U.S. Rwandan Ally is “Greatest Mass Killer on the Face of the Earth, Today”

Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda and one of Washington’s top allies in Africa, “is the greatest mass killer on the face of the earth, today, says Edwin S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide. Millions have died in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since Rwanda Uganda, and close another U.S. ally, invaded the country in the mid-Nineties. According to Herman, a UN report showed the area of Congo occupied by Rwandan forces experienced three and a half million excess deaths – a genocide by any measurement. Yet Kagame “is a western hero.”

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Mtangulizi Sanyika, of New Orleans’ African American Leadership Project, assesses the state of the city five years after the deluge, and a newly developed Economic Security Index shows Americans face growing employment instability, says Yale University’s Jacob Hacker.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.

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Is Labor Ready to Challenge Obama?

The October 2 Washington march for jobs, announced by the NAACP and SEIU Local 1199 and now endorsed by the entirety of organized labor, “is an important shift” from labor’s “failed policy” of avoiding conflicts with the Obama White House, according to Alan Benjamin, of the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign. The WERC urges unions to demand single-payer health care, creation of 15 million WPA-type jobs and an end to U.S. wars.

The Ongoing Crime Against Black New Orleans

Five years after Katrina, the quality of life is worse for working people in New Orleans. Lance Hill, executive director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research, Tulane University, reports that as many as 150,000 former residents have not been able to return. The “elite’s” plan to shut out and keep out much of the Black population, has been largely successful.

The Internet is Not a Movement

The Netroots Nation and others still drunk on Obama’Laid mistake the traffic on the Internet for a real political movement, says BAR columnist Dr. Jared Ball. “It seems not to matter whether or not Obama is good for us, or that the Internet didn’t prevent Oscar Grant’s murder from occurring or prevent his killer from being handed an unjust non-sentence.”

Wyclef Jean Serves Foreigners’ Schemes for Haiti

Haitian community activist Ray LaForest says Wyclef Jean’s presidential candidacy is part of the U.S.-France-Canada “grand plan” to transform Haiti into the “cheapest source of labor in the Americas.” The entertainer’s move has heightened interest in an election from which the nation’s most popular political party, exiled President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas, has been excluded.

Intimidating the Rich

Angered over a land grab by the giant Whirlpool Corporation, Benton Harbor, Michigan, activists led by Rev. Edward Pinkney spoiled the opening of a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course developed by the company. The demonstrators shouted “Jack Nicklaus, go home!” and caused Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and rich patrons to seek a side exit. “We intimidated them like they have never been intimidated,” said Rev. Pinkney.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.

Shirley Sherrod Fallout

The Obama administration and the NAACP wound up shooting themselves in the feet when they falsely accused longtime Black rural activist and Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod of anti-white racism. NAACP President Ben Jealous claims he was “snookered” by the Right. But BAR's Dr. Jared Ball says the incident reveals the fundamental weaknesses of "liberalism."

Anti-War Movement Rising

In Albany, New York, 700 participants in the National Peace Conference, demanded an end to all U.S. military, economic and diplomatic aid to Israel ... The immigrant rights movement is “one of the most dynamic movements in this country, today,” said Teresa Gutierrez, of the International Action Center. Attacks emanating from the White House to Wall Street “amount to a war against immigrant workers.”

BAR’s Glen Ford, speaking as part of the Black is Back Coalition, told the conference that “breaking the Obama spell is the must-do task” for the Black Left. “President Obama’s very presence in the White House is a narcotic, a hallucinogen, that causes the traditional base of the Democratic Party to lose contact with reality.”

Rangel Twisting in Ethical Wind

Rep. Charles Rangel’s problems with the House Ethics Committee “frankly don’t mean much to this district,” says BAR columnist Margaret Kimberley, one of Rangel’s Harlem constituents. Rangel’s 40 years of seniority have not translated to “jobs for people or places for people to live,” and it is “sad for him to be going out this way.”

Rage in Black America

Killer cops are the most powerful agents of Black enragement. As in the case of Oscar Grant, not even the presence of live witnesses and cameras seems to deter the hit men in blue. BAR’s Dr. Jared Ball reminds us that Malcolm X “once said that simply being Black in America ‘radicalizes you.’ We hope so because it certainly does continue to enrage.”

People’s Lawyer Sentenced

Lynne Stewart has been “made an example of” because she defends the people’s “right to resist – the ultimate human right,” says activist and educator Ward Churchill. Stewart was re-sentenced to ten years in prison for allegedly providing “material support” to her client, an accused terrorist.

Towards a Red Black & Green Party

Blacks have given blind allegiance to the Democratic Party over the last 75 years, just as they did with Republicans in the previous 65 years since Emancipation, says BAR’s Bruce Dixon. “Our 1870 political strategy makes us unable to discern an enemy when he is a professed Democrat, all the more a Democrat with a black face.”

Black Jobs by the Numbers

Steven Pitts, of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, at Berkeley, worries that “we begin to pit low wage workers against the unemployed” at times of economic trouble, and “put unemployed workers into bad jobs.” Pitts and his colleagues have recently begun issuing monthly reports on Black employment prospects.

A 43-Year Cooperative Venture

Since 1967, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund has helped Black farmers achieve self-sufficiency. The federation celebrates its work with 30,000 families in 75 cooperatives across the South with festivities in Birmingham, Alabama, August 19-21, says executive director Ralph Paige.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.

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Israel’s Like South Africa…

Dockworkers at the Port of Oakland, California joined with community activists to temporarily halt unloading of cargo from an Israeli vessel. Union official Clarence Thomas said Israel was “just as vulnerable” to concerted worker and consumer protests as was South Africa during the apartheid era.

Rangel Makes Times Spectacle of Himself in Times Square

Harlem Congressman Rangel “in essence, denounced his own constituents” in favor of Israel at a recent Times Square press conference,” says BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley. Rangel joined New York politicians demanding that American flotilla activists attacked by Israeli should be investigated before being allowed back in the U.S.

High Court OKs Draconian Terror Law

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Obama administration’s broad interpretation of what constitutes giving “material assistance” to so-called “terror groups.” A Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer says the law amounts to “something very close to guilt by association” and “could have landed President Carter in prison for 15 years” for his peace-seeking missions.

U.S. Justice Department Fails to Come Up with Prison Rape Standards

Attorney General Eric Holder missed a deadline to submit national standards to combat sexual abuse behind bars. One hundred thousand prison inmates are raped every year, according to federal studies.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. Click the player below to listen. Length: One hour.

Nader: Proposition 14 Has Killed "Free Elections" in California

The passage of Prop 14 in California last week, Ralph Nader explains to BAR, locks down the electoral process for everyone but celebrities and the wealthiest business-backed candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. It's the end of free elections in California.

Rwanda Regime is “Dictatorship, a Totalitarian State,” Says Colleague of Jailed American Lawyer

With Rwanda now a close ally of the US in East Africa, raising fact and evidence-based questions on the Rwandan genocide story can earn you prison or worse in that unhappy land, says Christian Davenport, a young black professor of Peace Studies at Notre Dame who has conducted research in Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Northern Ireland, Turkey and beyond. The “Hotel Rwanda” story doesn't begin to tell the whole tale of what went on in Rwanda in those days, Davenport tells BAR.

Black Exclusion From Juries is Endemic in the U.S.

Atty Jacqueline Jones-Peace outlines how the how Blacks are rejected from juries for reasons ranging from appearing “arrogant,” to having a goatee. Atty. One prosecutor rejected a Black juror because he “shucked and jived when he walked,” according to a study of eight southern states done by the Equal Justice Initiative,

NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Prison-Based Gerrymandering Resembles “3/5s Man” Rule

LDF attorney Dale Ho told BAR “the parallels between prison-based gerrymandering and the three-fifths compromise are strong and eerie.” The practice counts prison inmates as “residents” of the jurisdiction in which they are incarcerated, rather than their home cities.

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Anti-racist activist and author Tim Wise on Obama and so-called "color-blind" politics, Colia Clark on rising resistance in Haiti, and a musical mix in celebration of the Cuban Revolution.

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