26 April 2017 — Black Agenda Report
Obama’s New Job: Guardian of Official Lies
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Having spent eight years telling lies about who the U.S. was fighting in its so-called “War on Terror” (secular governments) and who it was allied with (jihadists), ex-president Obama must now ensure that these lies become part of the “common base line of facts” shared by all Americans. “Fake news” must not be allowed to interrupt the flow of the official (false) narrative. That’s how “legacies” are made, and how power is preserved.
An Answer To Cornel West – A “Peoples Party” Won’t be Imposed From Above
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon
In a Democracy Now interview Dr. Cornel West said he was part of a new “Peoples Party” the invention of former Bernie staffers who want to recruit their old boss and maybe some other Democrats to leave the capitalist duopoly. In the first place Bernie is a war Democrat content to stay where he is. In the second place, stealing the politicians of the corrupt Democratic party is no shortcut to organizing the people.
Freedom Rider: Do Americans Have No Shame?
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Putting aside the lack of any proof of Russian interference in U.S. elections, Americans have some nerve complaining about outside meddling when they have violated the sovereign rights of much of the planet. Americans owe the world heartfelt acts of contrition. “There ought to be a march of apology from Americans to people in Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and yes in Russia too.”
The U.S., Not Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The U.S. Secretary of Defense claims Russia is giving weapons to the Taliban, in Afghanistan. “Mad Dog” Mattis must also have mad cow disease of the brain. “If there is one major power in the world that has consistently fought against Islamic jihadists, in Afghanistan and everywhere else, it is Russia.”
Purity Over Principle: The Left’s State of Purgatory
by Danny Haiphong
It is difficult to speak of a “left” in the U.S., given the inability of people who call themselves leftists “to lend critical support to oppressed nations under siege” – the sacred duty of any genuine Left. Instead, pseudo-leftists join in dehumanizing the victims of U.S. aggression. “The lack of spontaneous anger surrounding US warfare is a product of the nation’s imperialist and white supremacist foundations.”
The Democrats Delivered One Thing in the Past 100 Days: Disappointment
by Cornel West
The nation’s best known Black public intellectual says it’s past time to dump the Democrats and build a real opposition to Trump. A new party is needed. “If a class-conscious multi-racial party attuned to anti-sexist, anti-homophobic and anti-militaristic issues and grounded in ecological commitments can reconfigure our citizenship,” says Dr. Cornel West, “maybe our decaying democracy has a chance.”
The Massacre of Hutu Refugees in Rwanda: An Interview with Rene Mugenzi
by Ann Garrison
Thanks to lies told by U.S. presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, much of the world believes only Tutsis died in the Rwandan genocide. No one has been prosecuted for “the systematic massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus between November 1994 and May 1995.” Instead, the West lavishes praise, weapons and money on the mass executioner, Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Big Lie Goliath
by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
On the presence, and likely not the passing of Bill O’Reilly….
Major Challenges of New Orleans Charter Schools Exposed at NAACP Hearing
by Bill Quigley
Former Obama education chief Arne Duncan declared that Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans schools, which switched to a nearly all-charter system. But, Black students, parents and teachers told an entirely different story to an NAACP hearing. Charterization has “created a set of schools that are highly stratified by race, class and educational advantage.”
A New Agenda in Jackson, Mississippi
by Sarah Jaffe
Chokwe Antar Lumumba wants to finish the work his father began as mayor of Mississippi’s capital city. “No longer should we just buy someone’s agenda, listen to how they are going to do all these great things for us, only to find ourselves disappointed in the end result,” says Lumumba, a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Lumumba and Cooperation Jackson believe that community-based initiatives “will change the order of the world.”
Africa’s War Lord Queen; The Bloodstained Career of Liberia’s Eleanor Sirleaf Johnson
by Thomas C. Mountain
If all you know about Liberian President Eleanor Sirleaf Johnson is what you read in the U.S. corporate media, you probably think she is a Nobel Prize-winning reformer. In fact, Sirleaf is a U.S. imperial puppet whose hands are steeped in blood, the “right hand woman“ of deposed warlord Charles Taylor, and a servant of multinational banks.
From Colonialism to Trumpism: Remembering Aimé Césaire
by Abraham Ramirez
Americans and Europeans speak of the drift towards fascism, as if the empires they have built on the tombs of the non-white peoples were not the incubators of Hitlers — and incarcerationist Clintons, bombing Obamas and Trumps. “They tolerated Nazism before it was inflicted on them, they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.”
I Feel Blessed to Have Encountered Darcus Howe
by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali
Darcus Howe, the Trinidad-born nephew of C.L.R. James, touched many lives. A member of the British Black Panthers and an organizer of street protests in London, Howe became a noted broadcaster and writer. The author first met Howe in New York in that crucial year, 1968.
Imperialism or Humanity? Black America Must Choose
Ever since the demise of mass movement politics, “the Black Misleadership Class has had a free hand to take the most backward positions on the State and violence and war,” said Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party’s 2016 vice presidential candidate and a founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network. Baraka is spearheading a campaign to revive the anti-war movement in Black America. “It’s important that people decide which side they are going to be on: on the side of the imperial powers — the congealed expression of institutional white supremacy in the form of the U.S. state — or are they going to stand with the rest of humanity?” Baraka is also an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report.
UNAC Expecting Record Black Presence at Richmond Conference
The United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) is expecting the largest Black presence in its history at its national conference in Richmond, Virginia, June 16-18. “Not since the first conference, in Albany in 2010, has there been a purposeful decision to ensure that Black voices play a strong role on the issues of peace and anti-imperialism,” said Ana Edwards, of Virginia Defenders, a founding member of UNAC. Peace voices have been “stifled” in both Left and Black politics “since the election of Barack Obama,” said Edwards. “It really hasn’t been until Trump’s election that people have found a way to begin to galvanize their thinking.”
Cynthia McKinney: Hillary Supporters are NOT the Left
“I’m almost speechless at what the Democratic Party has become,” said Cynthia McKinney, the former six-term Congresswoman from Georgia, who is currently teaching political science overseas. “Whoever would have thought that the Democratic Party would be the most rabidly pro-war, pro-bank, pro-military-industrial complex?” The political spectrum has done “a 180 degree flip,” said McKinney, the Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate. “The Left is defined as people who supported Clinton. I say that those who support the war machine are not the Left.”
The New Dark Age 