Skip to content
Image of the Day:
However, the real “America” is the America of Baltimore where six cops escape accountability for severing the spinal cord of Freddie Gray. It is the America where the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), under its first black president and two black Attorney Generals, only finds cause to indict one police officer in response to the epidemic of police killings from across the country. And it is the America where the DOJ will unleash its full power against five young, poor, African Americans whose crime was that they did not resist in the approved manner in the aftermath of the killing of Freddie Gray. And while the activist community was mobilized to condemn the outrageous charges brought against Jasmine Abdullah, the Black Lives Matter organizer in Pasadena, California, most people were unaware that Obama’s DOJ had “federalized” the prosecution of protestors in Baltimore by voluntarily intervening in the city to investigate and prosecute the resisters. Most don’t know because these young men were abandoned once they were classified as criminals by the state. — Baltimore: Impunity for the Police and Prison for the Resisters
Throughout Black people’s history in the U.S., these two political tendencies have maintained an uneasy coexistence, even simultaneously inhabiting the same individual Black brain. However, with the fall of legal U.S. apartheid in the mid-Sixties and the crushing of Black self-determinationist forces by the U.S. State a few years later, a Black Misleadership Class emerged that was concerned solely with its own narrow interests — with putting their own selfish faces into high places. This grasping and venal political class collaborated with the U.S. State to impose a mass Black incarceration regime — what Michelle Alexander calls the New Jim Crow — and ushered in a two-generation-long era of Black social disintegration, economic retrogression and political confusion. Today, however, the Black imperative to self-determination is in ascendance. Especially in the last several years, Black people have rediscovered and revived the Black Radical Tradition, with self-determination at the core. The emerging movement that goes under the heading of Black Lives Matter is largely animated by the drive for Black self-determination, albeit commingled with notions of representationalism. Both tendencies find expression in the Movement for Black Lives newly released demands. — Coalition Declares Black Self-Determination Back on the Agenda
In his Jan. 4, 1989, speech Castro stated: . . .There are some capitalist countries that question democracy in Cuba. There can be no democracy better than a democracy where the workers, the peasants, the students hold the arms. [applause] To all the Western countries that question democracy in Cuba, I say: Go ahead and give the arms to the workers, to the peasants, to the students, and let us see if you can start hurling tear gas canisters to put down a strike, or at any organization that struggles for peace [applause], or at students. We would see if these countries could send out the police, covered with shields and all that equipment that makes them look like astronauts. We would see if these countries could attack the masses with dogs every time there is a strike or a peaceful demonstration or a people’s struggle. I think the litmus test for democracy is to arm the people. [applause] When defense becomes the task of the people and arms become the prerogative of all the people, then there is democracy. Meanwhile, there are specialized police teams and armies to put down the people when the people show discontent over the abuses and injustice of a bourgeois system. It is the same in a Third World country as in a developed capitalist country.
Video of the Day:
U.S.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Freedom Rider: Trump, Russia and Democratic Liesby BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret KimberleyThe real story was that the Democrats rigged the primary elections. The manufactured story that has dominated corporate media is that Russia may hack the U.S. elections and Donald Trump is a “fascist” guilty of “treason” for failing to demonize Vladimir Putin. But the Republican nominee fails the fascist test, since the hard corporate Right is with Hillary and “Trump has no filter or political acumen and has run afoul of the Republican rulers.”
Baltimore: Impunity for the Police and Prison for the Resisters by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu BarakaPresident Obama’s justice department intervened to bring the full weight of federal law down on those that resisted killer cops in the streets. “The real ‘America’ is the America of Baltimore where six cops escape accountability for severing the spinal cord of Freddie Gray.” The fake America resides in the “liberal notion that the current state can actually render “justice” to a captive, surplus population.”
Coalition Declares Black Self-Determination Back on the Agenda A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by executive editor Glen FordAfter two generations of “Black social disintegration, economic retrogression and political confusion” ushered in through the collaboration of the Black Misleadership Class, “Black people have rediscovered and revived the Black Radical Tradition, with self-determination at the core.” The Black is Back Coalition is promulgating a groundbreaking 19-point Black political agenda entirely “formulated through the prism of Black self-determination.”
The Obama Legacy Part V: Waging War on Civil Liberties by Danny HaiphongLiberals and leftists supported candidate Barack Obama largely because they thought he would be good for civil liberties. Instead, Obama introduced “indefinite military detention without trial or cause,” increased wiretaps 34 percent in his first two years, imprisoned more whistleblowers than all his predecessors combined. The First Black President spends Tuesday evenings on his Kill List.
Stop Trump Fundamentalists Can Bite Me by Ann GarrisonThe duopoly electoral system causes shrinkage of the American mind, compelling otherwise intelligent people to conclude that critics of corporate Democrats must be supporters of Donald Trump. The author, who will vote Green, has a rhetorical question for the afflicted. “You trust Hillary, she of the 30,000 deleted e-mails, the $250,000 Goldman Sachs speeches, and the poverty pimping and corruption empire otherwise known as the Clinton Foundation?”
Rev. Pinkney’s Appeal Denied by David SoleA Michigan court ruled that Rev. Edward Pinkney’s political activism was enough motive to send him to prison for 2 ½ to 10 years charges. By such warped judicial reasoning, courts “can condemn every political activist in the country to be guilty of any political crime just for being an activist. In Rev. Pinkney’s words: “We are living in a time when the court system and the prosecutor don’t need evidence to send a man to prison.”
The Financial Firm That Cornered the Market on Jails by Arun GuptaThe financial services industry is ruthlessly exploiting America’s vast captive market of jail and prison inmates with fee-heavy cards. Corporate vultures have seized market shares in every sector of the prison gulag. JP Morgan Chase “has a ‘lock’ on the Federal Bureau of Prisons population,” JPay dominates state correctional systems, and an outfit names Numi rips off inmates — especially immigrants — at county jails.
Breaking the Camouflage Wall of Silence: When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, the News Is Grim by Nick TurseThe U.S. Military Command in Africa, AFRICOM, claims it is a force against “terror” on the continent. Yet armed groups have proliferated at much the same pace as the U.S. military expansion in Africa. “Over these last years, the number of personnel, missions, dollars spent, and special ops training efforts as well as drone bases and other outposts on the continent have all multiplied.”
Haiti 101 Years After US Invasion, Still Resisting Domination by Justin PodurEurope and its settler colony, the United States, never forgave Haiti’s Blacks for liberating themselves in 1804. The U.S. got its revenge, occupying Haiti in 1915. Washington intervened again under presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, creating an ongoing crisis that “will no doubt provide pretexts for the next US
Labor:
Economy:
Is Deutsche Bank as Dangerous to Financial Stability as Citigroup Was in 2008? Deutsche Bank is starting to resemble the financial basket case that Citigroup became in 2008, leading to Citigroup’s partial ownership by the U.S. government for a time and the bank requiring the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. financial history. Citigroup’s teetering condition and its intercon-nectedness to other mega banks played a critical role in the Wall Street crash and collapse of the U.S. economy. By Pam and Russ Martens Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: