8 December, 2010 — Black Agenda Report
Obama: The Republican’s Reliable Interlocutor
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
It was an ugly performance by “an unrepentant, unreconstructed, center-right, corporate operative,” as President Obama defended his “latest grand accommodation with the GOP.” But it is incorrect to say that Obama “caves” to Republicans. His m.o. is far more aggressive – against fellow Democrats, whom he has relentlessly pummeled since his first days in office. With Obama in the White House, who needs Republicans?
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists welcomed the Civil War, and John Brown gave his life attempting to kindle the armed conflict as the only route to freedom for the slave. Rather than denounce the very idea of celebrating the 150th anniversary of arguably the only “good” war the United States ever fought, African Americans should be planning their own festivities. “It was not just Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union that defeated the South, but the determination of black Americans to bring about their own liberation.”
President Obama’s FCC Sells Out on Network Neutrality – Another Constituency Thrown Under The Bus
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon
After campaigning as a champion of network neutrality, President Obama has decisively broken yet another promise. The FCC votes December 21 on rules proposed by the president’s FCC chairman which will begin the transformation of the free and open internet into somethning much more like cable TV, with corporate control over content, and hundreds or thousands of “channels”, but not much worth watching.
For Colored Antagonisms: Tyler Perry and the Propaganda of Film
by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
Much of mass popular culture in the United States is genocidal in intent. Worse, the manufacturers of racist films and other media products have enlisted the perverted talents of greedy and shameless Black operatives such as Tyler Perry. “This is all done to preempt any attempts at raising popular criticism of structural inequality or from ever popularly asserting the humanity of Black people at all.”
The Racist Maligning of North Korea and Asians in General
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
The U.S. and its South Korean minion, over which Washington exercises deep and overlapping layers of control, hold military exercises that are, in essence, rehearsals for invading North Korea. The Americans simultaneously send a carrier task force into waters claimed by the world’s number two economic power, China. Yet, U.S. media are full of wild and fanciful stories about North Korean “provocations,” “paranoia” and insanity, and the need for China to rein in its neighbor. Who are the real madmen, here?
by Julian Assange
In its short four years of existence, WiklLeaks has been responsible for exposing corporate and governmental mendacity and murder from West Africa to Great Britain to Iceland to Australia. Among its next releases are said to be a trove of documents from Bank of America exposing some of its fraudulent schemes. For this, WikiLeaks has been targeted by governments and the powerful around the world. Here’s what you won’t see in most other places – a word from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange himself.
At the end of this article you can find the current internet addresses of WiliLeaks, which are accessible despite the efforts of the US State Department, the Pentagon and other tools of Wall Street.
Julian Assange And A Broken Condom ‘Rape’ In Sweden: A Timeline
from Anorak
A day-by-day account of Mr. Assange’s meetings, travels and sexual hook-ups leading up to his arrest on rape charges in Britain.
Read more
Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey
Grand Juries as Political Weapons, Police Agents Provocateurs, and Privatized Wars
The grand jury process in the U.S. is “an incredibly repressive instrument, says Joe Iosbaker, one of 14 anti-war activist subpoenaed to appear before grand juries probing alleged “material support” to foreign “terrorists.” Iosbaker is a spokesperson for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. He says “the grand jury is an undemocratic tool of repression” that has been used in the past to repress “the Puerto Rican liberation movement, the anti-war movement and Black liberation movement of the 1960s” and in “every decade since the founding of the Republic.”
The case of the 19-year-old Somali-American charged with planning to bomb a public gathering in Oregon is yet another example of police manufacture of “crimes that might never have existed, even as thoughts, without the instigation of police provocateurs,” says Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon.
War is a Lie author David Swanson says U.S. wars and occupations have become largely privatized affairs, which has increased profits, dramatically. “That’s become a huge motivation for corporate dollars [flowing] into political campaigns…to keep the wars going.”
Hands Off Social Security
Social Security doesn’t belong in any deficit reduction package, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Taking Economics Seriously. Baker says the deficit is a “response” to the housing bubble-induced collapse of the economy, “not a cause.”
“The whole hysteria around the deficit and the debt is misplaced,” says Jonathan Tasini. The real crisis facing the nation is “how do we stop the robbery of Americans and giving the top one percent all of our wealth?” Tasini is author of It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis.
The New Dark Age 