22 November, 2021 – Black Agenda Report

[3 editions; 3 November, 10 November and 17 November 2021]

17 November 2021

COP26: Black Agenda Report Special Issue
BAR Editors
Black Agenda Report is giving special attention to the recent COP26 climate summit. The editorial team and contributors will present more themed issues in the future and provide in-depth analysis to subjects of importance to BAR readers.

Climate Action Pretense at COP26
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Joe Biden’s presence at COP26 was a photo opportunity giving the impression that he is fighting the climate crisis. But the U.S. and other governments continue carbon production while pretending to take action and ignore the needs of the Global South who suffer at the hands of the rich nations

COP26: Greenwashing and Plutocratic Misadventures
Ajamu Baraka, BAR Contributing Editor
For all the policy failures of COP26 it may actually be an inflection point in history — a point where social and political conditions force a transformation of consciousness and politics that can usher in epochal change.

A Dirty Occupation: The U.N.’s Criminal Enterprise and Ecological Catastrophe in Haiti
Jemima Pierre, BAR Contributor
What are the environmental and ecological impacts of large-scale military occupations by the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions? The deadly cholera epidemic unleashed on the Haitian people by UN soldiers is an extension of a totality of violence – material, political, and ecological – enacted by a presumably humanitarian peacekeeping mission.

EXCERPT: Genocide: The Social Lynching of Africans and their Descendants in Brazil, Abdias do Nascimento
Editors, Black Agenda Review
The late Brazilian intellectual, artist, and activist Abdias do Nascimento argues that racial democracy is premised on an idea of racial mixing that not only valorizes whiteness, but is predicated on the dilution and disappearance of the African race — on an annihilationist practice of “genocide.”

BAR Book Forum: Camisha Russell’s “The Assisted Reproduction of Race”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Camisha Russell. Russell is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Oregon. Her book is The Assisted Reproduction of Race.

Censorship is the Last Gasp of the Liberal Class
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
It is the liberal class which is determined to censor as much of public discourse as possible. They collude with big technology social media companies to determine what will and will not be seen and heard. In so doing they narrow the issues and positions which the public are able to consider for themselves. Ultimately the attacks are waged against the left.

Officer Prodigy
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR Poet in Residence

F.W. de Klerk: Requiem for a Racist Murderer
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR Editor and Columnist
F.W. de Klerk was the last apartheid president of South Africa. But remnants of that system remain, and the struggle continues to completely erase the legacy of apartheid criminality.

Industrial Nations Value Capitalism Over People at Global Climate Conference
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Inaction on the climate crisis is to be expected when capital is valued more than humanity.

Nicaragua Has a Public Relations Problem, Not a Democracy Problem
Roger Harris
Nicaragua’s recent elections were conducted with transparency and freedom of choice for voters. The only problem is with the United States and its determination to undo the will of Nicaraguans and overthrow the government they elected. U.S. corporate media act as governmental spokespeople and aid in the manipulation.

COP26 Was a Failure But the People’s Alternative Can Still Be a Success
Monthly Review Online
COP26 ended the way climate summits always do, with promises for change from countries which have every intention of keeping the status quo. The only possibility for change lies with peoples mass movements.

Behind the Scenes at COP26: Developing Countries Fume Over U.S. Pressure to Alter Climate Finance Terms
Rishika Pardikar
Rich capitalist nations use a variety of means to escape paying compensation to the Global South for climate change damage. The outcome at COP26 was no different in this regard.

So Said, Not So Easily Done
Steve D. Whitaker
The island nations of the Caribbean are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their governments and people need action from those countries with the power to stop the impending catastrophe.

Let a Hundred Socialist Flowers Bloom: A Conversation with Issa Shivji
Issa Shivji
In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.

We’re About to Pass Up a Generational Opportunity to Stem the Climate Crisis
Basav Sen
The Build Back Better program isn’t just just inadequate on climate. It will have disastrous consequences if there is no active mass movement to counter its provisions.

Organizing Against Racism and Class Oppression
Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong
Core organizer for Freedom Fighters DC Afeni joins Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley to discuss her activism and views on the current political situation in the United States.

November 10, 2021

U.S. Threatens Regime Change in Nicaragua
Margaret Kimberley
Nicaragua has been a target of U.S. aggressions since the 1850s. The Biden administration’s attack on the newly elected government is the latest chapter in a long and sordid history. Eyewitness accounts of the electoral process reveal the manipulations and lies concocted by the U.S. and its corporate media partners in this latest regime change effort.

Class Warfare and Socialist Resistance: Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela as Existential Threats to the US
Ajamu Baraka
Why do Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela pose such an existential threat to the U.S.? The promise of socialism and their resistance to US class warfare.

EDITORIAL: Abyssinia’s War and What Comes Next. Marcus Garvey, January, 1937
Editors, Black Agenda Review
When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the Black World rallied in support and solidarity. Marcus Garvey argued that the Black World was misguided and mistaken — and asserted that Haile Selassie was a fraud.

On American Patriotism a Marxist Polemic
Danny Haiphong
This article was originally published on November 5th in the author’s personal blog.

Abraham Wodaje Kebede on the Ground in Ethiopia
Ann Garrison
US Security state media has generated an avalanche of propaganda about the imminent collapse of the Ethiopian state this week.

BAR Book Forum: David Lester’s Book “Prophet Against Slavery”
Roberto Sirvent
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is David Lester.  Lester is the co-creator of the graphic novels The Listener and the award-winning 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. His book, edited by Paul Buhle and Marcus Rediker, is Prophet Against Slavery .

Are Black People the Crash Test Dummies for Democrats?
Pascal Robert
Black people in the US are the crash test dummies for the Democrats. The Democrats showcase the misery of Black people to maintain their legitimacy while deploying the Black political class to neutralize the “progressive” elements in the party.

The Hood Communist Guide to the US Blockade on Cuba
Hood Communist
When it comes to standing against U.S. imperialist aggression, Black radicals, informed by the Black internationalist tradition have rarely wavered. From Nicaragua, AFRICOM, Venezuela to Cuba, a new generation of African/Black internationalists are taking up that anti-imperialist mandate and making it clear that there will be no compromise and no retreat in the defense of Cuba. Here is a guide that provides us with the tools to stand in solidarity with the people of Cuba.

Book Review: The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders and Citizenship
Fouad Mami

Nicaragua Celebrates Democracy: An Election Day Report
Roger Harris
The US government and its allied corporate press are using every means to discredit and undermine the Nicaraguan election. According to imperial logic, any election where someone not beholding to the US is elected, is illegitimate and the democratic winner is a dictator.

You Can’t Abolish State Institutions Without Abolishing the State That Created Them
Kamau Franklin
The lexicon of abolition has taken a reformist turn and has been seized by liberal-left commentators, writers, and a certain activist class to suggest that the capitalist state model can be convinced to “abolish” its domestic decentralized army that maintains its very power over the masses of people.

November 3, 2021

Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Black politicians may be openly conservative or pretend leftists but their constituents rarely get what they need. Politics absent a mass movement is a recipe for inaction or even outright betrayal.

Ajamu Baraka on U.S. Ethiopian Policy
Ajamu Baraka, BAR Editor and Columnist
Ledet Muleta is the host of Prime Media’s “Prime Time.” She spoke with Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace on October 30. The interview is Important in light of the Ethiopian government’s recent declaration of a state of emergency.

TRANSCRIPT:  “Will they mourn us on the front line?” Mia Mottley, PM of Barbados, speech at the Opening of the World Leaders Summit of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), November 1, 2021
Editors, Black Agenda Review
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley’s comments at COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow, provided an impassioned call for global action on climate change. But what does it mean to beg for you life from the white neocolonial powers who have destroyed the earth?

Ethiopia: “I’ve Lost Faith in Everything American”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
In October 2021 Black Agenda Report published my interview with Jemal Countess, a photographer who has traveled back and forth between the US and Ethiopia since the Tigray People’s Liberation Front attacked a federal Ethiopian army base on November 2020, starting a civil war. This is Part II of that interview.

Reclaiming Our Time for the Planet
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR Poet in Residence

BAR Book Forum: Kyle T. Mays’ “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Kyle T. Mays . Mays is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His book is An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States.

Historic Decision Gives Davin a Win Over Goliath: Maryland Court Halts Sale of Moses African Cemetery by Developer
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR Editor and Columnist
A judge has ruled in favor of the community fighting to prevent a real estate developer from destroying an African American cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland.

Why Black Revolutionaries Must Stand with the People of Nicaragua
Netfa Freeman
While the US government haggles over the cost of providing basic human rights to its citizens, it is also targeting countries like Nicaragua that struggle to guarantee these rights to all of its citizens, especially Indigenous and Black populations.

Sudanies March Yet Again, Demanding Full-Fledged Civilian Rule
Pavan Kulkarni
The people of Sudan are protesting against the US and NATO trained coup leaders. They demand civilian rule and the rights to self-determination guaranteed under international law.

The United States is Organizing a Color Revolution in Cuba for November 15
Alan MacLeod
The U.S. continues its brazen attacks against the Cuban people, having announced its role in upcoming “protests” taking place on November 15. These actions are scripted entirely by Washington and are anything but spontaneous and home grown.

Bolivian President Warns Carbon Capitalism Won’t Solve Climate Crisis
Brett Wilkins
Bolivia’s president Luis Arce used the COP26 summit to speak against “green capitalism” offered by the rich capitalist nations and in favor of alternatives which put humanity at the center.

Don’t Ignore the International Tribunal on Genocide
Salifu Mack
The International Tribunal on US Human Rights Abuses against Black, Brown and Indigenous Peoples declared that the U.S. is still guilty of genocide, 70 years after the petition, “We Charge Genocide” was submitted to the United Nations.

Decolonising Dunkirk – Genocidal White Supremacists at War with Each Other
Nu’man Abd al-Wahid
The history of World War II often repeats the narrative of good vs. bad Europeans. In reality, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium perpetrated as many atrocities as the Germans. They differed only in that they committed their crimes against people of the Global South.