Haiti: No Sovereignty, No Justice
Haiti has been a less than sovereign nation since 1825, when France saddled the young Black republic with the equivalent of billions in debt to compensate for the colonial power’s loss of its plantations and slaves. Foreigners imposed the recent elections on Haiti, bringing into question whether “these elections were really Haitian, at all,” says Alex Main, policy analyst for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. All three of the top vote-getters “have very close ties to the business elite,” and “none have endorse an agenda that would lift Haitians out of poverty.”
Paul Pumphrey, of Brothers and Sisters International, notes that half of Haiti’s ruling Interim Commission is made up of foreigners. Haitian commission members recently complained that they are not even consulted on how reconstruction and development money is spent.
Finance Capital Hegemony is Cause of Crisis
Western finance capital is “not interested in productive investment – they’re interesting in spreading debt among nations and people and keeping wages as low as possible,” says Anthony Monteiro, professor of African American Studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia. Americans and Europeans will ultimately have to choose, “not whether they can reform finance capital, but how quickly they can undermine the hegemony of finance capital over their national economies and a good part of the world economy.”
The Dead-End of Liberalism
Comfortable liberals don’t really believe that the fascist barbarians are at the gate. If they did, they would be radicals. “Black, Brown, indigenous and working people need to abandon the conventions of the conventional Left and develop their own politics, says BAR columnist Dr. Jared Ball.
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 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
The polls were wrong in 2016, and they may be wrong this year, too, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in an essay for Prison Radio.
Thirty African countries have laws against homosexuality, but debate still rages over whether homophobia is endemic to Africa or a European import.
Anti-Black racism is not limited to the US, said Jomaira Salas, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Rutgers University and author of an article on Black Latina girls.
Attempts to “reform” the police through body cameras, so-called “community” policing and other such measures “all presume the continued presence of police” in oppressed communities, said Dy
Allegiance to the Democratic half of the duopoly – whether active or passive – is still allegiance to corporate rule, not a strategy for transformative change.
