| Black Agenda Report

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US Blocks Vote on UN’s Bid for Global Ceasefire Amid COVID-19
13 May 2020
The US veto trashes the UN’s efforts to convince armed factions in more than a dozen countries to call for temporary truces as the world battles the pandemic. “The U.S. is playing the ‘blame game.’" International diplomats were stunned and frustrated Friday after the United States again…
Quetzal Cáceres
The Sheepdog Caucus and So-Called “Democratic” Socialists
13 May 2020
The “democratic” socialist worldview supports socialism except in places where people are actually trying to build it. “The notion of ‘democratic’ socialism as espoused in the US generally functions as a veiled accessory to the ideology of American Exceptionalism.”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Archaic capitalism’s COVID cops?
13 May 2020
What if COVID-19 came and drove down crime by 40%? What if capitalism’s cops be- came useless patchwork quilts of punitive policing—cruel citations and fines? Stagecoach drivers in Tesla times? Milk pails beneath bulls on the Sahara Desert? What if we found we could live …
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Things Don’t Get No Better
13 May 2020
The current season of sickness – biological and political – is, indeed, strange, with no hint of a better day any time soon. “Paul Newman thought it was the most important film he ever made.” “Y’know things get funnier every day you live. They don’t get no better. Dig? But they sure as hell get…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Trump wins! Completing Obama’s Pivot to Asia and the Confrontation with China
13 May 2020
The Trump administration is determined to “put China in its place,” a white supremacist mindset that will inevitably lead to monumental errors of judgement. “U.S. policymakers are openly advocating war with China.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Joe Biden, Kim Jong-Un, and the Dialectics of White Supremacy
13 May 2020
White supremacy shapes every aspect of imperialism and must be understood from a dialectical perspective if socialism is to ever become a possibility in the United States. “White supremacy protects Joe Biden like a prison guard protects the warden.”
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: New Attacks on Venezuela
13 May 2020
The Democratic Party’s “left” wing is mute on the latest US aggression against the people and government of Venezuela, thus giving assent to Trump by their silence. “Neither the Congressional Black Caucus nor the Congressional Progressive Caucus have spoken out against the latest intervention.”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Leftists Jump the Corporate Democratic Ship, Leaving Sanders Behind
14 May 2020
History may record that the corporate duopoly dike was finally broken in the Time of Plague, with the defection of Bernie’s former sheep from the Democratic Party. “Meaningful victories require the shattering of the duopoly, a process that has now begun.”
K.J. Noh and Claudia Chaufan
Why is Sam Husseini Channeling Neocon Conspiracy Theories on Covid-19?
20 May 2020
The authors charge a progressive journalist with acting as a “shill” for neocon propaganda and disinformation on China. (Husseini’s article is also published, below.) “Husseini is mistaken--or deeply dishonest--in suggesting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing biowarfare …
Michelle Chen
Prisons Are Using the Pandemic to Impose Lockdowns
20 May 2020
More than 300,000 people in prisons or jails are under “full or partial lockdown” in response to the pandemic. “Rights groups say these supposed public health measures are both ineffective and inhumane.” When New Jersey issued its stay at home order in response to the…