Africa
Many articles have been written reflecting on five decades of historical experience — referred to as the 50th anniversary of the “Year of Africa” — since 17 African nations gained political independence. Yet few pay adequate attention to the indispensable role of women in the campaigns for national liberation and their continuing efforts in the present century....
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Bomb blasts in and around the Ugandan capital of Kampala on July 11 killed at least 74 people who were gathered at a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant watching the finals of the 2010 World Cup....
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Western imperialist states are continuing their efforts to undermine
Zimbabwe’s sovereignty. The most egregious campaign recently has been the
attempt to block the southern African nation from selling its diamonds on the
international market....
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Israel and its apologists bristle when Israel is called an apartheid state.
Most loudly shouting, “Israeli apartheid,” however, are those who
know the best — the workers of South Africa, who suffered the most under
South African apartheid. South African trade unions have denounced the siege of
Gaza and the apartheid wall on the West Bank, and have urged forward the
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS)....
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Acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan met with President Barack Obama
on April 11 at the White House as a prelude to the Nuclear Security Summit held
in Washington, D.C....
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African countries at the COP-15 climate change summit in Copenhagen led a
walkout for several hours on Dec. 14 to protest the efforts of the United
States, Britain and other imperialist countries and their allies to sidestep
responsibility for the worsening impact of carbon dioxide emissions. The
increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused
climate change that threatens the total collapse of agricultural production on
the African continent....
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A recent statement issued by the Obama administration indicates that it is
planning to carry out aerial bombardments in the Horn of Africa nation of
Somalia. The announcement comes amid intense fighting in the capital of
Mogadishu between the two Islamic resistance movements, Al Shabaab and Hizbul
Islam, and the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government that is ruling the
country....
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Against all odds the southern African nation of Zimbabwe is celebrating its
30th year of independence from British settler-colonialism....
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African countries at the COP-15 climate change summit in Copenhagen led a
walkout for several hours on Dec. 14 to protest the efforts of the United
States, Britain and other imperialist countries and their allies to sidestep
responsibility for the worsening impact of carbon dioxide emissions. The
increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused
climate change that threatens the total collapse of agricultural production on
the African continent....
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A new chapter in relations between the People’s Republic of China and the African continent began during the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC), which was held Nov. 6-9 in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced eight new measures to enhance partnerships with 53 African states in the areas of agriculture, debt relief, market access expansion, climate change, medical affairs, education, environmental protection and promotion of investment....
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A summit of African and South American leaders convened on the
Venezuelan-Caribbean island of Margarita Sept. 26-27. The gathering was a
follow-up to the first Africa-South America Summit held in Abuja, Nigeria, in
November 2006....
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According to the history books, 100 years ago on Sept. 21, 1909, Kwame
Nkrumah, the founder and leader of the African independence movement and the
foremost advocate of Pan-Africanism during his time, was born in the western
Nzima region of the Gold Coast, later known as the independent state of
Ghana....
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There was much anticipation on the African continent about Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton’s 11-day recent visit to seven countries. However,
the tour’s outcome largely reaffirmed the continuance of past U.S. policy toward Africa....
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The failure of capitalist methods of production and distribution is clearly
illustrated by the way the collapse of the financial and industrial centers in
Western Europe and the United States has devastated former colonial countries.
Since late 2007 tens of millions of workers and farmers in several regions of
the African continent have been severely affected by unemployment, rising
commodities prices, food deficits and the decline in material aid from the
industrialized states....
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For the better part of the last 75 years, revolutionary
peoples’ artist Irving Fierstein used his immense talent to depict the
many struggles of working and oppressed people for social and economic justice
and against imperialism. In the early 1980s Fierstein created a unique genre of
art—striking full-color revolutionary banners thoughtfully composed and
painstakingly painted by hand....
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What distinguishes the contemporary economic crisis within global capitalism
from other downturns over the last three decades is that the rapid
deterioration of the social conditions of working people and the oppressed is
taking place simultaneously all over the planet....
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A newly reconfigured Transitional Federal Government established during
early 2009 in Somalia has lost control of large areas of the country to the
al-Shabab and Hisbul Islam resistance organizations. On May 17 and 18, the
towns of Jowhar and Mahaday north of Mogadishu, the capital, fell to
al-Shabab....
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A flare-up in tensions between Chad and Sudan during the week of May 4 has
exposed the continuing efforts of French and U.S. imperialism to dominate the
political and economic future of North and Central Africa. An effort by Chad
rebels to attack the capital N’Djamena and overturn the Idriss Deby Itno
regime was reportedly defeated May 7 after air power halted the rebel
advance....
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Over the last several months, a series of dramatic cases involving police killings of civilians has brought to light the essential role of law enforcement within capitalist societies. Numerous cities throughout the United States have seen a dramatic increase in the murder of African Americans by cops as well as the escalation of raids and deportations against immigrants both documented and undocumented....
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In the aftermath of the April 12 sniper killings of three Somali teenagers by the U.S. Navy, several U.S. agencies met on April 17 to conduct a review of military and foreign policy toward this Horn of Africa nation. The State Department, Pentagon and Justice Department have outlined a series of options
to ostensibly fight "piracy" in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean....
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This Sudanese province is the theater of a conflict on which the international
opinion is rallying. As for any struggle on the African ground, we receive the
same images of misery: men are tearing, children are crying and blood is
flowing....
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Review of progress and
assessment of implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action
by all stakeholders at the national, regional and international levels,
including the assessment of contemporary manifestations of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance...
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We, the representatives of local, national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society groups from around the world gathered in Durban/South Africa during the week of 28 August – 3 September 2001 for the World Conference against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), guided by our
commitment in the struggle against racism and racial discrimination and inspired by the recommendations of the NGO Forums held in Strasbourg/France,
Santiago de Chile/Chile, Dakar/Senegal and Tehran/Iran and the related
sub-regional NGO meetings held in Warsaw/Poland, Kathmandu/Nepal, Cairo/Egypt
and Quito/Ecuador, in preparation for the World Conference, hereby make the
following Declaration:...
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We express our full support for a strong Durban Review Conference, the NGO/Civil
Society Forum, the Conference on Palestine, and other similar activities being
held before and during the Review Conference that support the Conference and
the goals for which it stands....
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After the execution of three Somalis and the wounding and capturing of
another in the Indian Ocean on April 12, a leader of the so-called pirates
vowed to avenge the deaths of these youth who held the U.S. captain of a cargo
vessel known as the Maersk Alabama for five days. Captain Richard Phillips was
released while the U.S. military and the corporate media hailed the killings of
the Somalis, saying the actions were justified....
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Between 20-24 April 2009 the world will take either an important step forward towards prohibiting discrimination, especially racial discrimination, or an unfortunate step backwards, if
governments are unwilling to confront or even to discuss the core issues. Which
way the international community will go will depend largely on the activities
of states, and to a lesser extent civil society, participating in the Durban
Review Conference to be held at the UN European headquarters in Geneva....
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The decision by the Obama administration to boycott
the Durban Review Conference Against Racism has raised a torrent of petitions,
protests and criticism. An actual boycott of the upcoming April 20-24 meeting
would be the first time that the United States has refused to participate in a
United Nations conference. This has come as a shock to many who expected a
fundamentally different attitude toward an international conference on racism
from the Obama administration....
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Please sign a petition to President Obama urging the
United States to participate in the Durban Review Conference and its remaining
preparatory meetings. The United States is currently refusing to participate in
the Durban Review Conference, a United Nations Conference to discuss the
elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerances....
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The following statement was issued by members of the December 12th Movement, who held a press conference on March 21 in Harlem on the U.S.
government's refusal to attend the United Nations World Conference against Racism-Durban Review in April....
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Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir visited the North Darfur state capital
of El-Fasher on March 8 in defiance of an International Criminal Court warrant
issued for his arrest just a few days before. It was the first ICC warrant
issued against a sitting head of state. As he addressed a rally of tens of
thousands of supporters, the president defied the ICC and its imperialist
backers....
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Manik Mukherjee, General Secretary of the International Anti-imperialist
and People's Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC), has issued the
following statement condemning the indictment of President Omar Hasan Ahmad Al
Bashir of the Republic of Sudan by the International Criminal Court....
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The same day that a unity government took office in Zimbabwe, Feb. 13, opponents of Western colonialism protested before the British and U.S. missions to the United Nations in New York City demanding an end to the economic sanctions imposed on this southern African country and the right to self-determination. ...
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The following excerpts are from talks presented at a Feb. 8 "Zimbabwe: Pan Africanism or Imperialism" forum in Harlem, N.Y. The forum was organized by the December 12th Movement and Friends of Zimbabwe....
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First, let us begin by saying thank you.
Thank you for demonstrating to and for African people and the world the courage
and conviction that must be had to be self-determining in the face of
insurmountable odds. Odds that would have crushed others with any less will to
be free....
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The Ethiopian government on Nov. 25 announced it was withdrawing its
military forces from neighboring Somalia. This represents a defeat for the
foreign policy aims of Washington, which encouraged the government of Meles
Zenawi to invade Somalia in December 2006....
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In a recent statement from the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC), the
possibility was raised of a greater military presence there under U.N.
auspices. This announcement comes at a time when there has been an escalation
of fighting between rebel groups and the Congolese National Army in North and
South Kivu provinces, located in mineral-rich eastern Congo....
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During the last week of September, unprecedented fighting took place in
several areas of the east African nation of Somalia. This rising tide of armed
conflict is directly related to the resistance efforts of the Somali people against the occupation of their country by the military forces of neighboring Ethiopia. The Ethiopian invasion in December 2006 was fully supported, financially and militarily, by the U.S....
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After months of painstaking negotiations between the ruling Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the two main opposition parties,
the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and the small breakaway
faction known as the MDC-M, the leadership of these organizations reached an
agreement to share power in a Government of National Unity (GNU)....
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Manik Mukherjee, General Secretary of International Anti-imperialist and People's Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC)attended the programme on National Workers Day Celebration on invitation from the Sudan Workers Trade Union Front (SWTUF). The Conference started on August 3, 2008 with nearly 2000 delegates from 20 countries at the Friendship Hall, Khartoum. The Text of Manik Mukherjee's Speech at the Conference is given below. ...
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President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was inaugurated for a sixth term on June
29 after winning a landslide victory on behalf of the ruling Zimbabwe African
Nation Union-Patriotic Front against the opposition Western-backed Movement for
Democratic Change-Tsvangira....
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A political and military accord signed between the Sudanese government of Omar
al-Beshir and Chadian President Idriss Deby in January was dissolved in the
aftermath of an attack by a Darfur rebel group on May 10. The so-called Justice
and Equality Movement (JEM) carried out an assault in Omdurman resulting in the
deaths of approximately 200 people....
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The Brooklyn-based December 12 Movement issued the following statement titled "West launches preemptive propaganda strike to depose presidency
of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe" on March 30 from Harare, Zimbabwe....
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Chad, in central Africa, was brutally conquered by France over a century ago and made part of its colonial empire. Today, while nominally independent, it is
the fifth poorest country in the world, according to the U.N. However, it has become a significant, though not major, exporter of oil in the past three years....
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The U.S. and European imperialist powers are responsible for the genocidal
slave trade that decimated Africa, the genocide of the Indigenous population of
the Americas, the colonial wars and occupations that looted three-quarters of
the globe. It was German imperialism that was responsible for the genocide of Jewish people. To call for military intervention by these same powers as the answer to conflicts among the people of Darfur is to ignore 500 years of history....
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For those people who know Mali's capital Bamako has only a handful of large buildings -- some government offices, the luxury hotel at 15 stories, the international bank and the great mosque -- it may have been a surprise that this city was picked for the African session of 2006's Polycentric World Social Forum (WSF)....
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For the first time in the five years of the WSF's existence, the issues of Africa were at its center. According to Malian organizer Mamadou Goita, "We had over 300 people from the rural areas of Mali alone, while another 8,000 came from neighboring countries. All of them participated in the forum and enriched the discussions. This has never happened before."...
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Two demonstrations were held in Detroit today against the rising tide of United States militarism in Iraq and Somalia....
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Audio streaming of panel discussion...
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U.S. agents abducted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of
Haiti over a week ago and flew him to this intensely poor former French colony
in the heart of Africa in an attempt to isolate him and keep him from telling
the truth about what has happened in his Caribbean country....
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