Rastafari Speaks

Poor Little Haiti to be Fleeced of its Riches

By Dady Chery
May 09, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

“This mining plan will permanently strip the country of much of its mineral, cultural, and ecological wealth.”

Show me a corporate boss who calls Haiti the “poorest country in the western hemisphere,” and I’ll show you a con artist preparing to fleece Haiti. Likewise, show me a western technocrat who bemoans Haiti’s “dramatic deforestation due to charcoal production” and I’ll show a bio-pirate or vandal preparing to wreck Haiti’s remaining cloud-forest and mangrove-forest ecosystems.

It turns out that the real plan for Haiti’s northeastern region — especially the Caracol Bay area — is one that was hatched by Canadian mining corporations, with the U.S and South Korean sweatshop zone being a side project and distraction. If this mining plan is given a green light while Haiti is under foreign occupation, it will permanently strip the country of much of its mineral, cultural, and ecological wealth.

Zimbabwe: When fear becomes the enemy

By Grañfada� Ayitomeka
April 17, 2012 - herald.co.zw

The struggle to free Zimbabwe from the gnawing jaws of settler colonialism was not fought because the people had the penchant of fighting strangers, neither did they do so for the love of the lofty ideas embedded in the skulls of the anti-colonial leaders.

The basis for the people’s bloody struggle is direct and simple, to ward off white predators who had occupied the land by committing maafa (the unspoken African word for genocide committed by Caucasians against Africans) and subsequently established minority criminal regime.

Ab initio, the struggle was about the land, it is and it will be about the land! This is not a negotiable issue because, it touches on the very existential ingredient fundamental to life. The socio-cultural, spiritual and economic fabrics of the people of Zimbabwe are inextricably linked to the land. If you yanked or dispossessed people from their land, they are better off dying than to live a parasitic miserable life. A landless person is stateless and ceases to enjoy human dignity.

The Irrationality of the Case against Iran�s Nuclear Program

By Gary Leupp
April 13, 2012 - counterpunch.org

President Obama has informed the Iranians they have one “last chance” to avoid attack. They must suspend higher uranium enrichment, close down the Fordow enrichment facility, and “surrender” their stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 per cent purity. Iranian officials respond matter-of-factly that such demands are “irrational.” (Some Israeli officials, eager to build the case for attack, are reportedly delighted with the Iranian response.)

Seasoned U.S. analysts seem to agree with the Iranian assessment.Stephen M Walt writes in Foreign Policy, “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the Obama administration is thinking about Iran... I’m puzzled.” Gary Sick, writing for CNN, predicts dire consequences of an attack on Iran and seems to question its wisdom. So why is Obama being so confrontational? So irrational?

Justice, Not Drama, for Trayvon Martin

By Margaret Kimberley
March 22, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

"Al Sharpton and Michael Baisden have announced that they will attend a rally in support of the Martin family."

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida has thankfully become a national news story. Martin was killed as he went about his daily business, under circumstances which usually don't result in death for anyone but black people. While Martin was returning to the home of a family friend in a gated community, a "neighborhood watchman," a trigger happy rent-a-cop, shot and killed the seventeen year old. The killer's assertion of "suspicious behavior" boils down to just one thing. Martin had a black face, and that has always served as reason enough to be deemed suspicious.

Social Media Scam Alert: Top Ten Ways to Tell Kony is Phony

By Bruce A. Dixon
March 19, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

Joseph Kony, the Invisible Children YouTube video tells us, is a bad guy in Uganda. He's a lawless warlord leading something called the Lord's Resistance Army, which kidnaps, enslaves and murders innocent children by the tens of thousands. We're never told exactly why, as corporate media simply paint Africa as a hellish and inexplicable place where things like that just happen. The Ugandan government, the video tells us, would gladly shut Joseph Kony down and bring him to justice if only the US would provide the advanced weapons, sophisticated tracking gear, military training and the boots on the ground to help get it done. To make this happen, all that Kony 2012's promoters ask of us is to help spread “awareness” of Uganda's “invisible” child soldiers by facebooking, tweeting and repeating the Kony 2012 video, and by emailing influential politicians and the one-name celebrities like Oprah, Bono, Rhianna, Cosby and Lady Gaga (OK, Lady Gaga is two names) to whom they listen. The Kony 2012 video aims to bring this criminal child-enslaving Ugandan warlord to justice by enlisting tens of millions of us little people in making Kony's name an odious household word around the planet, after which Washington DC will stretch forth its military arm to bring Joseph Kony, alive if possible, before the International Criminal Court for trial and punishment.

President Mugabe, Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement

By Bowden Mbanje and Darlington Mahuku
March 05, 2012 - The Herald

Biko wrote quite a lot of articles on political, religious and economic issues and we feel the little we have shared with you on his works these last three weeks will help our readers to have a deeper understanding of some of his revolutionary ideas.

Because of space and time, we also need to analyse other radical Black nationalist writers as to make our readers appreciate the works of these intelligent sons of Africa, who through their far-reaching and deep-rooted writings, just like those of Biko, can help all black people to reorganise themselves as a true united people. In this last instalment on Biko, we merge his ideas on Black Consciousness with what President Mugabe said in an interview to mark his 88th Birthday.

Hollywood and Race: Still Stuck in the 1950s

By Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr.
February 22, 2012 - counterpunch.org

This Sunday, nearly 40 million people are likely to tune in to see who captures an Oscar at the annual Academy Awards ceremonies. Winning the award can add millions to a film’s box office and supercharge the career of an actor, director, screenwriter or editor. According to the Academy’s 2009-10 fiscal year tax filing, the Oscars generated $81.3 million in revenue. This is a big deal.

It is avidly watched by the moviegoing population of this sprawling and diverse nation of more than 300 million people, and by millions more around the world. Hollywood sets styles, captures imaginations, touches dreams. Worldwide, movies provide people with much of what they think about America.

'Human Rights' Warriors for Empire

By Glen Ford
February 17, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

The largest imperial offensive since the Iraq invasion of March, 2003, is in full swing, under the banner of “humanitarian” intervention – Barack Obama’s fiendishly clever upgrade of George Bush’s “dumb” wars. Having failed to obtain a Libyan-style United Nations Security Council fig leaf for a “humanitarian” military strike against Syria, the United States shifts effortlessly to a global campaign “outside the U.N. system” to expand its NATO/Persian Gulf royalty/Jihadi coalition. Next stop: Tunisia, where Washington’s allies will assemble on February 24 to sharpen their knives as “Friends of Syria.” The U.S. State Department has mobilized to shape the “Friends” membership and their “mandate” – which is warlord-speak for refining an ad hoc alliance for the piratical assault on Syria’s sovereignty.

Rationalizing Idiocy: Attacking Iran For All the Right Reasons?

By Ron Jacobs
January 30, 2012 - dissidentvoice.org

Unlike a couple of years ago, when the consensus was split, there recently seems to be a growing consensus among pundits and certain politicians that Washington will be launching a military attack on Iran. While pundits do not have the power to make war, politicians in Congress certainly do. Furthermore, pundits convinced that this is an advisable route will do their best to bend the ears of those politicians so that there wishes can be filled, especially if those pundits are representing interests that believe they would benefit from such an attack.

Why now? Part of the reason is because the majority of US troops are out of Iraq, thereby leaving a minimal number of American soldiers available for Iranian retaliation. A related reason could be the loss of prestige to Washington with the withdrawal of those troops. It’s not like Washington won its war in Iraq; it’s more like it was a stalemate with Tehran still holding on to a couple key cards. Israel, with an element of its ruling elites always ready to attack any perceived enemy, is of course a constant element in the drive to destroy Iran, as are the ruling families of certain Arab Gulf states that compete with Tehran in the oil market. Iran’s alleged support for various resistance movements in the Middle East and Asia provides Israel with but one more reason to call for war, especially since those resistance movements are primarily opposed to Israel’s expansionist anti-Palestinian policies.

Black America Still Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant

Black America Still Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant: Year 4 of the Obama Era

By Bruce A. Dixon
January 20, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

Three years ago this week, more than 2 million souls, at least half of them African American, converged upon the nation's capital. They came, in what my colleague Glen Ford called the Great Black Hajj of 2009, to witness and celebrate the swearing in of the nation's first African American president. They wept and danced and sang and prophesied. They marveled at how far they had come. It was, their leaders assured them, the beginning of a new day.

Three years later, it's clear that this is indeed a new day, a new era. But for most of black America, it's not the one they hoped for. Nobody expected urban poverty would begin to vanish overnight, or that millions of acres of lost black farmland would be restored. But promises were made, and expectations were justifiably high, not because Barack Obama had promised to investigate Wall Street, prosecute banksters, or stop the imperial wars and illegal foreclosures, but because humans do have the right to expect justice at home and peace abroad, whether their leaders deliver these things or not.