From Ukraine to Biden’s Summit: End of U.S. Global Domination?

June 23, 2022

The U.S. plan to draw Russia into a proxy war in the Ukraine has turned out to be a monumental debacle, exposing the United States’ cynical plans as well as the limits of U.S. imperial power.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has consistently analyzed the conflict as manufactured, one that could have been avoided with a real commitment to peace in that part of the world.

But the Biden administration decided war was the method. It needed to suppress Germany and disconnect the Russian economy from the Western European economy.

In May, we called for states to boycott the Summit of the Americas, an event through which the United States has attempted to maintain hegemony through manipulation. The people of our region declared opposition to it, saying one cannot be a partner and a hegemon at the same time. As long as the United States sees our region as its backyard—or its front yard—we will struggle against it.

All of these are indications we are witnessing the development of a new world, in which the possibility of equality, peace, development and stability can be achieved. But it’s quite clear it can only be achieved with collective humanity putting a break on the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination.

We are proud that BAP has become an integral force in dismantling the U.S. empire. In this issue of our newsletter, you will see some of the political work BAP has been involved in, both in the media and on the ground.

We hope to continue with your support to bring about peace and justice in this world.

RECENT WORK

BAP issued a statement on African Liberation Day. We pulled off a webinar in May to introduce our SOUTHCOM campaign. Then we did another webinar in June about the connection between health and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Ukraine resources page has been updated. Check out the latest AFRICOM Watch Bulletin, featuring an interview with BAP member organization All-African People’s Revolutionary Party member Ahjamu Umi. Plus, keep up with what’s happening in Afghanistan with the Afghanistan News Update.

BAP at Five Years: Advancing the Struggle for Self-Determination and People(s)-Centered Human Rights

March 31, 2022

BAP at 5 Years: Advancing the Struggle for Self-Determination and People(s)-Centered Human Rights

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together. And you can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other.” (Martin Luther King —Chaos or Community [1967])
“The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical Black movement.” (BAP mission statement)
“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement—by popular struggle and self-defense—of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.” (Black Radical Peace Tradition, a BAP Principle of Unity)
“People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle.” (BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka)

The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of Black Liberation Movement

January 17, 2022

It is January, and in the U.S. this means it is time for the annual ritual of revisiting the white-washed, de-radicalized, pro- “American” M.L. King fairytale as part of the official celebration of King’s birthday.

In the official story, Dr. King was not the creation of the movement that was fighting for the democratic and human rights of Black people. No, it was Dr. King who created the movement, according to the colonial white elite and the neocolonial Black misleadership. In this story, the objectives of the movement were not for radical social transformation and Black self-determination but the redemption of the U.S. settler-colonial nation/state and the quiet integration of Black people into the state. In other words, to complete the establishment of a “more perfect nation,” as Obama would put it.

But King did not just show up to save Black people. Dr. King was a product of the post-war Black movement. And as such, the King that the movement produced reflected the changing, and sometimes contradictory development of that movement. As a product of the movement, Dr. King’s experiences as the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) evolved. He began to raise criticisms of capitalism, eventually opposed imperialist war and embraced a program of class struggle represented by the Poor People's campaign.

Democrats “Build Back Better” BS and Resistance

October 20, 2021

Nothing captures the contradictory essence of the democrat party’s Pro-ruling class politics and fraudulent nature of its’ “Build Back Better” legislation than the cavalier manner in which an overwhelming majority of democrats voted for $780 billion to go towards military spending. They then turned around and engaged in mind boggling haggling over spending the peoples’ resources, on the people, because of its cost!

Ajamu Baraka, BAP’s National Organizer, argued that legislation meant for economic recovery which included spending on infrastructure and "social infrastructure" was split into two pieces. Both are now stuck in the House of Representatives suggesting that a package of comprehensive social spending was more a public relations stunt than representative of a serious effort to address some of the human right needs of the population. By increasing military spending and cutting out resources and programs necessary for the people, Biden and democrats demonstrate that what they really want to push is neoliberalism with a smile.

Duopoly Votes for More War Even After Afghanistan Debacle

September 6, 2021

In the midst of the confusion and controversy around the defeat of the United States in Afghanistan, one thing has become clear: The rulers lost control of the narrative favoring endless war. The people suddenly became re-focused on the supposed “good war.” By doing so, they realized the real winners are the defense companies and military contractors. And who are the losers? The Afghan people, the soldiers who were killed and wounded, and the U.S. public whose national treasury was looted to the tune of over $2 trillion.

Yet, on September 1, the U.S. House of Representatives—in a bipartisan vote that ignored the sentiments of the people and that had Democrats defying U.S. President Joe Biden—once again awarded the Pentagon with an increase to its already bloated budget of $24 billion of the public’s money.

Afghanistan No 'Graveyard' for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination

August 23, 2021

Some have asserted the U.S. empire has reached its historic endpoint because of its defeat in Afghanistan. However, that call is as premature as political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation that history had "ended" in 1989 when Western liberalism won because the former Soviet Union was coming apart.

Afghanistan might have been the so-called “graveyard of empires” and of certain states at other points in history. But the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan had occurred years earlier, a fact verified by revelations found in the “Afghanistan Papers.” That defeat had no appreciative impact on U.S. foreign-policy makers, who continued their destructive path in places like Yemen, Libya and Syria. Only a handful of the U.S. population was still interested in continuing a war in Afghanistan up until the last week or so. But the rulers did not inform the U.S. public, so the masses did not know the war had been lost.

Glen Ford Will Always Be With Us

August 9, 2021

Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford was buried August 7 in Lumpkin, Georgia. That land in the Southern Black Belt, located within the settler-colonial space known as the United States of America, produced for him—like so many before him—a clear sense of the intersection of class, white supremacy and the National Question.

In the African tradition, our ancestors may leave the physical world, but they never leave us. That is why we evoke them. When we do so and allow their presence to infuse our consciousness and vision, they become a material force through us.

Missing Links on Cuba, Haiti and Colombia

July 26, 2021

Nothing quite demonstrates the arrogance and white supremacy of the U.S. empire like its relationship to Africans and other colonized people.

On Thursday, the Biden administration slapped new sanctions on Cuban government officials. We ask those who have raised racism in Cuba as a nuance worthy of interrogation: Why not question the white supremacy inherent in U.S. policies that disproportionately impact African/Black peoples throughout the region?

The Cuban people have spoken and they have said, yes, they have internal contradictions, like any country born within the context of colonial conquest and genocide. But they also have said what would make the most difference to Cubans in Cuba is an end to the cruel medieval-style blockade that has prevented vital food, medicine and other items needed to help the Cuban people.

We say when a people are at war with an oppressor, it is our obligation inside the United States to stand with them against the empire without engaging in the ego-inflating exercise of raising their internal contradictions at those critical moments. Either you support national liberation and self-determination or you don’t.

Why Human Rights in China and Tigray, But Not in Haiti, Palestine or Colombia?

July 12, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats have been playing the "Black Lives Matter" tune on their fiddle. Biden even raised the issue of Black Lives Matter during his presidential campaign. But, just days after Biden was sworn into office, his administration lent support for the Haitian dictator, Jovenel Moïse, who stayed in office past his term to the dismay of the Haitian people, who flooded the streets in protest.

Now, Moïse is dead and the United Nations has decided who will be the new president of Haiti. We see the racist irony. The people of Haiti have not been allowed to weigh in. The white rulers have made their decision, as the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) stated in its July 9 press release.

And while the director of Colombia's National Intelligence Agency and the director of its national police's Intelligence Division are in Haiti to investigate the role of Colombia in the assassination, those agencies have not launched investigations into police forces and paramilitary elements involved in the recent killings of peaceful protesters in Colombia, a client state of the United States.

Western Humanitarianism Is a Weapon Against Humanity

June 28, 2021

We dedicate this newsletter to our dear brother and Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member, Abdusshahid "Baba" Luqman (pictured below), who suddenly passed away on June 15. He and his partner, Jacqueline, hosted independent talk show "Luqman Nation" on Blog Talk Radio starting in 2014, and later on Facebook, YouTube and on Black Power Media. Baba's devotion to his people inspires us to keep going. Rise in power, brother.

G7, Ilhan Omar and White Supremacy

June 14, 2021

Fear of a rising China has gripped the supposedly “global elites” of the world. G7 member states agreed on Saturday that all wifi connections be dismantled around the room they convened in because they worried China would eavesdrop, part of a years-long narrative that China’s private tech companies are conducting surveillance on its behalf.

At the meeting, U.S. President Joe Biden pitched to G7 member states an alternative project to contend with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an 8-year-old program involving the construction of railways, ports and roads, along with cultural exchange. Already, dozens of countries have signed onto it.

But G7 leaders didn’t seem enthused as talks ended Saturday. Countries like Germany and Italy are heavily invested in the Chinese supply chain. In fact, Volkswagen and BMW cars are top sellers in China. Even though Italy pulled out of the BRI, its officials remember China's generosity when it provided personal protective equipment and medical professionals during the height of Italy's COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The rift within the Pan-European colonial-capitalist project is obvious.

All Eyes on Calí, Colombia

May 31, 2021

Saturday morning, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) got word the neoliberal, right-wing Colombian state was deploying its military into the predominantly Afro-Colombian city of Calí. To top it off, the internet was not working. That prompted us to put out an alert on Twitter.

Later in the day, we heard from our folks that the internet appeared to be up and running again. But we remain vigilant because the national government had deployed the military to Calí and other cities after issuing a decree on Friday forcing governors and mayors to cooperate with the militarized response to the national strike.

This move came after a month of unrest and severe state repression sparked by opposition to the government’s attempt to impose an austerity plan that would have transferred the economic crisis created by neoliberalism onto the backs of the working class.

Linking Palestine Solidarity with African Liberation

May 17, 2021

"The managers of the colonial/capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1%. The painful truth for some is that if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist project must die." -Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace National Organizer

Like Indigenous people throughout the world, the Palestinian people demand a life of dignity, sovereignty and self-determination.

What prevents Palestinian national self-expression is the constructed state of Israel. The United Kingdom helped settle the first Zionists in Palestine in 1922 after the Balfour Declaration. Later, a brutal Nakba took place when the U.K. aided the newly created state of Israel's settler-colonization. Meanwhile, the United States has armed and funded Israel for years. But lately, that support has come at a cost of $3.8 billion per year, plus an additional $8 billion in loan guarantees.

100 Days of Biden's Bait and Switch

May 3, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats pretended to support an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour and a stimulus payment of $2,000 per person. They also claimed to be outraged by former President Donald Trump's moves to dismiss the result of the 2020 election and remain in office no matter what. Then last week, with full support from the corporate media, Biden released “The American Jobs Plan" and "The American Families Plan,” both meant to revive the so-called “American dream” by bringing Keynesianism back from the dead, along with FDR!

Once in office, though, Biden, who was put in place by neoliberal finance and corporate transnational capital, dutifully began the process of scaling back on his “progressive” stances. The $15/hour minimum wage proposal was scrapped using a shady parliamentary device that gave cover to Democratic Party backtracking. Then the $2,000 check became $1,400. Plus, although Democrats loudly condemned Trump's anti-democratic moves, the Biden-Harris administration gave the green light to its puppet in Haiti to ignore the requirement to leave office February 7. This came despite thousands of Haitians marching in the streets in opposition.

Who Will Save the World from the Saviors?

April 19, 2021

The ruling class has long deployed propaganda meant to obscure the rule of capital and normalize capitalist interests as the general interest of society. But lately, the liberal Western intelligentsia has elevated that deployment to a science.

The concept of humanitarian intervention and its logical derivative, the Responsibility to Protect, have proven to be one of the most innovative ideological weapons ever produced. By combining normalized assumptions of white Western civilizational superiority and the liberal anti-authoritarianism encoded in the DNA of the liberal project, imperialism has been able to win broad support for everything from direct military interventions and drone warfare to punitive sanctions against whole societies. These actions are framed as defending human rights, and even as “democracy.”

Afghanistan: Demand an End to the Second Longest U.S. War

April 5, 2021

War was the primary instrument used to establish the U.S. settler state and expand U.S. hegemonic global power after the end of the Second World War. War has become so normalized that the U.S. state's two-century-long horrific war of conquest against the Indigenous peoples of the landmass that eventually became known as the United States, as well as the war with North Korea that technically has not ended, have been erased from the U.S. public's awareness.

The two-decade war on Afghanistan, therefore, is the second longest continuous war. That fact increasingly is being lost because of the corporate press's lack of coverage, resulting in vast swaths of the U.S. public being completely unaware of the peace process initiated in 2020 and the Biden-Harris administration's subsequent moves to undermine or completely gut that process.

That is why the Black Alliance for Peace is once again attempting to bring attention to this issue. We are organizing an International Day of Action on Afghanistan on April 8 to demand the Biden-Harris administration adhere to the agreement and withdraw U.S. troops from the country by the May 1 deadline. Find out how to get involved.

We Must Say to Biden and Democrats: 'NO War!'

March 22, 2021

The reactionary character of U.S. politics is on full display as the corporate media—in alignment with the military-industrial complex—the lunatic elements of the foreign policy community and right-wing neoliberal Democrats seem committed to conditioning the public to accept yet another insane military confrontation. This time, with a real opponent—China!

What makes this situation even more absurd is the public voted for Biden and the Democrats because they were led to believe the United States and the world would be a safer place with them in charge. This comes even though the historical evidence has always demonstrated the opposite. Outside the disastrous decision by the Bush administration to attempt to wage imperialist war in two theaters, almost every other major and minor conflict that the United States engaged in since the end of the Second World War took place during a Democrat Party administration.

On International Working Women's Day, Re-dedicate to Ending War and Imperialism

March 8, 2021

International Working Women’s Day is being celebrated today in various parts of the world to bring attention to the plight of non-men. But very few of these commemorations address the relationship between women, war and imperialism, particularly how non-European, colonized and working-class women are impacted.

Therefore, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organizations are using this day to remind the world that—in the spirit of the original International Working Women’s Day actions, where women took to the streets of Saint Petersburg, Russia, calling for “Bread and Peace”—this day must center the fight against war and imperialism.

Erica Caines, member of BAP-Baltimore and BAP’s Coordinating Committee, organized a webinar last year that highlighted how militarized policing domestically and U.S. global military aggression conspires to limit and degrade the fundamental human rights of African and colonized women. According to Caines, “In the last 10 years, as U.S. imperialism expanded—coinciding with the increase of police repression backed by Department of Defense programs—there has been a deliberate attack on internationalism. That makes it harder for colonized people in the United States to understand why and how what happens abroad directly affects us here—especially working-class Black women in the binds of triple oppression."

‘Building Back Better’—Via Neoliberal Warmongering

February 22, 2021

It is the white rulers who spent millions building prisons in Haiti and funding and training the Haitian police and military. It is the white rulers who have turned a blind eye to the atrocities of the Moïse administration. It is the white rulers who have condoned the lack of parliamentary elections, the ruling of the country by decree, and the rewriting of the Haitian constitution. Most importantly, it is the white rulers who have affirmed Moïse’s illegal extension of his ruling mandate. —Jemima Pierre, “Haiti: Black Despots and White Rulers”

After the “anti-democratic” Trump forces were defeated, the Biden-Harris administration assured it would re-commit to neoliberal orthodoxy in both domestic and foreign policy with its slogan, “Build Back Better.” That promised a return to the “traditional” U.S. values of decency, democracy and human rights.

Yet, the Biden-Harris administration, as well as most U.S. policymakers and political representatives, employ a double standard: While expressing concern for oppressed people and rhetorically supporting “democratic” processes and human rights in their domestic and foreign policies, they inflict harm on millions of people around the world through their wars, subversions and sanctions.

The Biden Administration: The Return of Neoliberal Madness?

February 8, 2021

The picture had started to form in Biden’s first 48 hours, but now it is crystal clear: The Biden-Harris administration intends to pick up exactly where the Obama-Biden administration left off in 2016, with an aggressive assertion of U.S. military power to offset its declining global economic, political and moral position.

All signals appear to be heading in that direction. The Atlantic Council, a right-wing structure that is a mouthpiece for NATO and the Western alliance, issued a 26,000 word screed against China, arguing for eventual war if regime change and other “containment” polices fail to coax China into surrendering to the United States. This is utter madness.

But it continues. In another highly publicized comment, Admiral Charles A. Richard warned, “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons.”

Newsletter