March 9, 2010

Native Youth Movement’s war for land and freedom continues

Indigenous peoples are celebrating worldwide after claiming victory over the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Invaders were warned not to enter our lands and now they are to blame for the “worst Olympic games ever.” The invaders have not stolen our land. The land is still here – under concrete or not, it remains – and as long as we remain, we will fight to expel all invaders who destroy or seek to destroy it.

March 7, 2010

John Prendergast’s selective outrage at African crimes

If a person really cared about human suffering – torture, mass rape, pillage, torching of homes with people alive inside, targeted rapes to spread HIV/AIDS, burying people alive, chopping off of limbs – then such a person would condemn these acts wherever they may occur and demand that the perpetrators of the crimes be brought to justice.

February 21, 2010

Rwandan opposition parties condemn grenade attacks in Kigali

If Rwanda’s three viable opposition parties are allowed to register and participate in free and fair elections, they have a good chance, in coalition, of defeating Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) Party. Those three parties condemned the Feb. 19 deadly grenade attacks in Kigali, calling them “an attempt to instill fear in the population” prior to Rwanda’s August presidential election.

February 11, 2010

On the anniversary of Mandela’s release, South Africans still struggle for liberation

Twenty years ago, on Feb. 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of his prison cell and, four years later, a huge majority elected him president. Now, after 16 years of ANC rule, the majority of South Africans are worse off than they were under the white minority regime.

January 15, 2010

'The Other America'

“The Other America” by Martin Luther King Jr. “is a chilling, troubled speech made with the background of urban riots, pleas for Black Power and the Vietnam War.” – Ishmael Reed

January 1, 2010

The war on the poor from San Francisco to South Africa has a new foe!

When I heard about the revolutionary resistance of our South African brothers and sisters in Abahlai baseMjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, who successfully overturned the Slums Act, which would have given South African police the ability to legally demolish, destroy and evict poor people from their shacks without notice, I cried.

December 31, 2009

Egyptian security forces attack Gaza protesters

Egyptian security forces were attacking protesters in Tahrir Square, at the core of downtown Cairo, after they sat down in the middle of a busy Cairo street, protesting the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. Others were literally barricaded inside their hotel, the entrance surrounded by steel riot barriers. It is pandemonium.

December 19, 2009

A luta continua: Our international struggle for climate justice, environmental restoration and reparations continues!

Despite years and months of intense advocacy and organizing, whole nations and masses of people are facing increased possibilities of drowning, burning and/or starving to extinction. All the progressive forces we have met – inside and outside of the governments – have told us how determined they are to continue our generation’s mandate to reclaim the power from the selfish polluters who threaten the survival of all of us.

December 18, 2009

Chavez slams rich nations at Copenhagen, calls for systemic change to save planet

During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the “lack of political will” of the most powerful nations to take serious action to avert climate change and called for systemic change to save the planet.

Evo speaks for me!

Faced with mounting issues like melting glaciers and destruction of the rainforests on his home continent, President Morales has called for very necessary measures to lower our world’s temperatures by even more than the recent warnings from most scientists and even our colleagues in G77, Africa Group and AOSIS. “One degree (Centigrade) rise is too much!” says Morales. Negotiators remain at work. Keep calling the Obama administration.

December 16, 2009

Three calls from Copenhagen for Obama to champion climate justice

We are too big to fail! Call President Barack Obama to remind him that a bold reinvestment in, recovery for and restoration of our environment is even more critical, and less expensive, than the trillions he has given to prop up Wall Street, the military contractors, capitalist for-profit corporations and now the insurance industry that stands to benefit so greatly from his health care “reform.”

December 14, 2009

‘We stand with Africa’: Africa Group shuts down climate talks

The U.N. Climate Change Conference entered its final week under a cloud of uncertainty as the Africa Group led a protest of the developing world against a perceived attempt to abandon the Kyoto Protocol. By the middle of the day, the Africa Group’s displeasure had brought official talks to a halt.

Copenhagen: The revolutionary spirits of Patrice Lumumba and Maurice Bishop live in the leadership of Lumumba Di-Aping and Dessima Williams

Here in the frigid capital of Denmark, we continue our long and difficult work to achieve REPARATIONS NOW! for Afrikan and Indigenous nations and ascendants, women and girls, and everyone in our sacred earth.

December 13, 2009

Belgian paratroopers to crush rising Congo rebellion?

With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has reportedly requested an immediate emergency military intervention from Belgium to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in the far Western Congo.

December 9, 2009

Lumumba Di-Aping: ‘We have been asked to sign a suicide pact’

The leak of a so-called “Danish text” that would sideline the U.N. in future climate deals is reverberating around the Copenhagen negotiations. Today I witnessed an unexpected and extraordinary outburst of candor from one of the key players in these negotiations – Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator of the G77 bloc of mostly poor countries.

December 8, 2009

Copenhagen: We demand reparations for crimes against humanity and nature

Thousands of people from around our world – grassroots activists, government delegations, scholars, artists, media and, yes, representatives of capitalist corporations and the national and international police forces who serve them – have assembled in this large, Critical Mass-like 24/7, bicycle-friendly metropolis of Copenhagen. It is said that this Conference of Parties 15th year climate change meeting (COP-15) is the largest United Nations’ gathering ever!

November 27, 2009

Conflict minerals: A cover for U.S. allies and Western mining interests?

As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.

November 17, 2009

Depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, drastic birth defects in Fallujah

On Friday, Nov. 13, the London Guardian reported a “Huge rise in birth defects in Fallujah,” Iraq. I sent the news to KPFA Radio 94.1FM Weekend News anchor Anthony Fest, along with contact info for Bob Nichols, San Francisco Bay View newspaper correspondent and winner of a 2004 Project Censored Award for his reporting on the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and consequent radiation poisoning.

November 6, 2009

African immigrants and refugees in Europe, Part 2

The historic city of Rome is known for breathtaking sights from the Vatican to the Coliseum and beyond. However, there are little known areas not far from the historic routes frequented by tourists, areas where large numbers of refugees from a number of African countries reside in poverty but with dignity.

African immigrants and refugees in Europe, Part 1

Saint Calogero, an African priest, is the patron saint of the Sicilian town of Agrigento. But in the 21st century, African refugees who traverse the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea find Calogero’s city, indeed the entire country, unwelcoming, even hostile to them.