A time when the armed forces in Africa were infamous for their penchant to interfere in politics, Malu distinguished himself as a professional icon. He led the 10-nation-strong force that liberated Liberia from the throes of a bloody civil war.

The US is preparing to inflict upon Africa the levels of carnage that it has already wrought upon the Middle East, where the dead and wounded number in the millions and those driven from their homes in the tens of millions, while entire societies have been shattered.

In January 2018, the Democratic Republic of Congo takes up its seat in the UN Human Rights Council despite its widely documented abysmal human rights record. DRC’s election, despite spirited opposition by activists, elicited international criticism. Yet sanctimonious Western nations like Britain and the US have absolutely no moral standing to castigate the DRC.

It will be a source of embarrassment to the United States Department of State to discover that while it is spending billions of tax-dollars in promoting democracy, human rights and the Justice Law and Order Sector in developing countries, justice, law and order are crumbling in, of all enlightened places, New York State.

Washington and London’s support for Paul Kagame’s more than two-decade long control of Kigali explains the dominance of a highly simplistic account of Rwanda’s genocide. But a tertiary reason for the strength of the fairy tale is it aligns with the nationalist mythology of another G7 state: Canada.

The terrorist attack in Mozambique early this month is the first incident of violent extermism in the southern African nation. The attack appears to have been carried out by a group of local young Muslims who formed a sect in 2014  and have told their followers to stop sending their children to secular institutions such as state schools and hospitals. The group wants Sharia law applied in their area.

Between 2006 and 2010 the deployment of US special forces troops in Africa increased by 300 per cent. From 2010 to 2017 the numbers of deployed troops exploded by nearly 2000 per cent, occupying more than 60 outposts tasked with carrying out over 100 missions at any given moment across the continent.

Emergency services, disaster management, the ward councilor and his committee and other state support structures were missing in action at Glebelands hostel after #DurbanStorm. Many of the rotten, decades-old blocks are structurally unsound, yet there were no officials on site to whom the residents could turn for help. The Glebelands community, as usual, has been left to pick up the pieces themselves as best they could.

The world must now wake up from its inexcusable slumber over the Igbo genocide and condemn genocidist Nigeria unreservedly. This condemnation must also extend to Britain, the co-genocidist state in this crime right from its original launch date on 29 May 1966.

A UN commission is urging the ICC to indict officials of the Burundian government for crimes against humanity as soon as possible, but Russia, China, and the African Union so oppose an indictment that it could cost the court what little political legitimacy it has left.

The North Korean situation may be (turned into) a blessing in disguise for humanity if we can let it usher in a global movement for universal nuclear disarmament.

The media has provided horrifying pictures of burning villages, endless lines of people threading their way across muddy rice paddy dikes to reach the river dividing Myanmar from Bangladesh, and then crossing in fishing boats to the other side where they will try to survive in huts made of canvas and sticks. What remains hidden to most people is the way this sickening crime is linked to colonialism and imperialism.

Today the US threatens North Korea with a first strike. North Korea has every right to say we will, "Nuke you too!" in self-defense. Apparently this is the foreign policy of every permanent member of the UN Security Council. They are all nuclear powers that have not disarmed. And the U.S. recently walked out of UN talks on the matter. They have also proposed to update and renovate their arsenal.

The South African anti-apartheid icon and Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the violence against her country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

Twenty Democrats and five Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors of the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Mass Atrocities Prevention Act. Much of this Orwellian movement is coordinated within the elite, richly resourced, corporate funded, ideological bastions of the Democratic Party.

The expanding wars in Afghanistan, conflict with North Korea, the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM), U.S. intervention in Venezuela, proposals to increase the military budget by $75 billion, and the war on African/Black people are all interrelated expressions of the systemic violence that the US state is waging and prepared to wage to salvage its rapidly declining power.

The United States, like every nation, has a dual mandate: to build, enlarge and sustain its wealth in the material as well as in the spiritual domains. America is the richest nation in the world. Yet the decison to close doors to 800,000 young people is one that shows a spiritual deficit that needs to be filled with compassion and enlightened self-interest.

At least 500 people died and more than 800 were reported missing in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown on August 13-14, when heavy rains swept away everything in their path. Kenyan Poet Shailja Patel reflects on the tragedy.

Tete Province is very rich in coal. An estimated 23 billion tons of mostly untapped coal lies beneath Tete. It is expected to become the region’s energy powerhouse built on coal and hydroelectricity. However, local farmer communities have been on the losing side of the coal boom so far, especially since large scale resettlements forced them out.

Global resource extraction interests in collaboration with corrupt local elites are providing incentives for a genocide against Indigenous people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a virtual media blackout allows this travesty to continue unchecked.