Imperial highlights

 

• Fifty-five years ago the fate of Africa was irrevocably altered when the CIA sponsored a 1966 coup d’état against Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, former Prime Minister of Ghana and Pan-Africanist visionary who was voted as “Africa’s Man of the Millennium.” At least 1,600 Ghanaians died in the coup and scores more were injured. Nkrumah wrote in his book Dark Days in Ghana that:

"It has been one of the tasks of the CIA and other similar organizations to discover … potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries."

 John Stockwell, a CIA officer in Africa had recounted the plot to undermine Nkrumah’s government and to sow anti-Nkrumah sentiments among Ghanaians. Stockwell wrote: 

"Howard Bane, who was the CIA station chief in Accra, engineered the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Inside the CIA it was quite clear. Howard Bane got a double promotion, and was awarded the Intelligence Star for the overthrow of Kwame. The magic of it was that Howard Bane had enough imagination and drive to run this operation without ever documenting what he was doing and there wasn’t one shred of paper that was generated that would name the CIA hierarchy as being responsible."
 

• Just over two months into the new year, 2021 has already seen a flurry of public banking activity across the US. Sixteen new bills to form publicly-owned banks or facilitate their formation were introduced in eight states in January and February. Two bills for a state-owned bank were introduced in New Mexico, two in Massachusetts, two in New York, one each in Oregon and Hawaii, and Washington State’s Public Bank Bill was re-introduced as a “Substitution.” Bills for city-owned banks were introduced in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and bills facilitating the formation of public banks or for a feasibility study were introduced in New York, Oregon (three bills), and Hawaii. Read full article on ScheerPost here.  

• “We should not expect any fundamental alteration” in US foreign policy under President Joe Biden, said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace, at a joint webinar of the US Peace Council and the Venezuelan section of the Committee for International Solidarity and Struggle for Peace. “Both of these imperialist parties are committed to the same fundamental agenda: to maintain and expand US global colonial capitalist hegemony,” said Baraka, in a talk entitled, “The People’s Struggles and the Emerging Situation in the United States.” Hear it all here

•  "American people are very much like the children of Mafia bosses who don't know what their fathers do for a living, and don't want to know -- but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window." - William Blum

• UK Trident submarine commanders unleashing a nuclear attack cannot be held responsible under law for their actions, according to the Ministry of Defence’s former nuclear policy chief. Rear Admiral John Gower, who was a submarine commander and a leading ministry official, has dismissed the argument that Trident commanders would be in ‘legal jeopardy’ if they launched nuclear warheads as a first-strike against an enemy. But this has alarmed former nuclear submarine commander, Robert Forsyth, who warned that it put current Trident commanders in an “impossible position”. If they unquestioningly obey an order to fire they could be guilty of a “war crime”, he said. The argument between two former senior naval officers over the responsibility for turning the key to launch nuclear-armed missiles has erupted at length on the website of the Nautilus Institute, a military think tank. See more here.

 

• On December 24th, Israeli settlers–likely from the outpost of Havat Ma’on–entered Palestinian lands in the South Hebron Hills village of Atuwani in order to uproot and steal approximately 34 olive trees. Of those olive trees, 24 had been planted by the Good Shepherd Collective through our olive tree planting program, a program by which international donations are turned into trees to secure vulnerable Palestinian lands. The attack on these trees, as well as their theft, represents exactly what Israeli settlers have been doing across the West Bank for decades: expand their control of land and resources. Over the years, Israeli settlements have crept across the South Hebron Hills, built on lands belonging to the villages next door, using similar tactics to intimidate the local Palestinian communities. In particular, settlers find a double success in sabotaging Palestinians’ ability to grow and sustain crops: it harms the community economically, while clearing land for use by the settlement. Click here to sign a petition.

Bruce