RAMPING UP LGBTQ PRESSURE

On 23 October, several US agencies warned businesspeople, health services providers, media workers and academics of Uganda’s 'Anti-Homosexuality Act.' The law punishes individuals who have engaged in same-sex relations to life in prison, while the death penalty would be meted out for what Uganda terms 'aggravated homosexuality,' or what the country has determined as various forms of rape. The US advisory also accused Uganda of 'violence against human rights activists, media members, health workers, members of minority groups, LGBTQI+ persons, and political opponents.'

Continued…..Since Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law on 26 May, the United States has imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials as well as other Ugandans 'complicit' with the new law. Meanwhile, the World Bank has said it will check if a program is violating LGBTQ people's rights before allowing newly approved funds to flow into the country.

The United States is notorious for committing crimes against humanity in the United States and around the world. Those include the US/NATO invasion of Libya, the military attacks on Somalia, among others. Plus, the United States has imposed a slew of economic sanctions against one-third of humanity—including on several African countries—which have been shown to starve innocent people and cause deaths.

Let us know if you think the United States really cares about LGBTQ people.

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Continued….Francia Márquez, the first Afro-Colombian vice president, is part of a long tradition of grassroots Black liberation and environmental justice activism. Unlike Harris, she represents the interests of the African diaspora and oppressed peoples worldwide. The government she represents has restored relations with Venezuela, strengthened ties with the African continent and defended Palestine from what it regards as Israel’s genocide.

Comparing Harris and Márquez in this way reveals why radical politics matter more than just shallow representation without commitment to the people.

Do you agree?

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GERMAN GAS DEAL BAD FOR NIGERIANS?

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been in Nigeria to secure gas deals.
He wants an alternative to Russian supplies that have been slashed since the Ukraine conflict. And the search is on for new solutions after the coup in Niger cast doubt over the Trans-Saharan pipeline. Shipping more Liquid Natural Gas from Nigeria is one option. However, it won’t help millions of Nigerians who don’t have access to the cooking fuel. A lack of local production means they keep having to go without - despite their country exporting almost a million tonnes of LPG every year. A crazy situation given the county has the biggest natural gas reserves in Africa.

Continued….Maybe it’s because Nigerian politicians like Bola Ahmed Tinubu are more concerned with lucrative export deals with wealthier nations like Germany, as illustrated in the clip. The leaders also gush about deporting ‘illegal’ Nigerians from Germany, with Tinubu saying many are ‘economic’ and not ‘real’ refugees. Well, if Nigeria’s economy was better managed (inflation’s topped 25 per cent) maybe more would stay. Place your comments below.

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PRO-PALESTINE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED IN KENYA

As the global push for not only a ceasefire, but a permanent and just resolution to the oppression of Palestinians, picks up pace, Kenya is pulling the other way. Several organisers were arrested 14 October in Nairobi for illegal assembly and for possession of a Palestinian flag. Both activities are, however, legal under Kenyan law. The organisers were released later in the day, with no charges booked.

We spoke to one of the conveners, Mr Diop (not his real name due to the politically sensitive nature of the subject) of the Kenya for Palestine organisation. He calls the arrests a ploy to intimidate pro-Palestine organising. However, he adds, it has only hardened activists’ resolve and solidarity with Palestine.

Continued….This is not an isolated incident, as Kenya has a history of pulling in the opposite direction of the continent. After the 7 October escalation in the Gaza Strip, the Kenyan government stated it stood with Israel. Decades ago, Kenya supported apartheid South Africa, with Kenya’s former president, Daniel arap Moi, being in the minority of African leaders that paid a visit to former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk. One day after his inauguration, President William Ruto announced the closure of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s embassy, in contradiction with the African Union’s policies. It was widely seen as a move to obtain fertiliser from Morocco, which has argued Western Sahara belongs to it. Morocco has refused to allow a UN monitored referendum on Western Sahara’s statehood.

Let us know what you think of Kenya’s position on Israel.

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IF HAMAS HID IN ISRAEL WOULD CIVILIANS BE BOMBED?

If you want to understand how Palestinians are being dehumanised, have a listen to this. A caller on UK talk radio station LBC complains Israel’s bombing of Gaza is not murder. He is then asked if Tel Aviv would pursue the same brutal tactics if Hamas hid in an Israeli hospital. The caller finally concedes Israel wouldn’t because it values more the lives of its own citizens.

Continued….This stark admission is a result of years of propaganda. Dehumanising Palestinians has paved the way for their oppression and destruction. At the onset of this latest escalation, an Israeli military official referred to them as ‘animals’. The Prime Minister, Netanyahu, evoked a Biblical analogy, likening Palestinians to Amelekites, who Israel was ordered to destroy. An Israeli website tracking deaths has labelled killed Palestinians ‘terrorists’. In recent days, Israeli plans to annex Gaza and evict Palestinians to the Sinai desert in Egypt were exposed. This after Netanyahu showed a map to the UN where Palestine had been completely erased - just before the Hamas attack on October 7th.

The result of all this? People ringing radio stations and happily calling the massacre in the Gaza Strip ‘collateral damage.’

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Kenya is taking a Pan-African step in the right direction: President Ruto has just announced that his country will be visa free to ALL Africans by the end of this year. Bravo! That’s the sort of Christmas present we like here at African Stream.

Not only is the decision good for African unity and solidarity, it’s good for business: it’s bound to give a boost to enterprises both in Kenya and our continent’s 53 other nations.

To cheers from the crowd, Ruto said it was time to follow the example of the EU and lift intra-African trade restrictions - noting also that already-implemented deregulation among East African Community nations had brought trade between them to 27%.

Kenya will be the fourth African country to allow unrestricted travel for Africans - after Benin, The Gambia and Seychelles. Seychelles, which relies heavily on its tourism industry, was the first to scrap visas in 2016.

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MONKEY GESTURES AT VINICIUS JR

A video has gone viral of a girl at a 21 October game making monkey-like gestures at Real Madrid's Brazilian footballer, Vinicius Junior. During that game, another man was found doing the same. Vinicius later thanked the Spanish club for quickly expelling the man.

Then, during last weekend's El Clásico games between the La Liga football clubs of Barcelona and Real Madrid, Barcelona fans were heard shouting monkey sounds at Vinicius and they threw a banana at him. These racist attacks aren't new. Last season, an effigy of the footballer was photographed hanging from a bridge in Madrid, showing how far fans are willing to go to abuse him.

These acts shed light, once again, on the deeply entrenched racism in Spanish football.

Let us know what you think.

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DRC VIOLENCE FLARE-UP: 200,000 DISPLACED

The conflict in eastern DRC has burst back on the scene, uprooting 200,000 people in the latest flare-up of violence.

The M23 rebel group has been exchanging fire with local armed militias under the Wazalendo umbrella.

A Kenyan peacekeeper is among the victims. Peacekeepers - both from East Africa and the UN - have long been a sore point, with DRC’s president calling for their departure.

M23 is widely accused of being a proxy for neighbouring Rwanda. The group says the latest violence is due to DRC violating a ceasefire deal. Kinshasa denies this, though reports suggest Congolese soldiers are fighting for Wazalendo.

It jeopardises months of regional dialogue to end the insecurity in DRC, where - besides M23 - more than 100 armed groups operate.

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DID IDF SHELLS KILL KIBBUTZ RESIDENTS?

Israel’s war in Gaza - which is threatening to spiral into an apocalyptic regional conflict on Africa’s eastern doorstep - is being waged not just with bombs, but with info.

The official Israeli framing of the events of October 7th is being used to justify a bombing campaign that’s killed thousands of Gaza’s children and triggered a humanitarian crisis in the Strip.

But according to reports in the Israeli media, including of survivor testimony, some of the civilians killed during the Hamas murder-and kidnap spree in Israel may have died as a result of IDF shelling. Unable to repel Hamas fighters, the Israeli army reportedly resorted to indiscriminate tank shelling, killing kibbutz residents.

Continued…. While in no way mitigating the atrocities committed by Hamas, these revelations cast doubt on the official Israeli narrative. Given the terrible consequences of that narrative, every aspect needs proper scrutiny.

In this clip, Propaganda and Co. - a social-media politics outlet - gives its take on the Israeli media revelations. Have a watch and let us know your own thoughts in the comments.

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NETANYAHU: APARTHEID 2.0?

Dividing peoples into good and evil - light and dark - is a classical colonial trope, one Africans unfortunately had to suffer from during Europe's assault on our continent. I And now it's being marshalled against the Palestinians.

In this video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of a battle between the people of the light and those of darkness - as his country bombs and expands its ground operation into Gaza.

By the 'people of darkness', he will claim he means Israel's enemies. Still, the ease with which he slipped into this kind of Manichaean vocabulary indicates an apparent attempt to 'other' the entire Palestinian population living in Gaza.

Continued….To us, it smacks of the sort of apartheid we once saw in South Africa. In apartheid South Africa, ethnicities were divided and codified through the Group Areas Act, where the most desirable lands were allocated to the White settler population. Then, the Asians and coloured and, finally, the least desirable slums were reserved for the Blacks. The European settlers justified all this by claiming that this was God's will and the Blacks were savages, aka the 'people of darkness'.

Do you see the parallels we're seeing?

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MALCOLM X: MAU MAU SELF-DEFENCE

In 2023, it is probably not hard to find people who understand and relate to Malcolm X's position on the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, popularly known as the Mau Mau. After all, it has become more commonly accepted that settler colonialism in Africa was brutal, racist and violent. It can be easy to forget that Western media depicted Mau Mau warriors as horrific blood-thirsty terrorists and savage criminals.

Malcolm X, like so many Pan-African freedom fighters, took the courageous position to defend the Mau Mau.

Continued….Like Frantz Fanon, Kwame Ture, Josina Machel, Amilcar Cabral, Titina Silá and so many others in the struggle for African liberation, Malcolm X understood that the violence of the oppressed is fundamentally different from the violence of the oppressor. When Malcolm X spoke of African liberation 'by any means necessary,' what he meant was that the white-supremacist imperialist system that has come to control the world today was founded in violence, and fueled each and every day by violence.We cannot forget that when the oppressed launched an attack, it came after the Western imperialists had declared war on Africans and on other colonised peoples of the world, when they decided to build their wealth through conquest, plunder and our suffering.

Let us know what you think of Malcolm's remarks.

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OCTOBER NEWS WRAP

In a month dominated by the conflict unfolding in Palestine, let’s not forget what’s been happening across Africa. Join us for a wrap of October’s biggest stories. We look at the French withdrawal from Niger, Nigeria being the Belt and Road Forum’s big winner and Burkina Faso agreeing to the construction of a nuclear power plant, among other important events.

The continent never sleeps. We invite you to join us again for another monthly wrap of news and events across Africa. In the meantime, share your thoughts on October’s big stories.

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