by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The Katrina catastrophe indisputably revealed the
corporate plan for America's cities. No sooner had the waters receded than
corporate planners devised elaborate schemes for a "new" New Orleans - a
"better" city in which Blacks would never again be allowed to become
majorities. African American "leadership" should have understood that, with
Katrina, corporate America had shown its hand: dramatic reduction of Black
populations is at the core of the corporate urban "renaissance" model.
Nevertheless, African Americans have failed to tackle the job of comprehensive
urban planning that serves existing populations, and conserves Black
political power for the future.

by editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel is right to be scared
of most of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. Except for Ohio
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the contenders jockey for the title of
most-likely-to-attack-Iran. Impeachment "is the only way to discredit
Republicans enough to insure a Democratic victory in 2008," but House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi will hear none of that. Even if the Democrats somehow triumph,
nothing much will change, because the frontrunners are all beholden to Big
Money and enthralled with war.  

by Cynthia McKinney

African Americans and
immigrants must band together to resist a forced march to the bottom, said the
former congresswoman in a May Day speech in Los Angeles. The United States
government should oppose, rather than abet, corporate policies that force
people across borders. The Democratic Congress is way behind schedule in
addressing critical issues such as ensuring Katrina survivors' right of return,
and repealing George Bush's tax cuts, the Patriot Act, the Military Tribunals Act and the Secret
Evidence Act.

by Jeremy Scahill

In addition to the other,
many shortcomings in the Democrats' Iraq "withdrawal" legislation, the measure
fails utterly to deal with the 126,000 "contractors" in Iraq - tens of
thousands of whom are armed mercenaries. The private force rivals the uniformed
services in size, and earns far more money, all of it paid for by U.S.
taxpayers. Unaccountable to U.S. military or Iraqi law, the mercenaries are a
shadow army undergirding the occupation - and a corporate profit center for
George Bush's friends.

by BAR Editor
and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley

Senator John McCain, a man who would be
president, thinks it's funny to joke about bombing Iranians. McCain shares a
moral sickness with many others in positions of power - most notably, George W.
Bush. Yet the relative silence surrounding McCain's macabre behavior is also an
indictment of a society that casually contemplates mass murders of Others,
while holding days of national mourning for their own dead. Cho was a sick man,
in excruciating psychic pain. McCain and his ilk treat truly mass murder as
comical.

by Manuel Garcia, Jr.

The core imperative of those who control U.S.
policy is "the protection of White Supremacy Super-Nationalism, or Empire."
Control of global energy resources and such are merely elements of a larger
crusade that operates "at the level of the central nervous system,
subconscious and unconscious." U.S. alliances are based on a brotherhood of
"Pan-Whiteness" - "a bond that expresses itself in a tribal level of
identification." The rest of the planet and its peoples are just "Injun
country."