by Osaze Lanre Nosaze

Africa’s most populous nation has lots of parties that call themselves “socialist” or “communist,” but “all of them fail by the crucial criterion of possessing sufficient interventional capacity for sustained and broad-based influence over the agenda, course, pace, and outcomes of the social conflict between the oppressed and the oppressors.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

President Barack Obama sold Saudi Arabia record amounts of weapons, joined its murderous war in Yemen, and interfered in European elections by supporting Angela Merkel in Germany and Emmanuel Macron in France. Yet the corporate media pretends that this continuity of U.S. imperial policy is, somehow, all Donald Trump’s idea. The rulers care only about the Empire. “The ICE raids, emboldened racism, voter suppression and cuts to government programs don’t concern them.”

by Danny Haiphong

The capitalist narrative, aggressively fronted by the Democratic Party in 2016, holds that “conditions in the U.S. were never better.” But all the objective facts say otherwise. “Imperialism's contradictions have been pushed to their natural limit.” By every social, economic and moral measure, conditions of life are deteriorating for the masses of people, while the rich suck up the wealth of the world.

Corruption allegations and protests against Brazil's Workers Party and its president Dilma Roussef were widely reported in the US. But since a soft coup ousted the Workers Party and its president a few months ago strikes and protests twice as large are utterly unreported by the US press. Brasil Wire correspondent Brian Mier explains who's in motion and what's at stake in the country with the largest black population outside Africa.

by Dr. Matthew Quest

Educator and popular historian Sister Tchaiko R. Kwayana (1937-2017) taught in Africa, South America and the US. A forerunner of the Black Power and Black studies movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, she also challenged post-civil rights, post-colonial independence black-led regimes where they emerged as authoritarian and oppressive, betraying the goals of national liberation and Black autonomy.

by Abayomi Azikiwe

History is not as far removed from the crises afflicting Africa today as many people seem to think. Imperialism has fought against the continent’s genuine independence and socialist development over the last five decades. As Nkrumah said, independence was only the prelude to a tougher struggle for the right of Africans to conduct their affairs according to their own aspirations.