Kenyan President William Ruto’s hope to address the US Congress went poof!

US House Speaker Mike Johnson has turned down a few Democratic legislators’ recent request for Ruto to address a joint session of both houses of Congress due to ‘scheduling constraints.’ It would have been a first for a Kenyan leader and the second time for an African head of state. In 2006, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf addressed the US Congress.

In the past, some world leaders aligned with Washington have addressed all 535 US legislators. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are recent examples.

Continued….. Ruto has advocated deploying Kenyan police to Haiti with Washington’s financial aid, and he has expressed support for US ally Ukraine. Recently, Kenya lined up behind US ally Israel amid its military onslaught in the Gaza Strip.

Ruto’s state visit to the United States is set for 23 May. The last African head of state to do a US state visit was Ghanaian President John Kufour in 2008.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

UN CHIEF: RAFAH FACES 'EPIC' DISASTER

The UN Secretary-General fears an ‘epic humanitarian disaster’ as Israel intensifies its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Speaking at a press conference in Kenya, Antonio Guterres warned there were no tents or food left for the thousands of fleeing Palestinians.

On Sunday, Israeli forces pushed deeper into Rafah where more than a million civilians have been sheltering.
Over three hundred thousand have fled the city in the last few days, according to the UN, with most heading to the badly-damaged city of Khan Yunis or the crowded Mawasi tent camp.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 when Tel Aviv launched its offensive on the besieged enclave. The majority of those killed are women and children, despite Israel claiming its offensive is targeting H*mas fighters. Conditions for survivors are bleak. In March the UN warned over half the Strip’s population faces imminent famine due to Israel’s blockade of food and aid.

In 1985, police accused the group of parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms and making 'terroristic' threats. The resulting fire claimed the lives of 11 people, including five children, in the headquarters and destroyed 65 nearby homes. Only one adult and one child survived the attack.

In 1996, a US federal court ruled that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the 1985 raid and bombardment.

Continued….. The court ordered the city to pay $1.5 million to a MOVE bombing survivor, Ramona Africa, and the families of two killed group members. In 2005, a court awarded $12.83 million to residents of the Black working-class neighbourhood who had lost their homes.

In 2021, a controversy ensued when a Princeton University forensic anthropology course allegedly did a 'case study' using the remains of two of the children killed in the aerial bombing. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had held their remains before transferring them to Princeton. After protests and public scrutiny, Princeton retired the course. The city stated the families had not claimed the remains after the bombing. However, in May 2021, Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley resigned under pressure after news that, in 2017, he ordered the cremation and disposal of victims' remains without either identifying them or contacting members of the family. A day after Farley's resignation, staff at the Medical Examiner's Office found a box labelled 'MOVE' containing uncremated remains.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

Things have been tense in West Africa ever since three anti-imperialist popular coups swept through the Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The latter country was hit especially hard with sanctions by regional bloc ECOWAS - including threats of military invasion.

Niger’s southern neighbour Benin took part in the economic assault on Niamey. Porto-Novo shut its border for trade. However, when Niger formally exited ECOWAS in January this year, sanctions were lifted in an apparent bid to persuade it to stay. But while Benin reopened the border, Niger has kept it shut - citing security concerns.

The loss in trade seems to be hurting Porto-Novo more, as it’s now banned Niamey from using its ports to export oil to China - until cross-border trade resumes. Niamey says Benin’s blockade violates economic agreements between the two countries.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

U.S. POLICE VIOLENCE JUST LIKE THE 60s

We’ve sewn together two clips filmed six decades apart, that show the same thing: Police violence in the US. The top footage captures officers quashing civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.
The one below it shows officers hurling to the floor Emory University professor Caroline Fohlin at recent pro-Palestinian protests.

She says they smashed her head on the concrete after she confronted them for 'pummelling’ a young student on campus. She’s been charged with disorderly conduct and could face a year in jail. Just one of hundreds of university protesters detained and bearing the brunt of heavy-handed police crackdowns nationwide.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Are we back in 60s America?

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

WESTERN 'CIVILISATION' A FAÇADE

How often do we hear about the merits of the so-called 'Western civilisation'? 

Eurocentric people tell us Western values have brought out the best in humanity and held the world together.

However, the West has also been at the centre of some of the most brutal and horrendous crimes that humanity has witnessed, as Shahid Bolsen, the founder of the digital platform Middle Nation, points out in this recent clip.

Whether it is genocide, enslaving people or brutally occupying foreign lands, the West's fingerprints have been on the crime scene.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

U.S. STUDENT WALKOUT OVER ISRAEL

This was a scene repeated across US universities at the weekend. Students walking out of their commencement ceremonies as part of pro-Palestine protests.

In this clip dozens leave the event at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) on May 11th, during a speech by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. It was expected following his support for police breaking up earlier protests on Virginia campuses.

According to local media, students chanted ‘No books, no peace, let the knowledge increase’ and ‘Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.’ They, like many others, want their college to stop investing in Israeli-linked companies.

There have been around 2,800 arrests on campuses across the US since the first pro-Palestinian protests erupted mid-April.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

CHAD ELECTION RESULTS

Chad’s incumbent ruler, Mahamat Déby, won a landslide victory in the recent presidential election - but the opposition is crying foul.

Déby’s main rival was assassinated ahead of the vote, and the opposition says its people faced intimidation and threats in the run-up to the May 6th poll. Their candidate, who came second, alleges vote-rigging and has urged people to protest the result.

Déby has been cozying up to the French, for whom Chad is one of their ever dwindling places of influence in Africa, having been kicked out of the Sahel. So France for one will be celebrating the outcome.

What do you think of Déby‘s retaining power in Chad?

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

Two years ago, a serene Saturday at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, turned into a nightmare when an 18-year-old, clad in military attire and streaming his actions via helmet camera on Twitch, unleashed terror with a rifle.

The assailant, Payton Gendron, went on a rampage that claimed the lives of 10 individuals and left three others wounded. In a chilling display of racially motivated extremism, he targeted 11 Black and two White victims before ultimately surrendering to authorities. The livestream captured the horror in real-time, broadcasting the unfolding tragedy to a shocked audience.

The aftermath of the massacre reverberated far beyond Buffalo, highlighting the legacy of racial tensions, gun violence and the alarming rise of hate crimes plaguing the US.

The shooter had penned a racist manifesto online before his targeting of the majority-Black neighbourhood. The cover page featured the Sonnenrad, also known as The Black Sun. It’s a symbol that was popularised in Nazi Germany and continues to be used among White supremacists. The manifesto included reference to a popular White supremacist theory known as The Great Replacement, which argues that non-European people will soon outnumber the European population in the West, and must therefore have their numbers reduced through fear and fatality.

Continued….. The manifesto espoused a certain Pan-European ideology, expressing solidarity with other European countries, stating that while the United States is home, the United States was also just “a finger on the hand of the body of Europe.”

In the aftermath, African-Americans mourned the tragedy, while Pan-Africanist organisations across the country reiterated the call for urgent principled and tactical unity among African people across the world. Many argued that only a strong and united homeland of Africa will end the brutal violence that Afro-descendant people face today. Do you agree?

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

NEW YORK GOVERNOR’S RACIST RANT

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul caught heat for saying Black children in the Bronx don’t know what a computer is while promoting the US state’s $400 million artificial intelligence computing centre on 6 May at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.

The Bronx is the poorest of the five boroughs of New York City, located in the densely populated southern end of the state she leads.

Hochul later apologised, saying, ‘I misspoke and I regret it.’ However, Hochul, like other Democratic Party politicians (and Republicans for that matter) whose racism comes in many forms, including bombing Libya, might want to learn about the contributions Black people have made to the field of computer technology.  

Continued….. For example, does she know about Jesse Russell, the ‘Father of 2G Communications’? This elder pioneered wireless communications, leading the first team from Bell Laboratories to introduce digital cellular technology in the United States in 1988.

Going back to the Bronx, a majority-Black team of students in 2015 beat more than 350 teams across the US to create a mathematics app for Google Play, which allows people to download applications onto smartphones. According to NBC News, ‘Their competition came from wealthier schools and whiter districts…’

Bottom line: Our people don’t need to be folded into the neoliberal establishment portraying itself as the saviour of Africans. We do just fine on our own.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

RWANDAN GENOCIDE USED TO JUSTIFY CONGO WAR


Progressive Jews have long accused the state of Israel of using the Holocaust to justify committing gen*cidal acts against Palestinians. 

The African state of Rwanda also faces the charge of using the 1994 gen*cide to justify atrocities in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

African Stream recently spoke with Claude Gatebuke (@shinani1), a Rwandan gen*cide survivor. Watch as he described how Rwanda weaponises the 1994 gen*cide to clamp down on divergent views and to wage war in the eastern DRC.

Continued…. Kigali defends its intervention as part of its responsibility to protect itself by flushing out gen*cide perpetrators. The 2005 UN World Summit endorsed Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a global political commitment to prevent populations from gen*cide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.  

Imperialist forces, however, have misused the R2P doctrine to justify illegal invasions in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and other countries.

Watch the entire episode on our YouTube channel.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

FIRST PRO-PALESTINE AFRICAN ENCAMPMENT POPS UP AT WITS UNIV.

In what may be the first African university encampment in solidarity with Palestine, students at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, commonly known as ‘Wits University’ or simply ‘Wits,’ set up their tents on campus on 13 May.

By doing so, they have joined thousands of their peers in Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and the United States.

Some student encampments call for universities to divest from companies that support Israel, which occupies the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Students also call for an immediate ceasefire to the military onslaught and siege taking place in Gaza that have cost the lives of more than 35,000 people, most of whom are children and women.

Police have cracked down on US student encampments, with about 2,800 people arrested on more than 60 campuses, according to a New York Times tally. 

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio

LIBYA JOINS S. AFRICA, EGYPT AT THE ICJ

Days after Egypt said it intended to back South Africa’s g*n*cide case against Israel, Libya’s thrown its hat in the ring. It’s formally applied to intervene at the International Court of Justice and made its stance loud and clear. In its declaration, Libya accused Israel of g*n*cide saying its actions in Gaza ‘are committed with the requisite specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group.’

The number of countries lining up to back South Africa’s case is snowballing, with Nicaragua and Colombia also formally applying to intervene. Egypt, along with others, says it intends to follow suit.

In the meantime, Pretoria has asked the UN’s top court to order Israel to halt its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. In January the ICJ demanded Israel refrains from actions that could fall under the G*n*cide Convention.

Please follow us on Telegram, Link in Bio