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3,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel on hunger strike on Prisoners’ Day
April 17, 2012
The majority of the 4,699 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli prisons refused their meals on Prisoners’ Day, while 1,200 of them promise to hunger strike indefinitely to protest unfair conditions. Over 40 protesters occupied the headquarters of BBC Scotland in Glasgow, demanding mainstream media coverage for the Palestinian prisoners who began hunger strikes today.
Black Star News, leading critic of Invisible Children, KONY 2012 and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, target of DDoS attack
April 10, 2012
On April 8, The Black Star News published “Invisible Children, Makers of Kony 2012, Spied for Ugandan Regime – Wikileaks.” Milton Allimadi, Black Star News publisher, says that his website has become inaccessible due to a “distributed denial-of-service attack” (DDoS attack).
Japan’s ‘Throwaway People’ and the fallout from Fukushima
March 30, 2012
Japan of old did not have a captive Black population to use and abuse. So the Burakumin were created to fill that economic and social vacuum at the bottom of society. They are still there, a permanent “untouchable” class, cleaning up Fukushima.
Kony 2012’s success shows there’s big money attached to white saviors
March 15, 2012
The Kony 2012 campaign is still taking heat over its portrayal of Africans as victims whose only hope lay in the actions – and wallets – of white saviors. And critics say it’s that centuries-old narrative that’s in part responsible for the campaign’s viral success. The white savior complex isn’t just a familiar narrative – it’s a lucrative one.
The problem with ‘KONY 2012’
March 15, 2012
The LRA is a raggedy bunch of a few hundred at most, poorly equipped, poorly armed and poorly trained. Addressing the problem called the LRA does not call for a military operation. Rather than the reason for accelerated military mobilization in the region, the LRA is the excuse for it. Alas, this message has no room in the Invisible Children video that ends with a call to arms.
The dangerous myths of Fukushima: Exposing the ‘no harm’ mantra
March 10, 2012
The myth that Fukushima radiation levels were too low to harm humans persists a year after the meltdown. Views like these are political, not scientific, virtually identical to what the nuclear industry cheerleaders claim. An October 2011 article in the journal Nature estimated Fukushima emissions to be more than double that of Chernobyl. How anyone, let alone scientists, could call Fukushima doses “too low” to cause harm in the face of this evidence is astounding.
Uganda: Acholi people face second genocide with U.S. troops in country
February 28, 2012
A vicious land grab is being carried out in Uganda, pairing the country’s dictator with an ‘investor,’ and the targets are the Acholi, genocide survivors who live in the northern part of the East African country, on abundant, fertile and mineral-rich land.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s war on journalists
February 14, 2012
Many journalists have been convicted of the same speech crimes that presidential contender Victoire Ingabire is accused of: disagreeing with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his regime, also known as “divisionism,” and disagreeing with the constitutionally codified history of the Rwanda Genocide, known as “genocide ideology.”
Congolese say South Africa’s Congolese immigrant sweep targeted anti-Kabila refugees
January 23, 2012
Two hundred Congolese immigrants, especially activists opposed to the Kabila regime, were, they said, “hounded out of their shops and homes by scores of South African police, then summarily arrested on ludicrous, trumped up charges of ‘public violence.’”
Cynthia McKinney: U.S. war machine pervades Africa
January 22, 2012
Does the Obama administration plan an African continent-wide Plan Colombia? Why such a militarization of U.S. relationships all over the world – and even here at home? Will chaos and wars – like what is happening in Libya today – be created all over Africa and the rest of Asia? Please circulate this message widely so that maybe we can get some more responses from the administration about its policy direction. Tell the White House that you will cast your vote for peace – to stop the drones and bring our troops home.
Lumumba is an idea
January 17, 2012
In the 1960s, many African countries acquired independence from colonial powers. The name that gave meaning to the struggle for independence, the right to claim a national identity and to be a human being in Congo was Patrice Emery Lumumba, the founding father of a political order in Congo. He was the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from the Kingdom of Belgium in June 1960. Before his assassination Jan. 17, 1961, he wrote: “For the people, I have no past, no parents, no family. I am an idea.”
Rwanda will never be the same, after Victoire Ingabire’s return
January 16, 2012
As with the path that the U.S. Civil Rights Movement took after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nothing in Rwanda will ever be the same after Victoire Ingabire’s defiance of the Rwandan government’s unjust laws. She sparked a spirit of resistance.
Cynthia McKinney: 12,000 U.S. troops bound for Libya
January 15, 2012
It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our president now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya. Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by U.S.-NATO allies on the ground.
Urgent message from South Africa: Free Ayanda Kota
January 12, 2012
Ayanda Kota, chairperson of the Grahamstown, South Africa, Unemployed Peoples’ Movement, was brutally beaten and arrested by the police today. Will he suffer the same fate as South Africa’s Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid leader and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, who died in 1977 at age 31 in police custody, or Andries Tatane, a math teacher and community newspaper publisher whose police murder, caught on video during a protest on April 13, 2011, shocked the nation?
U.N. on Congo: Dodd-Frank conflict minerals law increases conflict
January 7, 2012
A U.N. report says that the USA’s conflict minerals legislation, Section 1502 of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is increasing rather than decreasing criminality and conflict in the Congo and that Bosco Ntaganda is now in control of minerals smuggling from the Congo into Rwanda.
Congolese will decide the fate of Congo
January 6, 2012
Knowing of the vast reservoir of strength of the Congolese people, more important than its mineral wealth, one can expect a uniquely Congolese solution to finally securing a government that is accountable to its own citizens. With 70 million people, half under the age of 18 and half women, the future of the Congo is in the hands of the Congolese.
Stop the wicked West! Out of the killing fields in Ivory Coast and Libya comes a new world order
January 5, 2012
Today a new world order is being established in the wake of a heavy sacrifice of African lives – after the shock of thousands of deaths registered in Ivory Coast, with 1,200 inhabitants of Duékoué massacred, and dozens of thousands of casualties in Libya.
A young man set himself on fire in Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and becomes a martyr of the Congolese Revolution
January 4, 2012
On Dec. 10, 2011, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a young man named Cedrick Nianza self-immolated by pouring gas on himself and setting the fuel alight. He continually shouted, “Congo na nga, Congo na nga” (“My Congo, my Congo”), while the flames consumed him.
The new land grab in Africa
January 1, 2012
The issue at stake is not only one of increased food insecurity, but an attack on food sovereignty or peoples’ right to produce their own food. Land grab is a violent act to take away peoples’ right to food, access to their ancestral land, their social and historical ties, and their overall right for human dignity.
Should Africa be an ally of the West or China? The case of Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire
December 27, 2011
The past 12 months were very intense on the African continent. Some important elections stirred up a whole lot of interests. Shared zones of influence are being renegotiated between the old powers of the world, the Western powers, and the new power, China.
