#Migration policy and #sovereignty:
Has #Gambia ever completed the work of #independence?
Ousainou Allen, National Alliance For Accelerated Advancement (NAFAA):
"More than sixty years after independence The Gambia still lacks meaningful control over critical sectors that determine whether a nation can stand on its own feet."
#Self-determination a practical question of who controls #energy, #food, #security, and #technology in the #present.
Today in Labor History December 24, 1969: Nigerian troops captured Umuahia, the Biafran capital, leading to the end of Biafran independence. Igbo nationalists in the southeastern region of Nigeria seceded from Nigeria in 1967 and created the independent state Biafra, which existed from May 1967 to January 1970. They did it in the wake of the 1966 pogroms against them by northerners that killed up 30,000 (half of whom were children), and forced another 1 million to flee the region. Many nations recognized Biafra or provided support during their short independence, including Tanzania, Zambia, France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Rhodesia and South Africa. Doctors Without Borders provided medical support. Nigeria, however, never accepted Biafran independence. In the civil war that followed succession, as many as 100,000 people died and over 4 million civilians became refugees. However, the Nigerian naval blockade of Biafra resulted in up to 3 million civilians dying from starvation. In 1999, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra emerged as a nonviolent means toward re-independence. They have organized numerous peaceful protests, which the Nigerian government has attacked, leading to many deaths. The Indigenous People of Biafra, and other Biafran nationalist groups, have been fighting a guerilla war against the Nigerian government since 2021.
Persecution of the Igbo traces back to at least the colonial period. In building up a Nigerian army, the British followed their “Martial Race” theory (that certain ethnic groups made better soldiers), recruiting primarily people from the north, excluding Igbos, Yoruba, and others from the south of the country. After the Civil War, the southeast of the country remained underdeveloped and the Igbos continued to be excluded from key position in the government and military. However, the majority of Igbo lived in the southeast, which included the Niger River delta and Nigeria’s massive oil reserves. Controlling these resources was one of the primary reasons the Nigerian government refused to accept Biafran secession.
Only five countries (Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia, and Haiti) officially recognized the new republic of Biafra. The UK sent heavy weapons and supplies to the Nigerian side in order to preserve their access to the oil and protect their oligarchs’ investments in Shell-BP, which had controlled oil exploration and extraction since 1937. The Soviets also supplied the Nigerian government weaponry, seeing the war as a repeat of the Congo situation (maintaining access to African minerals, while keeping them out of the hands of the U.S.) Israel also support the Nigerian government in the war. France, which called the Nigerian treatment of Biafrans a genocide, secretly supplied the Biafrans with weapons. The U.S. was initially neutral (officially). Kissinger compared the Igbos to the Jews, but ultimately chose to support the Nigerian government in order to protect the interests of Gulf Oil, which operated offshore of the conflict zone. Numerous international mercenaries fought on the side of Biafra.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #genocide #Biafra #nigeria #coldwar #civilwar #famine #starvation #independence #colonialism #blackmastodon
It’s been many years since I watched the once unmissable Sports Personality of the Year programme on the BBC, largely because it has long been a deeply unserious piece of broadcasting.
“Nobody ever celebrated devolution day” (Alex Salmond) https://theorkneynews.scot/2025/12/24/nobody-ever-celebrated-devolution-day-alex-salmond/ #AlecRoss, #Football, #Independence, #Scotland, #WorldCup
“Nobody ever celebrated devolution day” (Alex Salmond)
YES, #Greenland fights back on #usa.
In Greenland, people are ready with signs and banners in case Trump’s new envoy drops by.
Spread the word i America since this news will not hit the broadcast stations.
#Greenland #denmark #greed #naturalresources #independence #nato #EU #WorldOrder #respect #nature #democracy #demonstration
More and more AA guns installed near the flightdeck.
#Scalemodels #3dprinting #CVL22 #Independence #Revell #Carrier #CVL #WW2
Is it normal to miss being single while dating? - QA Realm Forum
https://qarealm.com/d/23-is-it-normal-to-miss-being-single-while-dating
Tags: #It, #Normal, #Miss, #Being, #Single, #While, #Dating, #QA, #Realm, #Forum, #DatingAdvice #RelationshipTips #MissingSingleLife #Commitment #Independence #Couples #EmotionalHealth #Love #Partnership #SelfGrowth #RelationshipGoals #ModernDating #PersonalFreedom #HealthyRelationships
Gute Vorsätze
Ich habe gerade mein #Paypal Konto geschlossen. Ich hatte es ehrlich gesagt auch schon lange nicht mehr genutzt.
Tiếng chuông chùa Đồng Kỵ vang vọng giữa mùa thu độc lập, thức tỉnh lòng yêu nước và tinh thần dân tộc. Từ những mái chùa, mạch nguồn "hộ quốc an dân" âm thầm chảy, hội tụ cùng lý tưởng giải phóng dân tộc, bùng lên như ngọn lửa không bao giờ tắt. Một mùa thu lịch sử, một dấu ấn thiêng liêng giữa đất trời xứ Kinh Bắc.
#ThuDoiLap #ChuaDongKy #HoQuocAnDan #LichSu #KhoiNghia #VietNam #Independence #Autumn #Temple #History #Patriotism #BacNinh
Here's another #parenting challenge for a person with a #disability in terms of #independence
Alice is going on a flight to spend Christmas with her roommate and her family. This is her first time flying solo. How do you get her ready? It's a lot of pre-planning and teaching. Alice works well with lists, so I made her one.
Airbus lâche Microsoft et cherche désespérément un cloud européen pour protéger ses secrets
Airbus fuit Microsoft, Google et Amazon pour ses données sensibles
Being with no one is better than being with the wrong one. Sometimes, those who fly solo have the strongest wings.
#SelfLove #FlyingSolo #StrongerAlone #SingleAndHappy #KnowYourWorth #SelfWorth #HealingJourney #MentalHealth #Independence #Empowerment #LoveYourself #Loneliness #Growth #Solitude #Quotes #ShareInspireQuotes
FCC Boss Brendan Carr Showcases How He’s A Shameless Liar And Opportunist In Testimony Before Congress
FCC chair suggests agency isn't independent, word cut from mission statement
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/17/brendan-carr-fcc-independent-senate-testimony-website
#HackerNews #FCC #Independence #FCC #Mission #Statement #Brendan #Carr #Senate #Testimony #Media #Regulation
@simplex I use everyday 🙏
— —
#encryption #privacy #decentralization #freespeech #freesoftware #independence #opensource #foss #anonymity #internet #infosec #communication #internet #tech #android #data #monero
Use energy to win independence, rather than independence to win energy
“The problem with the idea of cause and effect is that what is deemed the cause is an effect.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.
Scotland doesn’t need independence to start owning our own energy.
It feels like 2025 has come full circle for us at Common Weal. January started for us with an announcement from the Scottish Government that it was “not possible” to bring Scottish renewable energy into public ownership – an announcement made after the publication of a poll showing that more than 80% of people in Scotland favoured them doing so. We responded with a briefing paper called “How to own Scottish energy” which laid out the logic behind their announcement, why that logic was flawed and how they could bring energy into public ownership despite their own objections.
In short, the Government’s stance is based on an extremely narrow reading of the Scotland Act which actively prohibits the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers from owning electricity generating, storage or transmission assets. Under this reading, there cannot be a “National Electricity Company” designed and owned in the same way as some public corporations in Scotland like CalMac or ScotRail.
However, we showed in our paper that various options were not blocked by this prohibition. For example, a Minister-owned “National Heat Company” could be designed to build and own district heat networks to keep us all warm (the prohibition is specifically about electricity, not other forms of energy). The Government could also build a National Energy Company and hand ownership over to a consortium of Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities. Or each Council could own their own energy companies. Or the Government could back the creation of a private energy company that is mutually owned by every adult resident of Scotland. Or, instead of complaining about the limits of devolution, they could be applying pressure on the UK Government to amend what is very clearly a completely obsolete prohibition in the Scotland Act (especially as a narrow reading of it also prohibits the Scottish Government from erecting solar panels on its own buildings).
Come forward now to December and the SNP have kicked off their 2026 election campaign with a new paper essentially saying the same thing as they did earlier this year except framing it around “we’ll do it, but only after independence”. On public ownership in particular, they aren’t advocating for the full-scale nationalisation of energy but their ambition appears to extend only to communities owning up to 20% of local renewable projects.
20% is far better than the current level of a rounding error above 0%, but it’s clear that even within devolution, the Scottish Government could do far more than it’s currently doing to support communities by giving them grants and loans to purchase stakes in developments, to pressure developers to sell or grant those stakes to communities as a condition of planning permission or the renewal of licences and to actively use opportunities like the “repowering” of developments, the end of their licence periods and break-clauses in contracts that would allow poorly performing developers to have their licences withdrawn and transferred to public bodies (in much the same way as the Government took ScotRail back from Abelio in 2022)
This doesn’t get the UK Government off the hook though.
Their recent announcement that some £28 billion will be added to consumer energy bills to pay for vital energy grid upgrades is going to stick in the craw of people whose energy bills are already too high. Worse will be that most of the profits of that investment will flow into multinational companies – including foreign public energy companies – with none returning to the consumers themselves. These investments, too, should be made on a staked ownership basis so that the people paying for them – us – should become shareholders in the investments and see a return on our investment. To make things perfectly clear, if the UK Government had announced that it was going to fully publicly own the assets built via this spending, then the added costs on your bill would be the same. In other words, the choice to publicly own the UK’s new energy assets will cost you the same as the choice to leave them in private hands.
“Can’t we use our public owned energy to help win back our independence, rather than claiming more weakly that we can use independence to win back our energy?”
The same will be true of assets in an independent Scotland – but given the Scottish Government’s “all in” approach to “inward investment” (something their plan published this week mentions more often than public ownership), I can completely see them making the same mistake and forcing us to pay for assets that someone else will profit from.
I freely admit that there are aspects of Scotland’s energy transition that are not in Scotland’s hands and which are not likely to be easily negotiated away as part of an adjustment to devolution such as Scottish consumers being forced to pay for extremely expensive and risky nuclear projects that even NESO (formerly, the National Grid) now says are not needed to meet Green energy targets but this does not let the Scottish Government off from making the changes it can make now rather than using the dangling carrot of independence as a means of delaying action. If anything, independence will come less from making a promise that might be fulfilled afterwards but by taking tangible actions now that push devolution to the limit and then saying to voters “if you want more, you know what to do”.
If it truly is, as the Scottish Government says, Scotland’s Energy – then shouldn’t we take back as much as we can now as use that as leverage to win the rest? Can’t we use our public owned energy to help win back our independence, rather than claiming more weakly that we can use independence to win back our energy?
#Economics #Energy #independence #politics #Scotland #ScottishPolitics
This is the face of a man who was able to go the shops on his own for the first time in six years.
Start to work on the deck new.
#Scalemodels #3dprinting #CVL22 #Independence #Revell #Carrier #CVL #WW2
Thwarted #Coup in #Benin: Why #France FEARS the #Sahel Alliance
#ECOWAS #WestAfrica #CheneyReport #independence #selfdetermination #Ukraine #Russia
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EZKngePNp4I
Body Positivity Meets Dating - Brett Cooper and Chris Willx
