ኢዮብ አሰለፈች ባልቻ (Eyob Aselefech Balcha)

#Ethiopia #Ethiopia #Ethiopia 🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹 #Ethiopia #Ethiopia #Ethiopia 🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹🇪🇹💔💔

Eyob Balcha Gebremariam argues that today’s global disorder stems from intensified Eurocentrism, hypocrisy and racism of the West, which shapes international narratives and conflicts in self-serving ways. buff.ly/S814zR5

@halelule 🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾🤦🏾

Startups of the world, unite!

I'm avoiding Twitter for obvious reasons; however, until I finalise my migration, I will share this piece written mainly for the UN audience. Restoring Africa’s knowledge sovereignty is key to sustainable development africarenewal.un.org/en/magazine/re…

ICYMI: Connecting the dots of coloniality... in health research & policy making - new blog by @BalchaEyob on his @UCT_news @BristolUni fellowship research #coloniality #AfricaResearch #AfricaCharter parc.bristol.ac.uk/2025/02/28/con…

Biko once said….

Decolonising Development Studies: Progress, challenges, and the role of the Africa Charter blog.gdi.manchester.ac.uk/decolonising-d… via @globaldevinst @PerivoliARC

The ASAA announces call for papers, panels, workshops, films etc for the #ASAA2025 biennial conference in #Cabo_Verde as-aa.org/index.php/in-t… @kafmurhula @divinefuh @Africaishome @qwesidjan @adomakoampofo

Valentin Y. Mudimbe turned 83 today. His philosophical masterpiece “The Invention of Africa,” which deconstructs the colonial library we all carry in our minds often unwittingly, is indispensable to our intellectual hygiene. Happy birthday to a giant!

🎊🎉Heartfelt Congratulations to #HUMA Director @divinefuh on his new appointment as head of Anthropology at @UCT_news starting January 2025! Read the full announcement: humanities.uct.ac.za/huma/articles/…

ከደስታ ኪዳነወልድ መዝገበ ቃላት የመጀመሪያ ገፆች በአንዱ ላይ የተፃፈ የማነቃቂያ መልክት ... #ኢትዮጲያ

I'm happy to announce that my book titled "The Foreign Gaze: Essays on Global Health" is now out! You can order the print copy and download the e-copy (open access) here: editions.ird.fr/produit/728/97… The book comes with a playlist for your listening pleasure: open.spotify.com/playlist/5K5t6…

The greatest of all #ThandikaMkandawire 's works are collected in one location for better access. If you browse through his work, you can find several insightful comments on Africa and beyond. He was truly phenomenal! Thanks, @CODESRIA, for the great help!

The problem with liberalism is that it rests on a fundamental contradiction that cannot be resolved. It will always fail, it will always collapse, and this explains everything about our current moment. Liberals try to hold two commitments at once: on the one hand, they are firmly committed to capitalism; on the other, they express support for principles like human rights, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, environment and the rule of law.  This duality is the core of liberalism. But there's a problem. Capital accumulation requires cheapening labour and nature. This eventually comes into direct conflict with principles like rights and equality. And whenever this conflict appears, the liberal ruling class sides with capital, abandons their lofty principles, and throws workers and nature under the bus.  Every. Single. Time. This results in flagrant displays of hypocrisy. They run on nice-sounding platforms but end up either betraying their promises or actively working against their stated values. They'll slash public services, bail out banks, imprison journalists, beat up students, expand fracking, coup democratically elected leaders in the global South, bomb liberation movements, fund a genocide - they'll even trash international law itself - anything that's needed to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation. At most, they may try to negotiate mediocre compromises, a few social policies here and there - some abortion rights, a tiny increase in the minimum wage - but nothing that might pose any serious threat to capital accumulation. Thus the soul-crushing slowness of liberal incrementalism.  Ultimately they are unwilling to take any of the obvious steps that would actually resolve our urgent social and ecological crises. This is why nobody trusts liberal politicians.  This is why they come across as so fantastically insincere, and even sneering.  This is why they feel so spineless and *empty*. The center cannot hold.  Liberalism will always collapse, inevitably handing power to fascists, and this is not acceptable.  There is only one way to overcome this deadly impasse, and that is to mobilize a socialist alternative. A political movement that can unite the working-classes, overcome capitalism, deliver real economic democracy, and enable us to achieve rapid progress toward social and ecological goals.

Hastings, East Sussex, #England

How President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to stop Fannie Lou Hamer's Powerful Testimony by impromptu Press Conference to Get Her off the air, 1964.

It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point. Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this. But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned. Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future. Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development. The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital. And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative. So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.” Guess who said this? It was Joseph Goebbels - the lead spokesperson of the Nazis.... the rest is both history and, sadly, present-day reality. #USElections2024