Tag Archives: By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

GUYANA: Time for Venezuela to stop bullying little Guyana over 180-year-old border dispute– By Mohamed Hamaludin

09/23/2021 – 12:03 am

 — By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and opposition forces got together in August to work out an accord which would hopefully ease international sanctions in a country with the largest oil reserves and one of the worst economic slumps.

The meeting took place in Norway – the second in two years–and participants managed to unite on one issue which had nothing to do with sanctions: a 180-year-old claim to “the historic and inalienable rights of Venezuela over the territory of Essequibo.”

That territory is two-thirds of Guyana, whose government said it “firmly rejects the agreement [as] an overt threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana,” adding, “Guyana cannot be used as an altar of sacrifice for settlement of Venezuela’s internal political differences.” The opposition APNU+AFC Coalition affirmed the country’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”  The government and the opposition noted the issue is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the latest stage of a dispute which began in 1841 involving two wholly unequal neighbors.      Continue reading →

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WORLD– Former slaving-owning nations getting reparations bills for trillions – By Mohamed Hamaludin

09/14/2021 – 6:03 am

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN – Final installment in a series

The African continent has sent Europe a $777 trillion reparations bill for enslaving 32 million of its people between 1450 and 1850 and theft of its minerals. The demand came during the first conference of the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission, held in Accra, Ghana. The Accra Declaration called for the debt to be paid within five years and also that African nations’ international debt be “unconditionally cancelled.”

The demand, made 21 years ago, has not been met. However, additional claims for reparations have also been made, including, in some cases, for the atrocities committed under colonialism. The Mau Mau in Kenya won a lawsuit in 2013 against the British government in a case filed by five elderly persons for torture and forced labor, Quartz Africa’s Lynsey Chutel reported. The court ordered the British government to pay $24.8 million to 5,000 Kenyans; another 40,000 filed a similar lawsuit.          Continue reading →

By guyaneseonline | Posted in Caribbean news, colonialism, Commentary, Disasters, Government, Military, Personalities, Politics, Racial Conflict, War and conflict | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

U.S.A — Reparations issue continues to languish in Congress as other topics take precedence – By Mohamed Hamaludin

08/20/2021 – 12:03 am

Third in a series – – By Mohamed Hamaludin

“We, the jury, in the above entitled cause,” the verdict read, “do find for the plaintiff and assess her damages … at Two thousand five hundred dollars $2,500.00.”

The year was 1878. Inevitably, the jurors, judge and attorneys were all European Americans. However, the plaintiff was an African American woman, Henrietta Wood, who had sued for slavery reparations and was awarded today’s equivalent of $65,000.

Like Wood, untold numbers of enslaved Africans, freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation Declaration effective Jan. 1, 1863, were still denied their freedom. Wood was kept enslaved and, after she was finally freed, she had little choice but to contract to work for her former owner for three more years for $10 a month. She was not paid and she sued him for $20,000 in lost wages, USA Today’s Nicole Carroll recounted on June 19, 2020.      Continue reading →

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U.S.A: Spa mass shooting puts spotlight on anti-Asian bigotry — By Mohamed Hamaludin

03/25/2021 – 3:10 am

While investigators try to unravel the motive behind the mass killing at three Georgia massage parlors/spas, this much is clear: The nation has not been paying nearly enough attention to the racist attacks against Asian Americans.

It took the killing of six Asian American women – and two others — at the spas to spark national outrage, the killer’s motive notwithstanding. And the full picture finally emerged. Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group for Asian American and Pacific Islanders, said it received more than 3,750 anti-Asian hate crime reports since the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic started early last year. News reports drew a direct link to then President Donald Trump’s penchant for referring to the virus as “China virus,” “Wuhan virus” and “Kung Flu,” most likely sparking the attacks.      Continue reading →

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U.S.A. POLITICS: Unchecked Senate filibuster equals doom for electoral reform – opinion

03/19/2021 – 12:03 am

 By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees universal adult suffrage but it also allows disenfranchisement for committing a crime. Southern states seized on that loophole post-Reconstruction to round up African Americans, charge them with bogus crimes, inflict punishment by public whipping and take away their votes, as Pema Levy noted in Mother Jones.

“Freed from federal oversight after Reconstruction, most Southern states by the 1900s had rewritten their constitutions to deny Black people the vote through nominally race-blind provisions, including expanded criminal disenfranchisement,” Levy reported. “These measures, alongside poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, fraud, registration restrictions, and vigilante violence, were part of the toolkit used by white supremacists to maintain a system of racial subordination.”     Continue reading →

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U.S.A — While ordinary Americans fight for political crumbs, the rich get richer – opinion

02/26/2021 – 12:06 am

 By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

The federally mandated minimum wage is $7.25 an hour but the average actual wage is $19.33; for Florida, $16.

The average hourly wage of a CEO is $369 but can be as high as $9,000. The average hourly wage of a billionaire is $1 million but can be as high as $4 million.

Billionaires numbered 565 in 2017and their combined wealth was $2.7 trillion. By 2020, in four years of the Donald Trump presidency and a year of the coronavirus epidemic, their number rose to 614 and their wealth to $2.9 trillion. By April 10, the number increased by15 to 629 and their wealth to $3.2 trillion. Meanwhile, more than 20 million Americans have had to survive on about $333 per week in jobless benefits.          Continue reading →

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US POLITICS: Capitol attack seen as precursor of more violence for years to come – Opinion

01/22/2021 – 12:03 am

Capitol attacked by Trump supporters

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

U.S. President Joe Biden pledged long before he took the oath of office Wednesday to strive to bridge the current bitter political divide.  “This is the time to heal in America,” he said.

Biden can achieve some success but the threat of violence is will hang over his administration. The sheer variety of names and symbols at the Jan. 6 insurrection boggles the mind: QAnon, American flags with the stars replaced by the Roman numeral III, Pepe the Frog masks, the Crusader cross, MAGA gear including a flag portraying Donald Trump as Rambo, as riding a Tyrannosaurus rex, and the “Zombie Outbreak Response Team, The New York Times reported.    Continue reading →

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US Politics: America’s slide into autocracy halted by two African Americans

01/08/2021 – 12:08 am

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

When the history of this period in the life of the United States of America is written, let it be recorded that it was two African Americans who saved democracy and enabled the process of disinfecting its politics.

The process started when 80-year-old Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina endorsed the failing candidacy of Joe Biden in April, three days before the state’s presidential primary, injecting into his campaign a life-saving shot of political adrenalin. “I am fearful for the future of this country,” Clyburn said at the time. “I’m fearful for my daughters and their future and their children and their children’s future.”      Continue reading →

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OPINION: Election violence shows need for power-sharing in racially divided Guyana

03/14/2020 – 12:00 pm

 By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

The dreaded oil curse seen in some small countries which became suddenly wealthy and which some commentators have been warning Guyana about has struck even before the expected billions of dollars has come on stream from newly discovered eight billion barrels of oil deposit.

The first shipment had barely left before violent unrest erupted. It was not about petro-dollar corruption, which was the fear, but the original bane of Guyana – tense race relations mixed with politics. This time it is over the purported result of the March 2 general election and the attendant turmoil is as wholly unnecessary as it is distressing.          Continue reading →

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Guyana — High-stakes March 2 vote will decide control of Guyana’s new oil wealth

02/27/2020 – 9:49 pm

 — By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

If there was any lingering doubt as to why the Guyana government tried every available tactic to stall for more than a year the holding of elections after being defeated in a no-confidence vote, the answer came on December 20.

That is when ExxonMobile and its partners started pumping oil from recently discovered offshore fields. The tanker Yannis P set sail a month later with one million barrels of light crude bound for a United States-based refinery owned by ExxonMobile. With that shipment, Guyana finally realized a 75-year-old dream of finding oil. About a month later, another tanker, the Cap Phillippe, left with another million barrels of oil – this time belonging to Guyana as its share of the output.    Continue reading →

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