Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” did not exist. Assad’s “use of chemical weapons” is an obvious, blatant lie. “Iranian nukes,” another blatant lie. The lies about Gaddafi in Libya are so absurd that it is pointless to repeat them. What is the reason for all the death and destruction and the flooding of the West with refugees from the West’s naked violence around the world? Violence for its own sake. That’s what America has become.

Stiff-necked apartheid high priests had their problems but none of them contemplated the type of weird political culture the ANC and Mr. Zuma are foisting on post-apartheid South Africa. Where is that country headed?

Somaliland is not only a pioneer as a cashless country but as one of the leading markets in mobile banking platforms in Africa. The phenomenon is not only revolutionising the people’s concept of money but also the way urgently needed assistance is provided to affected people in emergency situations.

Recent statistics show that for a population of over 70 million, only 4% of the inhabitants are connected to the Internet due to limited infrastructure and high access costs. Government actions such as shutdowns, alongside surveillance and censorship practices, undermine the development of inclusive Internet society in the central African country.

From chattel slavery to the current period of neocolonial flag independence, the Caribbean labouring classes have yet to exercise substantive power over the political institutions that govern their lives. A system of popular assemblies with the capacity to challenge the authoritarian liberal capitalist democracies for power would be one of the best expressions of reparatory justice in the Caribbean.

Nothing could be more hypocritical than Trump's claim to have bombed Syria because of the suffering of Syrian children. Deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians is a hallmark of America’s wars. Moreover, how can a man who ordered that not a single refugee be accepted from Syria, even keeping out children scheduled to undergo life-saving medical procedures, claim to act in the name of Syrian children?

South African communist leader Chris Hani was assassinated by white racists 27 years ago, removing him from the scene during the nation’s transition to Black rule. Hani fought careerism and corruption in the revolutionary movement. Today, the tradition of internal debate that Hani promoted has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

The security context in Europe today doesn’t make everybody unhappy, especially among firms that have specialised in security and surveillance, among them the British G4S, to which many governments subcontract their dirty work, ranging from prison management to the deportation of migrants. Will it be able to regain financial health in the new "Trumpian" world in which we live, after being tarnished by so many scandals?

The Convergence of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) has defied all efforts over the past year, by the Honduran government and the DESA dam company, to destroy it. On Monday, 27 March, 24 years after Berta Cáceres cofounded the Lenca indigenous organization, COPINH hosted an anniversary celebration of rebellion and recommitment.

The Igbo expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have to sit down with a free Biafra and discuss the entire history of the Igbo genocide, the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”. 

Britain will surely accept full responsibility for the crimes against humanity, apologise to Biafrans and pay full reparations.

Black America needs a peace movement to confront militarism and the global structures of white supremacy. “We are calling for a new alliance to help revive the black anti-war and peace movement in the black community as an essential component of a revived broader anti-war and pro-peace movement,” says human rights activist and former Green Party VP candidate Ajamu Baraka.

Does the gradual increase in the number of offensive strikes starting in 2007, the occurrence of the Marikana Massacre and the farm workers’ revolt of 2012, the five-month platinum strike and the one-month metalworkers’ strike in 2014 indicate that a new wave of offensive strikes has begun? Or is this just a short-lived revival? A key question is: has South Africa reached a turning point?

Since 1994 South Africa has been unable to seriously change the national socio-economic direction in the interest of the majority of the people. The end of apartheid has helped to increase SA’s integration into global capitalism. The benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism are mass poverty for the majority and wealth and privileges for the powerful minority, which includes a few blacks.

South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. The present situation is, in objective terms, a house divided; a house that is tottering on rotten foundations. Despite the more general advances that have been made under the ANC’s rule since 1994, power has not only remained in the hands of a small minority but has increasingly been exercised in service to capital. 

Is there really no explanation for Khalid Masood’s lone attack on Westminster Palace, as Scotland Yard sleuths say? Masood could not change his “blackness”, nor the reality of racism in England. He could not get over his schoolmates calling him “Black Ade”. He laughed about it, and even as he grew up into manhood he behaved convivially, behaving like a “good boy”, so as not to appear rude.

Africa is a vast continent with diversity of cultures. Rather than see this as an impediment to development, the continent should take advantage of this rich cultural diversity in its quest for economic development and should change the attitudes of its people towards work, interpersonal trust, time, youth and women.

The editors have brought together a vast compendium of knowledge that challenges the Eurocentric epistemic colonisation of Africa. The book should be on the reading list for courses on the Political Economy of Africa, Development Economics, and International Relations at universities. It would also do well in the library of journalists and other analysts.

The World Bank has for decades left a trail of human misery. Destruction of the environment, massive human rights abuses and mass displacement have been ignored in the name of “development” that works to intensify neoliberal inequality. In response to legal attempts to hold it to account, the World Bank has declared itself above the law.

The same people who did everything they could to vilify both Biko and Sobukwe while they lived – and have taken part in attempted erasure of their legacies – pretend to honour these anti-apartheid icons. Today, those who paid a painful price for associating with Biko and Sobukwe watch how others gobble up the fruit of their sacrifices, as they and their families continue to suffer in silence.

Pascuala Vásquez is the spiritual leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). Known affectionately to all as Doña Pascualita, she is also head of COPINH’s Lenca Cultural Committee, and is on the Council of Elders.

World Poetry Day was marked on Tuesday, March 21. Throughout Africa, spoken word art is taking firm roots, especially when it explores social issues. Spoken Word artist Valentine Onyeka Ogunaka aka Brainbox from Nigeria shares his experience.

March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A notable cultural icon in the struggle against racism is Jamaican reggae artiste Peter Tosh. He was an internationalist and linked the fight of Africans against racism, settler-colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa with the struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

In the four years Uhuru Kenyatta has been in power, the country has accumulated huge debts that will take ages to settle. Official theft of public money stands at a third of the national budget. Kenyatta’s authoritarian tendencies have seen a shrinking of democratic space. Kenya is deeply divided along ethnic lines. As the August elections approach, it is increasingly clear that a new leadership is needed.

Negotiations did not produce the state of Israel. From 1917 when the Jews procured the dubious Balfour Declaration right up to independence three decades later, the Jews conducted themselves in a manner that could have made the murderers of today’s ISIS and Boko Haram look like saints. So, why do some people encourage Palestinians to embrace negotiations as the way to their freedom?

Historically, the state is a transient phenomenon. Where are the world’s once great empires? Europe, with just a third of Africa’s population, has produced 23 new states since the late 1980s. There is no point in insisting that the Igbo people, victims of Africa’s worst – and ongoing – genocide, who want their own state, must remain a part of Nigeria.

De Klerk succeeded in shaping post-apartheid South Africa in deep and fundamental ways. Every policy he spelt out in his 1990 speech has been faithfully followed by successive administrations of the ANC. This is why so many black South Africans feel that their dreams are unrealised. It also explains why there is so much confidence among white racists that their positions of power are untouchable.

Rima Khalaf’s resignation, under pressure to suppress factual and legal findings unfavorable to Israel, will send a chilling message to other UN officials that they are better off serving those in power than in upholding any mandate to advance human rights and respect for international law.

The National Coalition for Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) and the Pan-African Institute for the Study of African Societies (PAISAS) have signed an MOU as part of a process of strengthening relations between Africa and its Diaspora. Here is the document:

Morocco’s newfound interest in Africa is linked to NATO’s attack on Africa and the murder of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO’s destruction of Libya completely humiliated the African Union. It tore the heart out of an alternative African future. And left Africa seriously exposed once again to the Western imperial virus: a virus contemporary Morocco carries.

The 13^th Israel Apartheid Week continues in Kenya, March 20-25, 2017. The event, organised by Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement, will feature films, poetry and discussions. In this poem, Shailja Patel shares her thoughts on why Kenyans - and Africans - should support the struggles of the Palestinian people against Israeli apartheid.

Not only was she involved in the development of the first national television network in Ghana, Graham Du Bois worked on a high level within the CPP government as an administrator within the state publishing house. She worked directly with President Nkrumah and was a part of his inner circle of advisors.

In order for Africa to assume responsibility for its own transformation and elevation, and be able to undertake self-reliant development and create secure domestic prosperity, it must create its own specific ideology and strategy of self-development. To do this there are 5 irreducible components that have to be designed and put in place.

Kenya’s rulers and some elite commentators frame the ongoing occupation of indigenous lands grabbed by colonialists in Laikipia as a criminal invasion of private property by lawless bands of tribal herders. Really? Those white ranches - in land-hungry Kenya, half-a-century into “independence” - are nothing more than ample proof of neocolonialism. The dispossessed indigenous people must take back their land. By any means necessary.

In this final essay of a seven-part series, Yash Tandon depicts fascism as a systemic phenomenon arising from the incompatibility of democracy and capitalism. For capitalism to persist, as is the case now, democracy is dispensed with. Hegemonic imperialist powers embody fascism in their relations with the rest of the world. Leaders of African neo-colonies administer the fascist system on behalf of the global corporate and financial fascism.

Western Sahara stands out today as Africa’s last colony, occupied illegally and forcefully by Morocco with the backing of France. Everyday Saharawi people suffer horrendous human rights violations by the occupying power. This is one of the world’s forgotten conflicts. The only peaceful solution is for Morocco to accept the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination.

Before the start of a public lecture by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in South Africa, student activist Kolosa Ntombini requested the renowned Kenyan writer and academic to ask white people in the audience to leave the hall as only black people could meaningfully discuss decoloninization. Kolosa recounts the episode.

The business community, oil companies, government officials, residents of Port Harcourt and non-governmental organizations need to come together to find a lasting solution, which borders more on structural and systemic issues associated with the oil and gas capitalist economy than with any flimsy explanation being given.

It is wrong history to teach that Africa was named by Greeks or Romans when these colonialists illegally occupied this unique continent through aggression and invasion. This was in 332 B.C. until the Roman invasion in 30 B.C. Africa got its name from Africans.

The Pan-Africanist movement harbours some African men who conceal patriarchal attitudes. These “Man-Africanists” are cancerous to the advancement of the movement that needs to engage in developing new men who are genuinely anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, empathetic, connected to a radical political concept of self-awareness, and guided by an ethical sense of equality, justice and freedom for all.

To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published its first-ever report on the human rights of African women. The report celebrates important achievements such as provisions on sexual and gender based violence, economic, social and cultural rights and the principle of non-discrimination in constitutions, polices and in legislations across the continent.

Kenya’s much-awaited elections on August 8 have thrown up the usual crowd of crooks in designer suits shouting themselves hoarse with the well-worn promises to deliver a sparkling new nation of milk and honey. It is all nonsense.

Does the ANC leadership, many of whose members lived in exile in other African countries for many years, bother to tell their stories to the new generation that is growing up in South Africa and who know almost nothing about the role played in the struggle against apartheid by the poor African countries whose people constitute the “immigrants” they now despise and harass?

In Africa the ‘collapse’ of the Soviet block had profound implications. At that time in the late 1980s and early 1990s Africa, and particularly Southern Africa, was involved in a process of decolonization by way of armed struggle, in which the Soviet block played a decisive role.  The contribution of the Soviet block and Cuba to the decolonization of Africa remains a testament to the progress of humankind.