World News & Views

Because of the rapid political transition that has recently taken place in Zimbabwe, this 37-year-old nation’s most ardent supporters and defenders, along with its most hateful detractors helped make the resignation of former President and revolutionary icon Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe and the installation of the current President Comrade E.D. Mnangagwa not only Africa’s top story, but the primary focus of the entire planet.

The Congo crisis is now one of the greatest humanitarian emergencies in the world and the most underreported. An average of 5,500 people a day flee violence and insecurity, even more than in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Unlike Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, however, the Congo wars are undeclared and there’s no front line. There are instead many wars over many concentrations of resource wealth in this immensely resource-rich country, especially in the eastern provinces.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the heart of Black Africa. Millions of Congolese have been murdered, massacred, enslaved, robbed of their resources and driven from their homes since the Berlin Conference gave the “Congo Free State” to Belgium’s King Leopold II as his personal property in 1885. I spoke to Jean-Claude Maswana about the latest waves of aggression under current Congolese President Joseph Kabila.

This declaration was authored by the pan-Africanist and socialist popular forces of the Caribbean nation of Barbados at Bridgetown, Barbados, on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2018, and submitted to the people and civil society organizations of the Caribbean for their endorsement and adoption. By describing the nations of Africa, the Republic of Haiti and the Central American nation of El Salvador as “shithole” countries, U.S. President Donald Trump has committed a despicable and unpardonable act of anti-Black, anti-African, anti-Brown racism and is “Persona Non Grata” in the entire Caribbean region.

On the 16th of January 2010, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza landed in Kigali to launch the nonviolent movement for democracy, peace and justice for all. On that day, she gave a serious hammer blow to the cornerstone of the regime fortress: fear. The fortress is shaking, the fear has shifted from fear of democrats and peacemakers to fear of the regime, as reflected in erratic diplomatic behavior and more repression. The regime has been totally exposed.

Let us remember two fallen sons of Mother Africa who truly represent and exemplify the bravery and patriotism which best defines our collective fighting spirit and resolve, Comrade Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s former president, and the commander of ZANLA’s guerilla army, Gen. Josiah Magama Tongogara. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Sankara’s assassination, a cowardly act carried out by the neo-colonialist stooge and poor excuse for an African, Blaise Compaore.

Feb. 6 is the international day for the abolition of all kinds of female genital mutilation and cutting. The practice of FGM/C in Africa and the Middle East is a thousand-year-old tradition consisting in cutting the clitoris of baby girls, teenagers and women with a razor blade or an ugly special knife. While the exact number of girls and women worldwide who have undergone FGM/C remains unknown, at least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries have been subjected to the practice.

Helen Epstein’s new book, “Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror,” is dense with detailed and fascinating accounts of events in Ugandan history and politics and those of neighboring nations. I’m familiar with much of it, but there’s also much I hadn’t known, some I disagree with, and elaborations or different interpretations of what I’ve previously read or been told.

The bipartisan budget bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump Friday morning marks a new stage in the American ruling class’ drive for social counterrevolution and world military domination. The deal, which reached Trump’s desk only because of support from congressional Democrats, expresses the oligarchic character of American society. Behind the factional mudslinging and mutual recrimination between Democrats, Republicans and Trump, it is the corporations and the military-intelligence agencies that dictate government policy.

Today comes the seventh year of the international conspiracy, in which obscurantist forces and Libyan agents participated in the war against Libya and its safe people, where innocent people were hurled to take part through the launching of false slogans by a media campaign carried out by excessive regional and international mass media machines. It is a conspiracy that was finally accomplished by eight months of a prolonged heavy military action that the NATO had carried out since the Second World War, resulting in the destruction of the total civilian and military infrastructure of the country.

The Executive Committee of the Libyan National Popular Movement is following the circumstances and context of the cowardly assassination attempt of the fighter Dr. Bashir Saleh Bashir, member of the Executive Committee of the Movement, and wishes to inform the public of the following: Firstly: The medical condition of Dr. Bashir is still critical and has not passed the stage of danger and we all pray to Allah to heal him quickly.

The My Lai Massacre occurred on March 16, 1968, 50 years ago during the Viet Nam War. Over 500 babies, children, women and men were slaughtered by American soldiers. Many Vietnamese women and girls had been raped. Huts were burned, livestock was killed, food supplies destroyed. Besides the My Lai Massacre that occurred that day, another massacre occurred in the nearby hamlet of My Khe.

The 2018 Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize was awarded on Saturday, March 10, 2018, in Brussels, Belgium. The prize honors Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Despite the African Court of Human and People’s Rights’ 2017 ruling that her imprisonment is unjust and that Rwanda should free her, she remains behind bars. This year’s Victoire Prize went to Cameroonian French journalist Charles Onana and Canadian radio broadcaster Phil Taylor.

The International Network in Defense of Humanity, Caribbean Chapter, and the Caribbean Peace Movement are disgusted and outraged by the latest episode in the orchestrated illicit right-wing oligarchical campaign to target and “bring down” by foul means one of the most outstanding and respected leaders of South America’s 21st century Socialist Movement: namely, the conviction by a powerful right-wing judge of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, former president of Brazil, on trumped up corruption charges, and Lula’s incarceration on a 12-year prison sentence.

April 6 was the 24th anniversary of the day that Gen. Paul Kagame shattered a ceasefire agreement and resumed the 1990-1994 war in Rwanda by assassinating Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. His troops, acting on his orders, fired a rocket at Habyarimana’s plane when it appeared overhead in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, returning from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

She was born in 1936 and named Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, but the world would come to know this South African beauty as Winnie Mandela, the wife of African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela. And when, after Nelson’s freedom, the marriage ended, she remained a powerful presence in South African life, loved by the nation’s poor and dispossessed. For they knew, in their heart of hearts, that their struggle was her struggle.

Excerpts from remarks by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova delivered April 19, 2018 – And now I am asking everyone to fasten their belts. During a briefing on the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) report held for the international diplomatic community on April 13, UK Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow said that “the Russian state has a record in state-sponsored assassinations including in the UK.”

This is not charity. It is the right to have access to education, not only in the US but all over the world. This was our goal when Krip-Hop Nation of the USA and journalist Ronald Galiwango of Uganda, Africa, teamed up to write about a single father raising two disabled daughters who needed basic things to survive like wheelchairs and help to pay for the oldest daughter to go to school to become “a disabled advocate like Leroy Moore of Krip-Hop Nation!” Eunice Atim told Ronald in a video interview.

While a delegation from the Trump administration and leaders from various parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem to witness the illegal and immoral move of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to the beleaguered and contested city, Israeli soldiers slaughtered unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The latest count reports more than 50 dead and 2,700 wounded. The Black Alliance for Peace demands the United States condemn Israeli state violence and the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to murder unarmed Palestinians, a violation of U.S. law.

This Memorial Day, let us renew our commitment to work for peace. Dr. King stated, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Let us ask ourselves, “What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say today?’” Let us remember Dr. King’s sermon. Let us reclaim our belief in the sanctity of human life. Let us turn swords into plowshares. Let us work for peace in our world.