The New Dark Age

26 January, 2011 — Black Agenda Report

News, Analysis and Commentary from the Black Left

The Obama/GOP Consensus

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
As far as President Obama is concerned, the state of the Union is now in harmony, with the merging of Republican politics and his own. The new consensus is an austere one for most Americans, as Obama joins the GOP “to prevent the domestic arms of government from coming to the people’s aid, by freezing finances” for five years. But have no fear: corporate tax rates will plummet, allowing the long-awaited trickle down to begin.
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Freedom Rider: Middle Class Means Working Class

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Economic disparities are more dramatic in the United States than any other developed country, yet most Americans have no idea what economic class they belong to. Class war rages, but the losers don’t realize they are under assault, or by whom. “Workers in the private sector who are themselves vulnerable, applaud the effort to race to the bottom, instead of fighting against it.”
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Samuel Yette and The Choice: Black Survival in the United States

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
Sam Yette chose to speak and write as a Black man and a professional, thus making himself no longer employable at Newsweek magazine during the Black Freedom Movement. In his book, Yette concluded that “black Americans are obsolete people.” It is up to Black people to refuse to accept America’s verdict – and dare to make our own verdict on America.
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Why Black MisLeadership Won’t Sign the Anti-War Petition

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“We vow not to support President Barack Obama for renomination for another term in office, and to actively seek to impede his war policies unless and until he reverses them,” says a petition signed by hundreds of social activists, only a handful of them Black. The baton of progressive political and moral leadership may be passing from Black America, dominated by a venal misleadership class that refuses to actively oppose President Obama’s wars.
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Will the Last Mercenary Turn Out the Lights On U.S. Empire

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
The United States’ use of mercenaries is unprecedented in scope for a major power in modern times, and further weakens a decaying empire. Unable to defeat the resistance in two of the poorest nations on the planet, America increasingly depends on high-paid killers-for-profit to man the battlements. In Iraq, where the U.S. is reluctantly making an exit, “President Obama plans to substitute outgoing U.S. troops with mercenaries.” The same may happen, soon, in Afghanistan.
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What Role Did U.S. Play In Baby Doc’s Return to Haiti?

by Rep. Maxine Waters
The return of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, in combination with the fiasco of a presidential election, has created a perfect storm of fear and anger in Haiti. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who witnessed many of the events surrounding the U.S. overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, wants to know if the U.S. was involved in Duvalier’s arrival, and if some officials of the Organization of American States are plotting to force President Rene Preval out of the country. “The OAS and other international agencies have no right to dictate the outcome of the election and no right to plot the exile of the current President of Haiti.”
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Throwaway Children

by Sikivu Hutchinson
A gun goes off in a Los Angeles public school, and children are wounded. Mass gun violence by students is an overwhelmingly white affair in the U.S., but “any time violence erupts in a black or Latino context it’s a racial indictment, an indictment of a community, not a nation.”
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Black Unemployment in the Multiracial Small Business Industry

by Tamara K. Nopper
Do small, immigrant businesses get a “pass” when it comes to racial discrimination in employment? “There is a good deal of literature examining how employers prefer non-Black people of color over Black workers and use this diversity to conceal and defend their anti-Black racism.” However, most academic studies “do not discuss hiring discrimination among immigrant (of color) entrepreneurs.”
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Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey

Obama Made His Career “Collaborating with the GOP”
“I think he liked the 2010 election outcomes, that brought the Right back to power in the House,” says Paul Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. “I think that’s his comfort zone. This is his career, collaborating with the GOP,” says Street, who worked for years as a researcher for the Chicago Urban League. Although “deluded liberals and progressives” continue to insist that Obama shares their values, “they just don’t get it. This guy is just very conservative.”
White House Retaliates Against Whistleblowers
The Obama administration is taking retaliation against whistleblowers “to a new level,” says Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, herself a renowned whistleblower and author of the book, No Fear. “The president has suggested that psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists should be deployed throughout the federal government to ferret out whistleblowers,” says Coleman-Adebayo. “They want to see if there is even a potential that you might blow the whistle on injustice or corruption.”
“Baby Doc” Has Friends in High Places in Haiti
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the dictator who returned to Haiti 25 years after being run out of the country, still has “cadres in power of some sort in the [Rene] Preval administration, and in business and many other venues in society,” says Haitian journalist and community activist Roger LeDuc. In addition, France, the United States “and, to some extent, Rene Preval,” are anxious to divert attention from the recent disastrous elections. Duvalier has been charged with corruption and embezzlement, and prosecutors say they are investigating possible crimes against humanity.
Progressive Candidate Claims Detroit Teachers Victory
Steve Conn, candidate for president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers on the Defend Public Education/Save Our Students ticket, says he is the rightful winner in the race, and that incumbent Keith Johnson rigged the vote count. Conn charges Johnson and national union president Randi Weingarten with “running the union as a tool of [education secretary] Arnie Duncan and the anti-public education privatizers.” A Day of Action is schedule for March 2, in Detroit.
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