People in every country must oppose the terror campaign the US is leading in Iraq and Syria. America seeks to maintain its intolerable political and economic domination of the region, which created the conditions for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the first place. The lives of the people of Iraq and Syria mean nothing.

Is there really no explanation for Khalid Masood’s lone attack on Westminster Palace, as Scotland Yard sleuths say? Masood could not change his “blackness”, nor the reality of racism in England. He could not get over his schoolmates calling him “Black Ade”. He laughed about it, and even as he grew up into manhood he behaved convivially, behaving like a “good boy”, so as not to appear rude.

The ISIL phenomenon poses profound lessons and challenges for maintenance of international law and order. Although recent, ISIL has its roots in the deep anomalies and double standards of the global system itself. The policies of Western governments have contributed lavishly to this lawless dynamic. Without discernable effort to repair those fatal policy flaws, more ISILs may be in the offing.

March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A notable cultural icon in the struggle against racism is Jamaican reggae artiste Peter Tosh. He was an internationalist and linked the fight of Africans against racism, settler-colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa with the struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

If Steve Biko – the iconic leader of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement - were alive today, what would he make of the Afrophobia/xenophobia in South Africa? Would he stridently denounce it – unlike South Africa’s leaders – and seek to foster a new sense of self-love in the transformed slogan: “Black is Beautiful! Be Proud of your Blackness and the Blackness of other Africans!”?

Negotiations did not produce the state of Israel. From 1917 when the Jews procured the dubious Balfour Declaration right up to independence three decades later, the Jews conducted themselves in a manner that could have made the murderers of today’s ISIS and Boko Haram look like saints. So, why do some people encourage Palestinians to embrace negotiations as the way to their freedom?

The racist policies of Israel constitute the internationally recognized crime of apartheid against Palestinians. As was the case for South Africa under minority white supremacist rule, it is imperative to think seriously about the nature of Israel’s constitutional order and about how to deepen anti-racist alliances and solidarities across borders on behalf of the Palestinian people.

An American manufactured helicopter attacked a vessel carrying Somalis fleeing from the war-torn state of Yemen killing 42. Somalia supports the US-backed Yemeni regime against the Houthi forces. But it is well known that Yemeni forces and their allies continue to target civilians in the war and prevent the transport of essential goods and services from reaching millions of people inside the country.

Hundreds of popular organizations, networks and movements of Latin America and the Caribbean launched a Week of Solidarity with Haiti, March 15-22, with a petition demanding the total withdrawal of the troops that occupy that country and closure of the UN Mission (MINUSTAH). They also want the UN to provide reparations for violations and crimes against the Haitian people.

Two recommendations from the report stand out. First, it asks that the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel. Second, the report urges that UN member states allow criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials connected with the practices of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Since most of the world’s states have signed the Convention Against Apartheid, they are now obliged to act.

Popular former President Aristide survived an assassination attempt this week against the backdrop of increased violence in the world’s first black republic. The mandate of the deeply resented UN occupying force MINUSTAH ends in April and is set to be renewed. The violence is orchestrated to justify continued imperialist intervention that benefits foreigners and their local henchmen.

Rima Khalaf’s resignation, under pressure to suppress factual and legal findings unfavorable to Israel, will send a chilling message to other UN officials that they are better off serving those in power than in upholding any mandate to advance human rights and respect for international law.

Before the start of a public lecture by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in South Africa, student activist Kolosa Ntombini requested the renowned Kenyan writer and academic to ask white people in the audience to leave the hall as only black people could meaningfully discuss decoloninization. Kolosa recounts the episode.

As American contradictions get sharper in the coming four years, what is needed is a rich Islamic selfhood that abides by the law of the land, is at ease with quarrelsome heterogeneity, and is confident enough to enter into open, vigorous and respectful dialogue.

Xenophobia is fear of strangers. Afrikans cannot be strangers or “foreigners” in Afrika. What is happening in South Africa is an extreme form of an element we can trace in all Black societies across the world: self-hatred expressed as rage against our own. White Supremacy has disempowered the Afrikan being to such levels that it only reacts with violence: Us killing us.

The people of Sudan, victims of one of the most murderous regimes in the world today, appear to have been abandoned to the terror of Omer al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal. The Sudanese despot has taken advantage of the vagaries of geopolitics and the so-called war on terror to consolidate his regime and protect himself from international justice. For how long with the Sudanese suffer?

The 2017 South Africa budget is not redistributive towards the working class nor is it progressive. Rather it is a standard neoliberal budget, delivered by a state that benefits the ruling class – white and black capitalists and top state officials – and that is controlled by that very same class.

Mining is a major economic activity in South Africa. But it is entangled with the atrocious legacies of apartheid. It benefits mostly elite whites to the exclusion of the black majority who suffer most from the harmful effects such as environmental degradation and poor health. Black resistance against the evils of mining has a long history. Now it needs to be strengthened.

South Africans who agree that government policies must enjoy popular support, who believe that peace is a desirable value which society ought to collectively and actively aspire towards and who admit the possibility that nuclear technology could be incompatible with the genuine pursuit of peace, should object to the government proceeding with its current nuclear plans without comprehensive public consultation.

For the third month, Kenya’s doctors have demonstrated a remarkable spirit of resistance to worker oppression - to the extent of union leaders being imprisoned for championing their rights. But this is a much bigger struggle requiring the solidarity of all progressive forces. Kenyans need to rise up against a government that doesn't care whether they live or die.