To justify US and European military occupation of much of Africa, migrants seeking jobs in the north of the continent or in Europe “are labeled as criminals and terrorists” when they are “just looking for work,” said Ampson Hagan, a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “These migrants, traveling along paths that have been traveled for centuries, are now implicated in terrorist activity,” said Hagan. “Terrorism becomes a way of legitimizing a foreign presence” in the Sahel region, centered in Niger. Hagan asks: “What does it mean for Europe to be policing African migration within Africa?”
The late Glen Ford would probably refer to events in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and elsewhere as the “blowback” from France’s colonial past.
“The structural crisis of capitalism in its neoliberal form has created a legitimacy crisis for the capitalist rulers, making the use of force a permanent strategy for maintaining their dominance.”
It would be a bad look for the U.S. or a European nation to be the public face of the impending occupation of Haiti. That's why Kenya was asked to help the make case for a new invasion.
This week’s featured author is Milagros Denis-Rosario. Denis-Rosario is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies at Hunter College of the City…
“…most slave children were prohibited from learning to read or write…” —James Mellon, Editor of Bullwhip Days
