WHY ARE YOU INFATUATED WITH THE DOLLAR?

Stop worshipping the US dollar. That’s the message from Christopher Mutsvangwa, a senior official of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

He responded on 15 April in Harare to those expressing doubts about the viability of Zimbabwe’s new currency, Zim Gold (ZiG).

On 5 April, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, launched ZiG to replace the inflation-battered Zimbabwean dollar, which lost over three-quarters of its value in the last 12 months, during which annual inflation had soared to 55 per cent. 

About $285 million worth of foreign currencies, gold and precious minerals back the ZiG.

Continued….. Mutsvangwa wondered why people would have more faith in the dollar than in the country’s gold, used as a medium of exchange for centuries before the United States became a country.

The government says gold backs the ZiG so that the new currency doesn’t suffer the fate of its predecessors, which depreciated quickly, mainly due to Western unilaterally-imposed economic sanctions following Harare’s land-reform programme more than two decades ago.

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MASS GRAVES UNEARTHED IN GAZA

Palestinian Civil Defense recently uncovered close to 800 bodies in mass graves at Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Disturbing reports of victims found stripped naked with their hands tied behind their backs began to circulate in recent weeks, prompting concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes and an imminent major raid in Rafah.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that ‘among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded.’

The Israeli military raided the hospitals, claiming to attempt to root out H*mas fighters that Israel alleged operated inside the complex. After a two-week raid at al-Shifa Hospital, UN monitors called it an ‘empty shell.’

Continued….. ‘The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,’ UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in a call for independent investigations into the deaths.

Israel’s bombardments and escalated siege have k*lled more than 34,000 Palestinians, including nearly 15,000 children and almost 10,000 women, the High Commissioner’s office said. More than 77,000 people are injured, and over 7,000 others are assumed to be under the rubble.

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Today marks the anniversary of a famous African victory over British colonial forces.
On April 29th, 1881, the Basuto Rebellion, also known as the Basuto Gun War, finally came to an end.

People in present-day Lesotho rose up to defeat a bid by British rulers to disarm them.
Fighting between the two sides erupted in September, 1880, after authorities of British Cape Colony, in modern-day South Africa, enforced the so-called Peace Preservation Act (PPA). The legislation ordered Basuto people to surrender their weapons.
Many refused, viewing it as a push by colonialists to increase their domination of a region they’d controlled for ten years.

In 1868, to avoid being overrun by Boers in the neighbouring Transvaal, the King of Basuto, Moshoeshoe, agreed to make the territory a semi-independent British protectorate.

Continued…. However, after his death in 1870, the land was annexed into Cape Province, which became a self-governing British colony two years later. This put the Basutos under control of Cape authorities, a fact that was widely resented.

Pockets of resistance flared up and this, coupled with widespread gun ownership among Basuto men, unsettled authorities. They then tried to enforce the PPA, but when that failed Cape soldiers attacked the Basuto to forcibly disarm them. However, The Basuto put up a formidable fight and inflicted substantial losses on the invading forces.

By April, 1881, it was clear without reinforcements from other parts of the British empire, it would be impossible to defeat the Sothos. On April 29th, Cape authorities signed a peace agreement that would allow the Africans to keep their guns but register them and pay an annual gun levy.

The Basuto victory demonstrated their capacity to resist domination by British agents. Two years later, Cape authorities decided the territory should be handed over to the British government for direct control.

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GOOGLE FIRES WORKERS FOR PROTESTING ISRAELI PROJECT

No Tech for Apartheid (@notechapartheid), a project of M Power Change (@mpower_change) and Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive), has accused Google of retaliation for firing as many as 50 workers the tech giant says protested Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with Israel’s military.

Nine workers filmed their sit-in protest and arrests on 16 April at the company’s offices in New York and California. That included a protest in Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office.

Continued…. Protests also have taken place at US universities to hold institutions accountable for investing their endowments in Israel. Frustration has grown because the United States has vetoed three ceasefire proposals at the UN Security Council, and it has been supplying weapons to Israel. Just a few days after reports emerged of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals, President Joe Biden signed off on $26 billion of unconditional military aid to Israel.

In January, the International Court of Justice ruled in South Africa’s case against Israel that Israel’s acts are ‘plausibly’ violating the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. More than 34,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, have been killed since the 7 October escalation in the 75-year Israeli occupation of Palestine.

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RITCHIE TORRES NOT OUR KINFOLK

We hear Black people in the United States uttering with more frequency, 'Not all skin folk are kinfolk' and 'Black faces in high spaces won't save us.' 

In 2020, many people celebrated the election of Ritchie Torres, the first openly gay Afro-Latinx elected from the south Bronx to the US Congress.

Yet, Torres chooses to side with the imperialist system for his gain. He once stated, 'There are few people in American politics who have been as visibly and vocally supportive of Israel as I've been.' As pointed out in this @codepink video, the pro-Israel lobby generously funds Torres.

Not only does Torres consider pro-Palestine protests anti-Semitic, he opposes a ceasefire, disputes the EU's foreign policy chief's opinion that Israel is starving Gaza, and denies the International Court of Justice ruled Israel is 'plausibly' violating the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. 

We should have known that identity does not determine ideology. 

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‘GREED’ FUELLING GLOBAL WARS

‘From Gaza, to Congo, to Sudan, to Haiti, people like us cannot sit idle in the face of injustice.’

This line was tweeted by former Ohio state senator, Nina Turner, along with her speech laying into greedy leaders. To her, current global conflicts are easily explained, ‘just follow the money.’

Viewed like that, you’ll see wars are happening in resource-rich regions of the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. A coincidence? Not to mention their profitability for the military-industrial complex.

She urges all ‘good’ people of the world to take a stand against politicians who are consumed by corporate interests.

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WORLD’S TOP-RANKING MATHEMATICIAN IS AFRICAN

Do you know where the world’s top mathematician comes from? Well, he’s a 38-year-old Cameroonian, Abdon Atangana. Inspired by the lack of references to African people in scientific literature or mathematics, he challenged the field’s Eurocentrism with his mathematical theorems.

Now at the top of his field, his formulas are essential in their real-life application in science, technology and engineering.

Here’s more from tech entrepreneur Sandra Babu-Boateng. Tell us which other ground-breaking African mathematician you want to see on our page.

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Today, 30 April, marks the 61st anniversary of the Bristol bus boycott, a milestone in the United Kingdom’s civil rights movement.

The Bristol Omnibus Company refused to hire Black or Asian bus crews, sparking outrage that led to the minority communities in the southwestern city of Bristol boycotting the bus company for almost four months.

The year-long bus boycott in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States, inspired the Bristol organisers, known as the Commonwealth Coordinated Committee. The committee still runs today as the Bristol West Indian Parents and Friends Association.

Continued….. Caribbean community organisers like Paul Stephenson led the way, encouraging people to find alternative means of transportation, including walking.

The Bristol boycott garnered national attention and support only within four months, putting pressure on the Bristol Omnibus Company to hire its first Indian-born Sikh driver, and later two Jamaicans and two Pakistanis.

The victory led to the United Kingdom passing the Race Relations Act in 1965, barring racial discrimination in public places. Then, in 1968, another act extended provisions for employment and housing.

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TUNISIA STUDENTS JOIN GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR PALESTINE

The global student movement in solidarity with Palestine has received a boost. 

On Monday, 29 April, Tunisian students answered the call for demonstrations. Engaging in sit-ins at the French embassy in Tunis and the capital's municipal theatre, they condemned the French and US role in aiding Israel to k*ll more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of whom have been women and children. They further called for criminalising the normalisation of ties with Israel. So far, Tunisia has not recognised Israel, unlike a few of its North African neighbours, Egypt and Morocco.

The student protests are most visible in the US, where universities have called for police and military crackdowns in response to demands that US universities divest millions of dollars from Israel.

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STUDENTS TELL UNI: BREAK BOEING TIES

Washington University typifies what students across the U.S. are protesting about. The institution has a long history with weapons manufacturer Boeing, which arms Israel. It has a research partnership with the aerospace firm which recruits WU graduates and donates millions to the college.

Students now want these ties cut, following Tel Aviv’s destruction of Gaza that’s killed 34,000 Palestinians. Police arrested around 100 demonstrators who’d set up encampments on campus at the weekend. It’s a picture repeated across the U.S. where similar protests are taking place at dozens of universities.

While it’s hard to know precisely how colleges manage their finances, one database from the U.S. Department of Education shows American colleges and universities reported about $342 million in gifts and contracts from Israel from 2014 to 2024.

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U.S. STUDENT RALLY: WE WON’T BE COWED!

If you want to sum up the feeling of U.S. student protests against Israel’s destruction of Gaza, this clip does a good job.

Sean Blackmon is speaking at a rally at the campus of George Washington University. He’s a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and tells the crowd: ‘What kind of system do we live in where an institution can call the police on you for opposing g*n*cide, but there’s no authority that you can call on an institution that supports g*n*cide,?’

Colleges nationwide are telling police to remove students who’ve set up encampments on campuses amid demands universities cut their Israeli-linked investments. In less than a fortnight, nearly 1,000 students have been arrested.

Continued…. The crackdown jars with the universities’ claims of supporting freedom of expression. They argue setting up tents on their territory amounts to trespassing and violates their institutional policies.

Whatever the arguments, students remain defiant and we’re seeing more speeches like this one. Meanwhile, in Gaza, scores of Palestinian students and children gathered on Sunday to show appreciation for the U.S. college demonstrations. It’s a movement that’s being heard. And it shows no signs of slowing.

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NAMIBIAN OIL DISCOVERY AMONG WORLD’S BIGGEST

Namibia should be joining the ballers club following the discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields. Containing at least 10-billion barrels, the Mopane complex, off the coast, holds a promise of riches for years to come…or does it?

Portugal company Galp made the discovery and currently has an 80 per cent stake in the venture, with the remainder going to Namibian firms. It sounds like a repeat of what we’ve seen too often on the continent. In places like Guyana, it is companies like Exxon that make a killing, taking home a vast sum of revenues, leaving the country with peanuts and holding the bag in case of events like environmental pollution.

Continued…. However, Galp has said it might sell half its interest but would the Namibian government step in to buy it? It could give the country a unique chance to take control of its resources and use oil money to address vast wealth inequality. Windhoek can grasp a unique opportunity, or will it choose a depressingly familiar path?

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RACIST KARENS GO WAY BACK

The word Karen is often used to described self-ennoscriptd White women, who abuse Black men. However, the racist phenomenon was around long before it became an internet meme.

One such example is the shocking case of 14-year-old Emmett Till who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. He was tortured and killed after being wrongly accused of whistling at White woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store.

His case galvanised the rising civil rights movement, but also highlighted the emergence of what we call ‘Karens’ today. It's deep-rooted behaviour that's been around for decades.

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CONGOLESE ABANDONED BUT
$1BN RAISED IN 24H FOR NOTRE-DAME?

In this clip from our round table with Congo activist Chakabars, he compares how the West has totally ignored the ongoing genocide in DRC with how it rallied to stump up a billion dollars in just 24 hours after Paris’ iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral burnt down.

Obviously cultural preservation is a wonderful and important thing, but you’d have thought human life is - or rather, millions of human lives are - a more urgent priority.

If this discussion piques your interest, the full round table is on our YouTube channel. As always, your input in the comments is appreciated.

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