Under the threat of U.S. military action, Iranian tankers sailed to deliver fuel to Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. The United States and its European vassal states have conspired to destroy Venezuela with sanctions and a growing naval blockade, preventing it from selling its oil around the world.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Paris, Saint Denis, Aubervilliers, Aulnay-Sous Bois, Clichy Sous Bois, the French police beat and terrorize working-class Africans and Arabs who have migrated from French neo-colonial territories. In the United States, colonial police are just as brutal as those in the Fanonian “zones of non being,” where colonized African, Latinx and Indigenous peoples live as the permanent “others.”

Despite pandemics, global climate change and nuclear war, nothing has moved Western capitalist societies to recognize colonized people’s common humanity.

Instead, it has become quite clear, public opinion in the United States has hardened toward China, which has economically eclipsed the United States. The U.S. capitalist class, along with growing numbers of the white public, are prepared to blow up the world before it surrenders its power.

This makes the United States and Europe existential threats to 90 percent of global humanity unless their power is curtailed or, better still, seized. 

But that will not be easy. 

The core of the colonial/capitalist project is violence backed by the state and embedded in all social institutions and practices of capitalist societies. 

The freedom of Africa and African peoples requires the structures of domination be identified and opposed. 

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is one of those structures. Read BAP’s African Liberation Day statement.

This is the message the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) brings on African Liberation Day (May 25). This day reminds all Africans and all still fighting to free themselves from the barbaric rule of Western capital that a free, united African nation—with a liberated and united Africa at its core—would be a force for progress in the world.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and BAP member, calls for the indictment of the capitalist class for systematically violating African/Black people’s right to life, the ultimate human right.

Historian Gerald Horne notes the bubonic plague “set the stage for the erosion of feudalism in 14th century Europe,” leading to the rise of capitalism. He suggests COVID-19 is further setting the stage for the breakdown of capitalism.

Tunde Osazua, a member of the BAP’S Africa Team and the coordinator of BAP's U.S. Out of Africa Network, breaks down why U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), in seeking accountability, only legitimized the U.S. military occupation of Africa. Watch it on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

To tackle China’s growing influence in Africa, the United States permanently stationed military units to assert its will on African politics. 

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka writes the “elevation of anti-blackness as a kind of universal problem eliminates the basis for solidarity among the colonized” and puts some Africans in the United States on the side of U.S. imperialism.

A U.S.-led bloc of countries persists in using force to maintain and extend their global dominance, writes historian Vijay Prashad and Moroccan revolutionary and former political prisoner Abdallah El Harif.

Obama’s fans like to think of the first Black President as scholarly and above the fray of dirty politics, but he appears to have conspired with the FBI to set up the incoming Trump administration. BAP Coordinating Committee member and Black Agenda Report Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley breaks it down.

BAP Research Team member Paul McLennan wrote about his evolution from a petty-bourgeois upbringing to being a revolutionary in the U.S. South.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs hosted an exclusive interview with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza.

Venezuela’s opposition has long accused the Bolivarian government of corruption and mismanagement. Anya Parampil of the Grayzone reports, “with Citgo on the verge of liquidation, Guaidó’s officials are too incompetent—or too devious—to save it.”

The U.S. Peace Council released a statement that Iran’s decision to dispatch five oil tankers carrying much-needed fuel for the struggling Venezuelan people has created a “decisive test of the Trump administration’s willingness to continue its violations of international law and the UN Charter by taking military action against Iranian tankers.”

Trump withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies, further escalating tensions between Russia and the U.S./EU/NATO axis. 


EVENTS

Webinars have taken place or will take place in lieu of annual marches and in-person events.

  • 6 p.m., May 25: The December 12th Movement will host a webinar, “COVID-19, Sanctions, and the Human Right to Health Care,” featuring officials representing Namibia, Zimbabwe and the African Union.

  • May 24: The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Maryland Council of Elders hosted a webinar dedicated to African Liberation Day, featuring speakers from BAP and Pan-African Community Action (PACA), a BAP member organization.

  • June 16: BAP will host a webinar, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM,” on Soweto Day. This is part of our ongoing U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign. Read our press release. We will roll out more information on this event in the coming weeks.


   TAKE ACTION

  • Have you signed our petition to demand 2020 U.S. candidates take a position against war, militarism and repression? Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge. Check out BAP’s campaign and take action.

  • BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.


No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

P.S. Freedom isn’t free. Consider giving today.