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Audit the Fed? The Battle Against Obama’s Bankers Begins on Capitol Hill

Posted Wed, 11/25/2009 - 00:48 by Glen Ford
audit the fedby BAR executive editor Glen Ford
A bill has begun its journey through the U.S. House that could crystallize (and polarize) public attitudes toward the wholesale Wall Street theft of mega-trillions in national treasure. Rep. Ron Paul has gathered over 300 co-sponsors for legislation that would force an audit of the Federal Reserve – “the heretofore unaccountable engine of bankster thievery on a cosmic scale.”

Freedom Rider: President Sarah Palin

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:30 by Margaret Kimberley
palinby BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Smug Democrats love to imagine they are a species apart from Sarah Palin, the “pit bull with lipstick.” However, U.S. political history teaches us never to overestimate the intelligence of the American electorate, or trust a Democrat – many of whom were Republicans not very long ago. At root, Palin's supporters are “white nationalists,” the same people that adored Ronald Reagan and, yes, George Bush. So why is it so hard to imagine a Palin presidency?

What's Really In House and Senate Health Insurance Bills

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:30

pharmaBy Ida Hellander, MD

It's not universal health care.  It's not even close.  Insurance companies will be bailed out and millions forced to purchase crappy insurance with government subsidies.  Drug costs will soar, the existing safety net wil be slashed and none of the uninsured will be covered till 2013 in the House version, or 2014 in the Senate version.  The devil lurks in the details, and there are lots and lots of details....

Rep. John Conyers: “I’m Tired of Saving Obama’s Can”

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:25
conyers and Obama
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford


 

Periodically, Rep. John Conyers, one of the point-men for single payer health care, vents his frustration with President Obama. But then he, and nearly all the rest of the Progressive Caucus, vote for the president's pro-business legislation, anyway. “Obama would not have had the option of 'bowing down' to the corporations and the 'right-wing nuts' if progressives were not so predictably spineless.”

Black Caucus Shows Displeasure with Obama on Jobs, But Avoids Confrontation

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:22
jobs nowA Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What's a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) member to do when he/she is politically wedded to the Black man in the White House who is refusing to do anything substantive to tackle Depression-level African American unemployment? The CBC is approaching the moment when either they confront President Obama, directly, or abandon the pretense of representing their constituents.

Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:18
the poppy
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford


The U.S. set the stage for the Afghan (and Pakistan) war eight years ago, when it handed out drug dealing franchises to warlords on Washington's payroll. Now the Americans, acting as Boss of All Bosses, have drawn up hit lists of rival, “Taliban” drug lords. “It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol.”

Counting the New African Community in the U.S.

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:14
Dr. Ron Danielsby Dr. Ron Daniels
The demographics of African America have changed dramatically since the Sixties. “There are untold millions of Africans from the Pan African world who have emigrated to these shores in the last half century”to become part of what the author calls “the new African community.” However, a fair Census count is “the first crucial step in the effort to maximize the potential/power of the new African community.”

Jamaica, Feed Thyself

Posted Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:10 by John Maxwell
jamaicaby John Maxwell
After five centuries of producing bananas and sugar for the profit of Europeans, Africa and the Caribbean must now embark on a breakneck campaign to produce food for their own hungry millions. That also means freeing th soil of the great “biocide,” Roundup. Roundup and its chemical cousins kill everything, and wreak havoc on human cells, as well.

The Mis-Incarceration of Lynne Stewart

Posted Fri, 11/20/2009 - 14:13
lynn stewartby Iyanna “Nana Soul” Jones
Crusading “movement” lawyer Lynn Stewart is ordered to begin serving a prison sentence. “To put her behind bars when no one was injured, no one was harmed, when those who produced the torture memos, those who produced the war are going free and even prospering is really the irony of our time.”

Why Democrats and Republicans Won't Confront Black Mass Incarceration, and Why The Green Party Will

Posted Wed, 11/18/2009 - 12:00 by Bruce A. Dixon

prisonAlthough the phenomenon of black mass incarceration is at the center of African American life, it continues to be obfuscated or ignored. The bipartisan consensus is that the social policy of black mass incarceration may exist only the minds of black people, and is certainly off the table as a political issue. To get this very real concern of Black America on the table then, may require stepping outside the bipartisan consensus. In Georgia, the state with the third highest black population and the largest percentage of its adults in the correctional labyrinth, the Green Party proposes to do what Democrats and Republicans won't --- make black mass incarceration a central political issue.

 

White House Plans Sham Jobs Forum

Posted Wed, 11/18/2009 - 00:43 by Glen Ford
unemploymentby BAR executive editor Glen Ford
In laying down the ground rules for next month's White House Forum on jobs, the Obama Administration makes it plain that no serious job-creation proposals will be entertained. The employment crisis is to be treated as a waiting game. Civil rights and labor leaders seem not to understand that their president “is philosophically opposed to targeted programs that might directly impact on Black unemployment.”

Freedom Rider: Assassination

Posted Tue, 11/17/2009 - 20:02 by Margaret Kimberley
wilkins and king meet bobby kennedyby BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was rooted in previous crimes and created a cascade of subsequent crimes. Indeed, none of the high profile political killings of the Sixties can be understood apart from the larger matrix of official criminality. Even “the American mafia owes its very existence to the CIA, which protected and promoted the illegal drug trafficking responsible for so much loss of life and destruction of entire communities.”

U.S. Sows Seeds of Wider War in East Africa

Posted Tue, 11/17/2009 - 19:54
Greater SomaliaA Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford


 

Like a pyromaniac, the United States threatens to ignite the entire East African region in its campaign to suppress Islamist forces in Somalia. Unable to marshal support for the pitiful puppet regime in Mogadishu, the Americans try to buy ethnic Somali recruits in surrounding countries. A new military offensive is set for late December.

Expendable Allies: Vietnam's Diem, Afghanistan's Karzai

Posted Tue, 11/17/2009 - 19:50
karzaiA Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player to listen to or the mic to download an audio in MP3 format.

Superpower gangsters steal whole nations as a matter of routine, but feign shock when their handpicked puppets deal in unlicensed larceny. Hamid and Ahmed Karzai are no more nor less loyal to the American Project – and their own fortunes – than were South Vietnamese President Diem and his brother Nhu, who found themselves expendable 46 years ago this month.

Obamacare A Bonanza For Drug Companies, A Pain For the Public

Posted Tue, 11/17/2009 - 19:45
expensive drugs
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player to listen to or the mic to download an audio in MP3 format.

Why are the drug barons planning a $150 million ad campaign boosting Obama's health care scheme? They've got $21 billion worth of reasons – bonus earnings from record price hikes while wheeling and dealing with the White House. Everything the president touches turns to cash – for the corporate sector.