Rice and Power Turn Blind Eye to Congo Genocide
President Obama’s choices of Samantha Power as United Nations ambassador and Susan Rice for National Security Council chief should trouble “those of us who are concerned about Africa” because they were “the two most aggressive individuals in the intervention in Libya,” said Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of Congo. “Congo serves as a massive inconvenience for the likes of Power and Rice,” because U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda are implicated in the genocide of millions in that country, site of “what the United Nations, itself, says is the deadliest conflict in the world since the Holocaust,” said Carney.
Rice, Power Implicated in Libya Genocide, Assault on Syria
Renowned professor of international law Francis Boyle says Susan Rice and Samantha Power were among those most responsible “for slaughtering 50,000 Libyans under the pretext of Responsibility to Protect [R2P]. We saw outright genocide inflicted on the black citizens of Libya and black foreign guest workers…these people were outright exterminated,” said Boyle. “These are the same people who will be pushing [R2P] against Syria.”
Tell Harvard: Stop Polling Black People
Eighty-six percent of Black respondents told a Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll they were “satisfied” with their lives – but the numbers do not mean Blacks are doing well, said South Carolina author and activist Kevin Alexander Gray. In southern poor communities “people used to sweep the dirt in their front yards,” said Gray. “They didn’t have lawns, but they swept the dirt because they wanted to keep up appearances. Some of these polls are like sweeping dirt in the front yard.” Harvard should refrain from polling African Americans, since it doesn’t “know how to measure well-being in the Black community,” said Gray.
Detroit City Council Useless
The Detroit City Council has remained largely passive while an appointed Emergency Financial Manager considers auctioning the city’s assets to pay corporate creditors. Local people’s lawyer Tom Stephens says the council is “willing to compromise with power” as long as “they keep a seat at the council table, and are still getting their salaries. I think, at this point, short of, perhaps, human sacrifice, they’re willing to go along with pretty much anything.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
The Victoire Ingabere Umuhoza Prize for Democracy and Peace is awarded to people who work for democracy, peace, and freedom in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
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This week’s featured author is Hugo ka Canham. Canham is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of South Africa and coeditor of Black Academic Voices: The South African Experience. His…
Rosalino Flores is just one of the Peruvians who died in the struggle against the coup government. Clau O'Brien Moscoso continues her dispatches from Peru. A Spanish translation follows.
The UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent must uphold the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). A recently written mandate affirms the importance of DDPA and the need to…
