This week the governments of Mexico and Rwanda, the dictatorship of capital in the US, and this dictatorship’s wars in Africa were on your minds. We share your comments for “Mexico: First the Poor,” “It’s Time to Acknowledge Hutu Genocide and Rwandan Occupation of DR Congo,” “The US Dictatorship of (White) Capital and its Tools of Bamboozlement,” “Expanding Monstrous US Drone War to Kenya is Bi-Partisan Madness,” and “Whitewashing the Destruction of Libya: Douglas Murray’s Libya Whitewash.”
“Mexico: First the Poor” by Roger Stoll examines the efforts of the country’s new leftist president to fight poverty and expand access to education.
Carmen CR writes:
“Afro-indigenous campesino Mexico with their subsistence livelihoods will be displaced by AMLO's megadevelopment projects. Afro-indigenous campesino communities in particular in Veracruz and Oaxaca that do not depend on the capitalist model and are intrinsically anti-capitalist, will face forced migration or neo-slavery in AMLO's interoceanic corridor passing through Tehuantepec Veracruz to Oaxaca (regions in Mexico with the largest afro-indigenous communities) by way of land dispossession, cultural imposition, and disarticulation of community governance and land management. The corridor, along with the badly named 'Maya Train,' are large scale state created racist gentrification efforts just as much as 'mixed income housing units that privilege higher income white middle class folks in middle of the hood. There is a spectrum of capitalist/neoliberal and industrialist left of which AMLO skews at the very far right. These are state 'development' projects that still adhere to the desires of the US whom permit AMLO to carry them out because they promise the US to decrease migration flow from other afro-indigenous communities in the deeper global south through their capture as low paid workers in Mexico's south, the region where these megadevelopment projects are planned for. They are a racialize capital investment against indigenous and afro-indigenous territories specifically. The imperialist US permits it because it benefits them.”
“It’s Time to Acknowledge Hutu Genocide and Rwandan Occupation of DR Congo” by Ann Garrison calls for challenging the silence of the global elite on the crimes of the current Rwandan regime.
Vincenzo Lachimera writes:
“Something most Americans don't know. In Canada we were watching the genocide unfold in graphic detail every day on our television screens for weeks and weeks. We could then swing the dial to American news stations and see the president tell the press
the situation is fluid, facts on the ground are shaky, it's hard to get a clear picture.’ The broadcast news would then repeat that statement verbatim as if they authored it. One Canadian reporter giving his report from Washington did not hide his contempt for the president's obvious lies and at the completion of his report his cameraman panned to the Whitehouse and then zoomed in on the vast array of satellite dish that adorned the roof of the Whitehouse back in 1994. Understand, Clinton had a reason to allow almost one million Africans to be slaughtered. Canadian General Romeo Delaire who commanded UN peace keeping forces stated, ‘I had the force and the command to stop the genocide in one hour.’ Clinton was the cog blocking UN forces from acting. Canadian reportage and it's timeline of that event is archived, as is US media reportage that gave cover for the extermination of a million sub Saharan Africans.”
“The US Dictatorship of (White) Capital and its Tools of Bamboozlement” by Glen Ford got this response from Flick Ford:
“White supremacy is an equal opportunity employer. In the event that Harris gets installed while the doddering old fool retreats behind the curtains and the Twittiot-in-Chief is free at last we will have both a person of color and super cop holding the highest office in the land. Only this time we will have no illusions about this person’s agenda as the rhetoric pretty much matches a record that is pure white suprematism.
“Often overlooked in the discussion of power that proves the point of your argument is the fact that since 1955 the make-up of the 3 branches of government - executive, house and senate - roughly 82% come from the private sector. C. W. Mills’ prophetic book The Power Elite pointed this out in 1957, and it’s become an institutionalized demographic since. Anyone who expects this mostly nepotistic cabal to reverse course is suffering from more than Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“The bipartisan move that placed the DHS/OHS into the executive branch gives a potential super cop president a private secret service militarized police force above and beyond superficial restrictions, they are accountable only to the president. The DHS/OHS is an American version of the Stasi soon to be deployed in ways we can only imagine in nightmares. The directorate comes directly from the Phoenix Program that was as you know created to illegally coerce or destroy civilian resistance to the American occupation of Vietnam.
“We are more than just a failed state, we are occupied by a power elite with the means to destroy dissent. The tiny chink in their armor is the fact that almost a third of the country no longer believes in the electoral process. Convincing the underclass that this ‘right
to vote’ is nothing more than ‘right this way’ is the highest challenge to establishment power that we have. Now is the time to disrupt and deflate the electoral farce that guarantees nothing will fundamentally change for America’s underclass.”
Paul Billings writes:
“Excellent analysis. As you point out, the ‘State’ is a pyramid, with the ruling elite, aka the ‘lords of capital’ sitting at the top. The ruling elite maintain their control with a labyrinth of overlapping support structures.
“Of course, the entire structure of the ‘State’ is designed to promote corporate power and profits. From my perspective, the biggest threat to the Empire is the inability of American Capitalism to resolve its systemic financial problems. Indeed, the structural economic problems giving rise to the Great Recession of 2008 have not been resolved and have resurfaced with a vengeance from the Coronavirus pandemic. We now have the highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression, with millions of families facing eviction from their homes and losing their health insurance.
“Two pillars which have supported US post-WWII global hegemony have been unrivaled military power and maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. These pillars are being threatened by astronomically expensive, looming strategic debacles confronting the Pentagon in Afghanistan (longest war in US history), Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, while major financial institutions- banks and Wall St are being propped up with an orgy of money printing. Thus, the CBO is projecting a $3.7 Trillion deficit for 2020. Obviously, deficits of this magnitude are not only unsustainable, they are weakening the dollar (reflected by rising price of gold). If the dollar crashes, American capitalism is going to implode, resulting in a literal ‘castration’ of the Empire. Perilous times ahead.”
“Expanding Monstrous US Drone War to Kenya is Bi-Partisan Madness” by Netfa Freeman compares the racism of US military operations in Africa with domestic police killings.
Marc Salomon writes:
“For the liberal, nothing really happens until it transpires within the field of vision of the liberal. Immigrants simply appear on the southern border as if out of nowhere, as if for no reason. The liberal performs compassion for the refugee, but remains clueless as to how US violence forces people to flee. Inexpensive good and services simply appear, as if raw materials were offered up to firms by grateful global southerners. Trade is cheered. No mention is made of the brutality imposed to keep those supply lines moving. Not to worry, out of sight, out of mind.”
In “Whitewashing the Destruction of Libya: Douglas Murray’s Libya Whitewash” Nu’man Abd al-Wahid critiques a recent book on migration to Europe which ignores the role of the West regime’s change operation in Libya in creating refugees.
James A. Ross writes:
“Oh, let's be clear the true reason Libya was attacked. Oil, and water resources. Also Gaddafi wanted to start their own currency amongst African countries. This was a threat to the dollar, the would not tolerate that, so he had to go. The phrase cause and effect applies to this situation. Obama and western force's attack Gaddfi under the pretense that he's attacking his own people. Long story short. They kill him thus destabilize the region, and it's been downhill ever since.”
Bouchra Lanae writes:
“Helped by the left with their white savior 'Refugees Welcome' scheme. For the outsiders it looks like they care but all they do is help whitewash the creation of refugees.”
Amina Mire writes:
“In 2012, Gaddafi came to Moscow and he was offered advanced air defense system and other advanced weapons. Gaddafi was played by Western leaders and Western spies who forged fake friendships with him. As a result, Gaddafi did not purchase advanced S-300 and S-400 are defense systems from Russia. Safi Gaddafi has admitted this much. If Gaddafi listened to Putin, he would have been defended with advanced Russian weapons.”
Michael Callura writes:
“The British won’t acknowledge their part in Palestine, or the conflicts between Kashmir and India. Many countries throughout the world are in or have been in conflicts within their borders because of Britain’s colonialism.”
The West’s long war on the rest of humanity continues but so must our struggle against it. In remembering this long war’s victims in Libya and elsewhere, we must redouble our efforts to organize against it.
Jahan Choudhry is Comments Editor for Black Agenda Report. He is an organizer with the Saturday Free School based in Philadelphia, PA.
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