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Obama wars

Cornel West: Obama “Is a War Criminal”

Tue, 05/14/2013 - 14:28 — Jacob Chamberlain

by Jacob Chamberlain

“I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones," activist-academic Dr. Cornel West told British journalists. Barack Obama, like his predecessor, should be tried for war crimes.

A Plague of Desolationists on the “Left”

Tue, 04/23/2013 - 15:28 — Randy Shields

by Randy Shields

“Desolationists believe that America’s non-stop bombing of other nations is either no issue at all or not nearly as important as being pro-choice or supporting gun control or marriage equality.” They are worse than useless. Plus, “with blacks standing down indefinitely, the working class doesn’t have the rage to stop Obama from taking the first swings of the wrecking ball to Social Security.”

Throwing BRICS at the U.S. Empire

Wed, 03/27/2013 - 14:05 — Glen Ford

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

History has placed the BRICS nations on the path of confrontation with a superpower in decline. Washington is prepared to strangle the world into submission, or drown it in chaos. “Objectively, the United States has positioned itself as the great and implacable impediment to global development.”

Freedom Rider: What Ails the GOP

Wed, 03/27/2013 - 08:52 — Margaret Kimberley

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The Republicans have stripped down their constituency to only “the worst of the worst” Americans: “white supremacists, misogynists and other dead enders.” Obama’s Democrats have absorbed the rest of the GOP, to become the New Republican Party of austerity and war.

The White House Un-Reality Show

Wed, 01/23/2013 - 15:25 — Glen Ford

 

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Despite the fact that “it was Barack Obama who began the current austerity offensive in the weeks before delivering his first inaugural address,” the president was allowed to pose as a champion of the social safety net. Having redefined war, he once again claims to be a peacemaker. “By cheering the inaugural speech, progressives are only encouraging Obama’s gaming and mendacity.”

The Descent: From Dr. King to Barack Obama

Tue, 01/22/2013 - 15:31 — Ajamu Baraka

 

by Ajamu Baraka

Two Nobel prizes, two different eras, awarded to Black men of near-polar opposite politics. The clash between the historically progressive African American worldview and allegiance to the corporate militarist in the White House puts great strains on the Black polity. “As African Americans, we are experiencing our most profound existential crisis since our collective experience of being enslaved.”

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of January 21, 2013

Tue, 01/22/2013 - 11:31 — Glen Ford

 

Black and Brown Schools Already Over-Policed

“When we look at whose schools are policed and which students have to go through metal detectors, get pad-downs, get drug-searched on a routine basis, it’s our students of color and our communities of color across this country,” said Matthew Cregor, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Newtown, Connecticut, massacre has led to renewed calls for an increased police presence in schools. However, what inner city students need are more social workers, psychologists and counselors, and teaching resources, said Cregor.

Savage School Inequalities Intensify

“Our schools are more segregated and less equal than they were in 1968, when Dr. King was taken from us,” said Jonathan Kozol, the educator, activist and author. “This kind of inequality is a theological abomination, a crime against the least of us,” said Kozol, author of the 1991 classic Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. He was interviewed on public radio’s Smiley & West show.

Obama “Co-Conspirator” in Austerity Schemes

“Austerity is, essentially, shifting of the burden of the economic depression from those who created it onto the working class and the poor,” said activist Eric Draitser, who has been organizing anti-austerity forums. “This is a concerted attack by financiers and the ruling class against the legacy of the New Deal.” President Obama is “a co-conspirator and collaborator with these austerity schemes.” Draitser is publisher of the web site StopImperialism.com.

MLK vs. Obama

Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have nothing in common, politically, according to Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “The only connection they would have in the real world be that Dr. King would be leading the demonstrations against the Obama regime, if he were alive,” said Yeshitela. Obama has “extended the war machine beyond anything in recent memory.”

Lynn Stewart’s Cancer Spreads

Human rights lawyer Lynn Stewart, serving ten years in a Fort Worth, Texas, prison for her zealous defense of an accused terrorist client, has suffered a relapse of cancer. “It has spread to her other lung and to parts of her back,” said Stewart’s husband, Ralph Poynter, speaking on the radio program Taking Aim. Prison regulations prevent Stewart from obtaining the care she needs. “We feel that it is a death sentence,” said Poynter.

Happy Birthday to Ramsey Clark and Dr. King, from Mumia

If MLK were alive, he would be 84 years old, a year younger than former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, whose birthday was recently celebrated at New York City’s historic Riverside Church, along with the 20th anniversary of the International Action Center. Dr. King “would be with the people, with the IAC, with Ramsey Clark, at Riverside,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal in a message recorded for the event.

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Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – week of January 14, 2013

Tue, 01/15/2013 - 12:41 — Glen Ford

 

What Would Dr. King Do?

Were he alive today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would “highlight Wall Street criminality,” “war crimes coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department” and “the social crimes of the New Jim Crow, the criminal justice system, which is itself criminal,” said Dr. Cornel West, of the Union Theological Seminary, in New York. “Martin would be very, very sad when he looked at the fraudulent character of Black leadership, the massive capitulation to the White House.”

The slain civil rights leader “would be in righteous opposition to the American regime of austerity and war, and to a president and his administration that is in the vanguard of it,” according to Dr. Anthony Monteiro, professor of African American Studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia. “King was, at the end of the day, a democratic revolutionary. He was calling for an uprising to the forces of injustice and war,” said Monteiro. In contrast, today’s “Black petit bourgeoisie are more interested in their own comfort than they are in social justice.”

Black Women’s Wage Gap

The wage gap between men and African American women is 70 cents on the dollar, according to a study of U.S. Census Bureau data by the National Partnership for Women and Families. Sarah Crawford, the group’s director of workplace fairness, said “nearly 40 percent of households headed by African American women are living in poverty, so this lost pay in particularly critical for those families. The difference in earnings amounts to more than $14,000 each year.”

Fictional Fiscal Crisis

“The conservatives, the Republicans, the business lobby, have been allowed to control the debate” over fiscal policy “because they’ve created the idea that we have this big deficit crisis,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “And it really is a fiction.” Such false assumptions are why “programs like Medicare and Social Security are on the chopping block.”

Pace of Police Killings of Blacks Increases

Kali Akuno, one of the authors of last year’s Malcolm X Grassroots Movement report on extrajudicial killings of Blacks, said “we are already noticing that, by our count, there’s been ten Black men who’ve been killed by police in 2013, and that’s faster than the pace of 2012.” Akuno spoke earlier this month on a National Forum on Police Brutality and Institutional Racism, on Your World News, hosted by Solomon Comissiong and Peter Fowler.

Obama’s War Mongers

“Virtually everybody on the top echelon of the Obama foreign policy team, they all backed the Iraq War,” points out Sam Husseini, communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, tapped for Secretary of Defense, fits the bill. John Brennan, the White House intelligence advisor who got the president’s nod to head the CIA, meets every week with Obama “to decide who they are going to kill,” said Husseini. “He at one point claimed that there were no civilian deaths from the drone program, though we know there are civilian deaths.”

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Your Brain on Obama: Waiting for the Man

Tue, 11/06/2012 - 01:04 — Randy Shields

 

by Randy Shields

The “Obama Phenomenon” is a world-class consciousness-destroyer, guaranteed to burn a hole in your soul. Millions of once-progressive minds have fallen victim to the scourge. “Obama users have turned on friends and colleagues who kept their principles regardless of which capitalist flunky commits the crimes.”

Nothing More Evil

Tue, 10/02/2012 - 15:23 — David Swanson

 

by David Swanson

War is the worst thing that humans do, from which the evils of genocide and crimes against humanity flow. Yet, in our political culture, people convince themselves that supporting supposedly “lesser evils” is a glorious enterprise. In truth, “a Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.”

Debating Dr. Dyson: Facts vs. The “Wall of Words”

Wed, 09/12/2012 - 15:22 — Glen Ford

 

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Obama is the “most progressive president since FDR.” So says Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. The president has also solved the problem of predatory lending. If there were any facts behind these assertions, the United States would rate a lot higher on the Global Well-Being Scale. Unfortunately, the First Black President’s ability to push forward the Right’s agenda makes him the “more effective evil,” says Glen Ford.

Honor Dr. King (and Real Black History): Oppose Obama’s Wars

Wed, 04/04/2012 - 00:29 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The Dr. Martin Luther King who was assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968, broke with a Democratic president over the “giant triplets” of militarism, extreme materialism, and racism. Obamite revisionists must, in effect, gag the actual Dr. King to make him compatible with the current resident of the White House. They portray all of Black history as preparation for Inauguration Day, 2009. The true voice of MLK, the anti-warrior, is silenced for Obama's sake.

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Freedom Rider: Obama’s Mission Accomplished Moment

Tue, 11/15/2011 - 23:46 — Margaret Kimberley

 

by editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Obama is once again out-Bushing Bush on the war-worshipping front. With the president’s blessing, NCAA basketball games will now take place on the decks of warships – the Carrier Classic. There is a message in this muscular madness: “America is powerful, can kill anyone at will, glories in those facts and browbeats everyone into celebrating this horror with a combination of coercion and the façade of making evil acts seem entertaining.”

Iran Apocalypse Soon

Thu, 05/27/2010 - 11:30 — Glen Ford

 

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The Obama administration’s behavior toward Iran is eerily reminiscent of George Bush’s mobilization for war against Iraq in the half-year before the actual invasion. A recently leaked Pentagon directive and a host of other factors are “consistent with preparations for a general mobilization, as begun against Iraq by the Bush regime in the summer of 2002.”

 

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