
As the mother of a young Black man whom I pray for nightly and worry daily about his life being violently ended senselessly either by someone marginalized by the unjust social structure of U.S. life or by some rogue officer of the law or one pretending to be a policeman, I offer my sincerest condolences to the Martin family and friends over the loss of their son Trayvon.

Kagame jails and kills people in Rwanda and is sending his agents to pursue people in Europe and here in the U.S. for the crime of simply saying that not only Tutsis but also Hutus died in 1994. One young man who is now under attack as a “bad” survivor is Claude Gatebuke.

Everything that we have witnessed in Libya, all of the bloodshed, is based on the word of one individual, and he admits on camera that he had not one whit of proof that the letter’s contents were true. And now look at Libya. What of the, by some estimates, 20,000 people killed? What of the Libyans whose skin is dark like mine and who have been targeted for murder? What about those left homeless by U.S.-NATO bombing? In the Jamahirya, every Libyan was entitled to a home.

In Rwanda, which has received over $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid in the past 10 years, Mrs. Victoire Ingabire made every attempt to participate in the political process that Rwandan President Paul Kagame insists is democratic, but instead she now stands in the dock in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, facing charges that could keep her behind bars for 30 years to life.

“The police in our community occupy our area, our community, as a foreign troop occupies territory. And the police are in our community not to promote our welfare or our security or our safety, but they are there to contain us, to brutalize us and murder us,” said Huey P. Newton, co-founder and minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. Hunters Point has stood up to the Lennar Corp. and the City about the shipyard. It is time to expand that movement to include police terrorism, put new energy into it, and claim our right to live and not be wantonly killed.

The “rebels” in Misrata in Libya have driven out the entire Black population of the city, according to a chilling story in the Wall Street Journal … The “rebels” now eye the city of Tawergha, 25 miles away, and vow to cleanse it of all Black people once they seize the city. Isn’t this the perfect definition of the term “genocide”?

Kevin Cooper has been locked down on death row in San Quentin for the past 26 years. He was convicted of the 1983 murder of the Ryen family, although no reliable evidence showed him to be guilty. On the contrary, the case has overwhelming evidence suggesting that he is in fact an innocent man.

Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region in accordance with a new U.N. Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations’ “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But what about Ethiopia’s own genocide in the Ogaden Basin that the West is funding?

Advocates of intervention in Southern Sudan argue that the U.S. can’t be bystanders to what could become another Rwanda and must become instead “upstanders” preventing genocide. Was the U.S. a bystander to the Rwanda Genocide? Professors Peter Erlinder and Edward Herman both say no.

Mathaba has learned that the African Union is intending to pull out of the United Nations Organization unless NATO stops bombing fellow AU member, Libya.

A recent evening at the African American Museum and Library in Oakland was special. The line wrapped around the corner of 14th Street at Martin Luther King Jr. Way as people lined up to hear Isabel Wilkerson talk about her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.”

In controversy is the minister of health’s announcement of what the government of Rwanda calls voluntary vasectomies (sterilizing) of 700,000 males.

The racism of the American “war on drugs,” especially in the South, is notorious. So is the racism faced daily by Palestinians. In Atlanta, a university program allows these two manifestations of racism to feed off each other and community activists are organizing to shut the program down.

Jean Leonard Teganya was recently found to be a war criminal by the Canadian Federal Court simply because he survived an attack on a Rwandan hospital where he was a medical student intern in 1994. This is such an assault on war victims all over the world.

“All of our institutions have failed us if they do not use their power and act against this crime against humanity being carried out in Africa today. I received a call this morning from an Ivorian friend who calls it genocide what Sarkozy’s troops are doing there. Blood, blood, everywhere. Depleted uranium in Libya. Generations to come will suffer the health effects. We must try to stop President Obama. He has the power to say no. So far, he is good at saying yes to all the wrong people. So we must do more than we think we can. Anything less places more blood on everyone’s hands.” – Cynthia McKinney

“Had the RPF not been made militarily dominant by outside support and the two presidents not been assassinated in the RPF assault for power, the ICTR evidence suggests that the Rwandan genocide would never have occurred,” concludes Professor Erlinder.

What can po’ folks learn from the revolutions in North Africa? Lessons in revolutions not dictated by non-profit industrial complex agendas and philanthro-pimps but revolutions guided by angry mamaz, hungry babies, houseless elders, jobless fathers, profiled and criminalized migrants and gang injunctioned youth of color.

The Platform to Stop Impunity in Rwanda requests the South African government accept the extradition petition issued by the Spanish government and hand over the indicted Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa to the Spanish authorities. Add your organization as a signatory.

On Jan. 20, Rwanda’s High Court once again rejected the bail appeal of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, chair of Rwanda’s FDU-Inkingi coalition of opposition parties.

It wasn’t just Patrice Lumumba his assassins wanted to kill, it was the genuine self-determination, dreams and aspirations of African people, writes Horace Campbell, reflecting on the murder of the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Jan. 17, 1961. Two poems by Lumumba follow the story.