and the lynching of African Americans — while urging their abolition.

Liu Zifeng: How did the Cold War international order, Sino-Soviet relations, and shifts in Chinese and U.S. foreign policy impact relations between Chinese and African Americans?

Gao Yunxiang: Following its rough birth amid the intensifying Cold War atmosphere, the infant People’s Republic of China was forced to confront a superpower armed with nuclear weapons in the Korean War. By this point, the singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson was enshrined as a fearless and reliable friend of China, and for Robeson, China was a strong source of support that he sorely needed.

April 20, 1949 marked the start of Robeson’s political downfall in the United States. On that day, he famously told the International Congress for Peace in Paris that it was “unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union.” That statement quickly drew widespread condemnation, including from Jackie Robinson, the famous African American baseball star, whom Robeson had helped to integrate the game.

Joining W.E.B. Du Bois in standing firmly behind Robeson was the Chinese Communist Party. The People’s Daily condemned Robinson and defended Robeson. The paper reported Robeson’s speech, highlighting the standing ovation the star received from the event’s 2,000 attendees, including Nobel Laureate and nuclear scientist Frederic Joliot-Curie and Robeson’s friend, the artist Pablo Picasso. Treating the organized regional and world peace movement as a powerful popular rebuke of U.S. involvement in China’s Civil War and later the Korean War, Chinese state media reported intensively on the involvement of Du Bois and Paul Robeson in the pacifist movement.

The United States quickly accelerated its attacks on Robeson. The most significant and ugliest example was the so-called Peekskill riots, in which right-wing mobs brutally attacked a Robeson concert in August 1949. Soon, the U.S. State Department cancelled Robeson’s passport and stalled his brilliant career. As is well documented in both Robeson’s writings and Chinese state media coverage, Robeson and the People’s Republic lent each other unyielding support during their most trying moments.

By the late 1950s, in the wake of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, China had immediate reasons to welcome public support from African American cultural giants. The CCP needed a new domestic perspective to reinvigorate the revolution and socialize the nation. In addition, it required new diplomatic defenders and tactics as it contested Soviet dominance of world communism and aspired to leadership of the “Third World” that bound the destinies of China with former agricultural colonies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The CCP was already reaching out to Africa, but the newly independent African states met Chinese overtures with caution and reserve. The stature of these African American figures among the African diaspora helped China open doors for alliances across the continent. Du Bois’ reputation and endorsement particularly meant a great deal. Chinese outreach to Africa through diplomatic exchanges, aid, and propaganda peaked following the Du Boises’ 1959 visit to China. For diplomatic and economic reasons, China continued to maintain a large presence in Africa, which the Du Boises helped to foster.

During the 1960s, Mao Zedong was interested in contacts with radical Blacks, who he valorized as true revolutionaries. Influential Black activist Robert Williams, author of “Negroes with Guns,” was mentioned in a People’s Daily headline plastered on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, for instance. At the same time, Black Americans were impressed by Mao’s anti-American imperialism as well as his emphasis on violent struggles and cultural change as a revolutionary force.

Liu: As often happens in cases of transnational exchange, the intellectual and cultural interactions between China and African America that you chart were fraught with misunderstandings, ambiguity, and conflict. What were some of the complexities and contradictions of the internationalist politics of the five central figures in your book?

Gao: Caught in between the murky, sometimes treacherous, and shifting trans-Pacific political and ideological waters, all five citizens of the world I profile — W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Liu Liangmo, and Sylvia Si-lan Chen — experienced their share of ambiguity and conflict. For instance, in 1962, state media and publishers in the People’s Republic of China suddenly fell silent on Robeson, who had been promoted as a heroic revolutionary model for China’s socialist citizens throughout the 1950s. After the Sino-Soviet split came into the open, Robeson’s position of advocating for peaceful coexistence fell on the wrong side of Chinese politics amid a shift in dynamics between the trans-Pacific powers.

The official press took an alternative approach toward Hughes. Outlets awkwardly remained silent on Hughes’s public renunciation of his radical past at the peak of McCarthyism and the Korean War; instead, they fixed their gaze on the writer he was in the 1930s, an “established Black revolutionary writer,” as if he were preserved in a time capsule. Liu and Chen, meanwhile, were marginalized and even attacked during the radical Maoist years by a regime they had long idealized.

W.E.B Du Bois’ treatment of imperial Japan — which brutalized China and Asia — as a pillar of “the darker word” turned out to be the most controversial. Du Bois visited the segregated treaty port of Shanghai in 1936. Pampered by the Japanese authorities, he stayed at the luxurious Cathay Hotel on the Bund. At the University of Shanghai, Du Bois “occupied a seat on the dais,” listening as a Rockefeller Foundation representative spoke about scholarships to the United States.

“I said to the president that I should like to talk to a group of Chinese and discuss frankly racial and social matters,” Du Bois recalled. He soon “plunged…recklessly” into a luncheon at the Chinese Bankers’ Club at 59 Hong Kong Road on November 30. He wanted to know, in his own words, “Why is it that you (Chinese) hate Japan more than Europe when you have suffered more from England, France, and Germany than from Japan?” If Japan and China worked together, Du Bois continued, perhaps Europe could be eliminated permanently from Asia. Du Bois calmly reported, “There ensured a considerable silence, in which I joined.”

His dismayed hosts responded that whatever problems China suffered, Japan’s militarism hindered any progress. Unconvinced, Du Bois commented later that “the most disconcerting thing about Asia is the burning hatred of China and Japan (for each other).” As he sailed from Shanghai aboard the S. S. Shanghai Mari to Nagasaki on December 1, 1936, Du Bois hurled a final insult, claiming that the Chinese Nationalists were “Asian Uncle Toms,” likening them to the willing Black menials of white racism in the United States.

Du Bois repeated his belief in the virtues of Japanese rule and firmly urged a Sino-Japanese alliance, which would “save the world for the darker races.” He steadfastly maintained such views even after Japanese forces occupied Beiping (today’s Beijing) and Shanghai. To the news of the Nanjing Massacre, Japan’s genocidal occupation of China’s then-capital in late 1937 and early 1938, Du Bois responded that few of the white Americans expressing horror at the killing had said much about Italy’s recent depredations in Ethiopia.

Liu: What lessons do the stories recounted in your book offer for understanding China-U.S. relations?

Gao: While most scholarship on Sino-American relations treats the United States as default white, “Arise, Africa! Roar, China!” cuts a new path by foregrounding African Americans. It allows us to reimagine Sino-American relations by decentering Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in the discourse, understanding Afro-Asian history as central to world history, and focusing on global anti-imperialism and popular movements which are still relevant today. My book combines the study of Black internationalism and the experiences of China and Chinese Americans with a trans-Pacific narrative. It reveals earlier and widespread interactions between Chinese and Black leftist figures prior to the better-known alliance between Black radicals and Maoist China in the 1960s.

It also shows the global remaking of China’s modern popular culture and politics. The book traces China’s transnational entanglements even during periods when the nation has commonly been regarded as insular and unconnected to the wider world.

The intertwined lives of these five citizens of the world, usually perceived as inhabiting non-overlapping domains, stand as powerful counters to narratives that foreground racism and alienation. Their endeavors across racial, national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries illustrate that the world always remains connected despite political, legal, immigration, and diplomatic hurdles. Their stories offer a view into the power and potential of Black internationalism and Sino–African American collaboration. “Arise, Africa!” and “Roar, China!” as articulated by Du Bois and Hughes, respectively, match the shared struggles of a nation and a nation-within-a-nation. Their power and promise resonate to this day.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... -yunxiang/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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