The New Dark Age

13 October, 2010 — Black Agenda Report News, analysis and commentary from the black left

The Unraveling of the Empire of Finance Capital
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The more the Wall Street financial class dominates political affairs in the United States, the sooner they will meet destruction. By giving the banksters everything they wanted, including free money, the Obama administration actually accelerated the processes of finance capital’s decline. That’s because, unfettered, capital behaves in ways that make its contradictions even more acute.

Freedom Rider: Foreclosure Fraud
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
It is senseless to expect Democrats to save the people from the worsening housing crisis, since Democrats are as culpable for the disaster as the Republicans. It was Democrats in the House and Senate that passed a bill to allow banks to bypass state law to repossess homes. President Obama only exercised a quiet “pocket veto” when it became clear that failure to spell disaster with elections only weeks away. “If predicted losses in congressional races become a reality, the Democrats bear as much blame as the Republicans.”

Uganda, America’s Pit Bull, Wants to Lead a Larger War in Somalia
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
America’s top hit man in Africa, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, is calling for a much larger air, sea and land war in Somalia – with Museveni’s forces on point. The saber-rattling follows on the heels of Uganda’s and Rwanda’s threats to withdraw from UN “peacekeeping” missions, such as in Somalia. What’s up?

Obama and the “Superman” School Predators
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Waiting for Superman” is pure propaganda for the hedge funders that seek to “create a private market in for-profit educational services that can be traded on the stock market and bet on derivatives.” Obama has deployed his presidential bully pulpit as a booster for this “bait-and-switch” scam of a film, and for the underlying privatizing project.

The Evangelists of Social Media
by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
Just because millions of people can interact at the speed of light, does not mean they are going anywhere. Indeed, by providing the illusion of common action, social media tend to suppress the kind of methodical organizing necessary to sustain a real “movement.” And, who owns the new media, anyway? The super-rich. Social media are “perfect for illusion-development and propaganda dissemination but horrible for the oppressed engaged in political struggle.”

American Terror
by Sikivu Hutchinson
It is not enough to preach mere “tolerance” of those who do not conform to gender norms. “Gay identities have moral value both as part of the range of sexual identity and in their difference from the compulsory heterosexual norm.” And, as is usual in a racist society, the damage to non-whites whose sexual identities challenge the norm is routinely ignored.

The Tea Party Does Not Exist
by Anthony Dimaggio and Paul Street
The white nationalist Boogie Man that has the NAACP and the Democrats on the run isn’t a bonafide social movement, at all, but a top-down creation of media and millionaires. The Tea Party is generally drawing much smaller crowds than the leftish U.S. Social Forum, but garners far more coverage from a corporate media that portrays the phenomenon as “rising up from the grassroots against establishment politics.” All indications are that the Tea Party is poorly organized and funded at the local level.

Nine Months After the Quake – A Million Haitians Slowly Dying
by Bill Quigley
After all the media fanfare about American “generosity” to Haiti – a nation tortured by the U.S. throughout its history – one million people have been left to rot with not a penny of aid from Washington. “Every park, every school yard, every parking lot appear to have people living under sheets or lean-to tents,” writes the author, from Port-au-Prince. But “only 13,000 temporary structures have been built and they are far away from family, school, jobs and healthcare. There is no place to go.”

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey
U.S and Britain to Blame for Congo Genocide
A recent United Nations report on Rwandan massacres of Hutus in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reopened discussions blocked by the United States and Britain more than a decade ago, said Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of Congo. “We need to hold everybody accountable,” said Carney. “We have rebels in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda are the point countries, but they’re backed up by the U.S. and Great Britain. We have to follow the chain all the way to Washington and all the way to London.”
Need for a “Movement” to Stem Corporatization of Education
Last week’s “Days of Action in Defense of Public Education” showed that “young people want to see a change, they feel angry, the feel shortchanged,” said Shanta Driver, national chair of BAMN, By Any Means Necessary. While demonstrators around the country protested the Obama administration’s corporate educational policies, the president “was holding meetings to give the private sector far more control over community colleges.”
Michelle Rhee Brought Down DC Mayor
Washington, DC school’s chief Michelle Rhee, the darling of school privatizers and the Obama administration, was “absolutely” an albatross around the neck of Mayor Adrian Fenty, who was defeated in a Democratic primary election, last month, said community activist and writer Leigh Dingerson. Rhee is best known for her “negativity and disrespect for teachers.”
Plus…
A cadre of young organizers fight gentrification and illegal evictions in Oakland, California. BAR speaks to Robbie Clark, of “Just Cause.”
And…
The legacy of Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion is made accessible to visitors to Southampton County, Virginia, where Khalif Khalifa is senior tour guide of the Nat Turner Trail.