Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
In Africa as in the rest of the world, US machinations undermine its goals and bring other nations together as they seek to protect themselves from a desperate empire.
[Source: gzt.com]
Why Mauritania is turning into an alliance outpost in the region – a recent report by Nikolay Dmitrievich Plotnikov outlines the potential for a new NATO front with Russia with Mauritania converted into a NATO alliance outpost in the region.
Pathy Tshindele (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Untitled, 2016.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The United States government held the US-Africa Leaders Summit in mid-December, prompted in large part by its fears about Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. Rather than routine diplomacy, Washington’s approach in the summit was guided by its broader New Cold War agenda, in which a growing focus of the US has been to disrupt relations that African nations hold with China and Russia. This hawkish stance is driven by US military planners, who view Africa as ‘NATO’s southern flank’ and consider China and Russia to be ‘near-peer threats’. At the summit, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin charged China and Russia with ‘destabilising’ Africa. Austin provided little evidence to support his accusations, apart from pointing to China’s substantial investments, trade, and infrastructure projects with many countries on the continent and maligning the presence in a handful of countries of several hundred mercenaries from the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.
The Biden administration is holding a summit with some 40 leaders of African countries. The New York Times headline of its reporting on the summit is revealing:
Biden Is Bringing Africa’s Leaders to Washington, Hoping to Impress
Seydou Keïta (Mali), Untitled, 1948–1954.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 21 November 2022, Mali’s interim prime minister, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, issued a statement on social media announcing the government’s decision ‘to ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by [French] NGOs operating in Mali’. This announcement came a few days after the French government cut Official Development Aid (ODA) to Mali, alleging that Mali’s government is ‘allied to Wagner’s Russian mercenaries’ (referring to the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group.) Colonel Maïga called the French claims ‘fanciful allegations’ and a ‘subterfuge intended to deceive and manipulate national and international public opinion for the purpose of destabilising and isolating Mali’.
Billionaire Arrogance
Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SAWe, 50 organizations focused on food sovereignty and justice worldwide, want you to know there is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground. —Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
Chaïbia Talal (Morocco), Mon Village, Chtouka, 1990.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 17 October, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), US Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk. Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its ‘largest and premier annual exercise’, African Lion, partly on Moroccan soil. This past June, ten countries participated in the African Lion 2022, with observers from Israel (for the first time) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Continue reading
Captain Ibrahim Traore came to power after deposing his senior officer Lt. Col Paul-Henri Damiba in a military coup on September 30. He faces the challenge of rising attacks by Islamist groups which have taken over 40% of the country’s territory
Ibrahim Traore34-year-old Capt. Ibrahim Traore, who deposed his senior Lt. Col Paul-Henri Damiba in a military coup on September 30, was sworn in as the new president of the transitional government of Burkina Faso on Friday, October 21.
The moment that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted by his own former military colleague, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pro-coup crowds filled the streets. Some burned French flags, others carried Russian flags. This scene alone represents the current tussle underway throughout the African continent.
Wilfried Balima (Burkina Faso), Les Trois Camarades (‘The Three Comrades’), 2018.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 30 September 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traoré led a section of the Burkina Faso military to depose Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had seized power in a coup d’état in January. The second coup was swift, with brief clashes in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou at the president’s residence, Kosyam Palace, and at Camp Baba Sy, the military administration’s headquarters. Captain Kiswendsida Farouk Azaria Sorgho declared on Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB), the national broadcast, that his fellow captain, Traoré, was now the head of state and the armed forces. ‘Things are gradually returning to order’, he said as Damiba went into exile in Togo.
Formerly top secret files show how the two oil corporations bankrolled UK covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 60s. The goal was to secure British access to key oil supplies across the developing world.
BP directors meet in London, 1960. (Photo: Central Press / Getty)The IRD used the secret subsidies to fund British covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 1960s across the Middle East and Africa, where Britain’s oil interests were substantial. Today, the value of the payments would be in the millions of pounds.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent tour in Africa was meant to be a game changer, not only in terms of Russia’s relations with the continent, but in the global power struggle involving the US, Europe, China, India, Turkey and others.
By Owen Schalk
[Source: twitter.com]
This important essay by US scholar Joel Wendland-Liu, originally published on the CPUSA website, provides a serious and detailed comparison of the US-Africa relationship and the China-Africa relationship. Referencing numerous recent studies indicating that Africans – and particularly younger Africans – have a more favorable opinion of China than of the US, the author contrasts the West’s record of military, economic and political coercion on the continent with China’s record of extensive, mutually-beneficial cooperation.
Pepe Escobar
The SCO and other pan-Eurasian organizations play a completely different – respectful, consensual – ball game. And that’s why they are catching the full attention of most of the Global South.
The meeting of the SCO Ministerial Council in Tashkent this past Friday involved some very serious business. That was the key preparatory reunion previous to the SCO summit in mid-September in fabled Samarkand, where the SCO will release a much-awaited “Declaration of Samarkand”.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to the questions during a meeting with permanent representatives of the member countries of the African Union and the diplomatic corps, Addis Ababa, July 27, 2022
Russian FM Sergey Lavrov rounded off a tour of African states in a blaze of media publicity despite US hopes to “isolate” himThe US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a press availability at the State Department on Wednesday made the dramatic announcement that he intends to speak to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days … for the first time since the war began” in Ukraine on February 24.
Interestingly, he gave an alibi that harks back to the Soviet era — prisoner exchange.
Nú Barreto (Guinea-Bissau), A Esperar (‘Waiting’), 2019.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The world is adrift in the tides of hunger and desolation. It is difficult to think about education, or anything else, when your children are not able to eat. And yet, the sharp attack on education during this past decade forces us to consider the kind of future that young people will inherit. In 2018, before the pandemic, the United Nations calculated that 258 million, or one in six, school age children were out of school. By March 2020, the start of the pandemic, UNESCO estimated that 1.5 billion children and youth were affected by school closures; a staggering 91% of students worldwide had their education disrupted by the lockdowns.
The New Dark Age 