Israel Imprisons Cynthia McKinney For Carrying Crayons To Gaza - Updated Again

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 08:39
The Editors
Former Georgia Congresswoman is imprisoned in Israel along with 20 others after being intercepted in international waters for the offense of carrying humantarian and reconstruction aid to the Palestinians of Gaza. 

The merciless Israeli blockade, aided and abetted by the Obama Administration continues to deny Palestinians the right to obtain the necessities of ordinary life such as medical suplies, writing paper, crayons, and cement to reconstruct their homes and businesses and carry on their ordinary lives.

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Obama's Public Education Policy: Privatization, Charters, Mass Firings, Neighborhood Destabilization

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:01

arne duncanby BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Last weekend in Chicago, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan delivered the keynote address at Rainbow PUSH's annual conference and education roundtable.  Duncan is the premiere executor of corporate instpired policies that have closed dozens of neighborhood public schools in Chicago without substantially improving educational outcomes and at vast cost to neighborhood stability and the careers of hundreds of good teachers.  But are African American organizations standing up for their own interests, for public education?  Or are we paralyzed because the corporate policies issue from the administration of a Black President?

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Freedom Rider: Dangerous Progressives

Submitted by Margaret Kimberley on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 13:00
uglyby BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
 
Self-styled “progressives” tend to think of themselves as another tribe entirely, untainted by American chauvinism. It ain't so. “Progressives also succumb to the belief in American divine right, and consequently can often be as dangerous as those on the political right.” This is especially evident in the Age of Obama, who “has continued some of the worst Bush administration policies, but still receives nearly universal support from progressives.”
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The Election of Barack Obama Has Paralyzed Progressive Forces in US Politics

Submitted by Glen Ford on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 12:59

If you don't see the video above, click here.
This speech delivered by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford at African Liberation Day 2009, highlights the paralysis of black and progressive leadership and the dead end in which progressive forces in the U.S. find themselves.
For as long as anybody can recall, the dominant stream in black politics has been about our right to decide and determine our own fates and the fates of our communities, to be answerable to our people and to hold each other answerable.  Another stream in black politics is just as old, seeks escape from the vestiges of slavery by proving that we are worthy and willing to assimilate into the dominant society without trying to alter it in any fundamental sense.  It's easy to see which of these strains our president belongs. 

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Giving Honduras the Haiti Treatment

Submitted by Glen Ford on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 22:51

HAITI ELECTIONSA Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford 

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

President Obama has joined all of Latin American in denouncing the coup in Honduras. But Washington's words should always be taken “with whole spoonfuls of salt.” Obama could restore democracy to Haiti immediately, if he chose to, by allowing the return of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but instead shuts Aristide's party out of recent Senatorial elections. President Zalaya “was aligning himself with Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other left-led nations.... It is inconceivable that the U.S. looks forward” to his return.
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French Cops are Racist, Too

Submitted by Glen Ford on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 20:39

A

stop the violence

Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford 

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

If you're Black and tired of getting stopped by the police on the streets of New York City and elsewhere in the United States, then Paris isn't the city for you. “A new study of the Paris police shows that...persons the police consider Black are stopped six times as often as whites.” And Arab-looking people are stopped even more frequently than that. Although racial profiling is illegal in France, the police studiously avoid keeping records on race.
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High Court Tries to Freeze White Privilege in Place

Submitted by Glen Ford on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 20:34

New Haven White Firefighters

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford 

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

The real “activist” judiciary if represented by the U.S. Supreme Court majority than is determined to re-enshrine white privilege in law. The New Haven firefighters ruling is an assault on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “The High Court decision would preserve an ethnic, clan and family racial protection racket that has been embedded in fire and police departments for generations.”

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Eshu’s blues: Michael Jackson dies of Amurrika at 50

Submitted by michael hureaux on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 10:57
michael jacksonby BAR columnist michael hureaux perez
 
The King of Pop is dead, and “you can hear the scavengers gnawing on bones all the way to the bank from any vantage point where you stand.” Michael Jackson succumbed to a peculiar Amurridan syndrome: TMTS, Too Much Too Soon. “In United States capitalist culture, performing artists have to deal with a public pillorying that actually ought to be reserved for the war criminals and thieves who have always run and owned this society.”
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When Will Obama Stand and Fight?

Submitted by Dr. Ron Daniels on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 03:04
ron danielsby Dr. Ron Daniels
Barack Obama entered the presidency with a huge mandate, but “is emerging as a cautious pragmatist who is more obsessed with 'bi-partisanship' than seizing the moment to create substantial change in this country.” His economic policy is run by “Wall Street insiders,” he has bowed to “conservative mantras” on the housing crisis, and he “has apparently capitulated before putting up a fight” over health care. “Therefore, the outcome is predictable; the insurance companies will carry the day.”
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Mob Attack in Darfur: Personal Account

Submitted by Isma’il Kushkush on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 02:16
darfurby Isma’il Kushkush
The author, a Sudanese journalist, found himself surrounded and nearly beaten to death by “Shabab” - young men – in a Darfur displaced persons camp. The mob shouted, “Criminal! Janjaweed!” Some may simply have hated journalists. “I've been told that many IDPs in Darfur believe that journalists are 'banking' on their cause.” But it is also true that “banditry and thuggery have become components of life in unstable Darfur with the absence of stable work.”
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Black Music Month at 30: A Cultural Retrospective

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 01:08
blk music monthby Pamela D. Reed
President Obama changed Black Music Month to "African American Music Appreciation Month," and neglected to hold a commemorative event at the White House. “This is like the tree that falls in the forest with no one there to hear it.” (George Bush held three Black Music Month affairs). “In the trademark Obama 'a rising tide lifts all boats' tradition,” a presidential spokesperson “stresses that the Obama administration subscribes to the '365 day' approach to music appreciation--all music.”
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Haiti's Non-Election

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 00:18
haiti sceneby Kim Ives
When the most popular political party is barred from the election, what's the point of voting? Such was the simple logic of Haiti's recent farcical senatorial run-off election, boycotted by supporters of Lavalas Family, exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party. “Streets around the capital were eerily devoid of pedestrians and traffic despite the fact that the government allowed the operation of public transportation.” Some estimate only about one percent of eligible voters turned out.
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Obama’s Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers and For-Profit Healthcare

Submitted by Glen Ford on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 10:23

Obama Sam by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The first Black president has racked up some impressive victories. Barack Obama has quarantined single-payer healthcare advocates, crushed dissent against the war in Congress, and transferred more money to the finance capital class than at any time in planetary history. Not bad for just five months in office. “At some point in the near future Barack Obama will become inextricably associated in the public mind with Big Capital – and deservedly so.”
 
 
 
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Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 07:25

darfur again

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

For more than five years, the Save Darfur Coalition has used a slick and star-studded multimillion dollar ad campaign to paint a horrific vision of 400,000 dead in a black vs Arab war of extermination. No historic or political causes are offered for this scenario; it's genocide a case of good vs. evil demanding our attention and action. But the big lies underpinning the Save Darfur campaign are coming undone. Reporters, scholars and even US envoys are returning from the region affirming that if there ever was a genocide in Darfur, and there may not have been, there isn't one now. The British government has even ruled that Save Darfur cannot, in that country, use the figure of 400,000 dead which it throws around in all its US advertisements, cause it just ain't true.

 

 

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