The New Dark Age

4 April 015 — Black Agenda Report

When the Jihadists Turn on Their Masters

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The filthy rich hereditary rulers of the Gulf wage war on secularists and Shia. But, the greatest danger to Saudi Arabian royalty is the Frankenstein they have nurtured for nearly four decades: Islamic jihadists. “The prospect of physical annihilation by Sunni jihadists hangs over the House of Saud and all its royal brethren.” The scourge they let loose on the world will destroy them.

Call GA Governor, Prison Officials, Demand End to Deliberate Malnourishment & the “Tier Step Down” Program

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

Several years after peaceful prison hunger strikes asking for decent medical care, educational programs, an end to the incarceration of juveniles with adults and other reasonable demands, Georgia prison authorities continue to viciously retaliate against past and future dissenting prisoners with what they call Tier Step Down, a program that apparenlty includes deliberate malnourishment of prisoners and other brutal and inhuman treatment.

Freedom Rider: American Hell for Yemen

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The U.S.-spawned whirlwind of carnage and destruction has wrecked the societies of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, yet most Americans feel themselves blameless. “The people, the corporate media and the political system all accept that their government has the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations and that it is always right and moral in its claims.” They behave like zombified cogs in an imperial death machine.

Black Is Back Coalition to Hold National Conference on Black Community Control of Police

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

There is no possibility for even a semblance of justice for Black people until they control the police in their communities. Not oversight, but control: the power to “discipline, direct, and hire and fire the police in their community.” It is a self-determinationist necessity. “If Black people fail to define for themselves the functions and obligations of policing in Black communities, then others will continue to do it for us.”

Physical Murder and Political Asphyxiation: The Story of Danielle Hicks-Best

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

An 11 year-old Black girl is raped twice by men and winds up jailed and institutionalized for years by a callous and predatory system. The abomination lays bare the thin line that many African-American children and families tread “between physical murder and spiritual death.” Washington DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier must be made to answer for the crime. Meanwhile, “behind the scenes in the courts and judicial system, the bodies are piling up.

Danny Schechter (1942-2015): Media Activist and Clandestine Courier

by Ronnie Kasrils

Danny Schecter, the “media dissector,” prolific writer and tireless activist, once acted as a secret courier for the South African freedom movement, and “forged strong personal links with many South African comrades such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Pallo Jordan, Zanele Mbeki, Sue Rabkin, and Nelson Mandela himself.”

Common’s Song for Black America: Extend a Hand of Love to White Supremacy

by Danny Haiphong

The rapper/actor Common’s “plea to Black America to get past white supremacy is actually a request for support for his endeavors from the Empire’s Black corporate club.” Race and class betrayal is a highly profitable enterprise in America. Common’s “Daily Showcomments place him in the same plane as those working to murder Assata Shakur and erase hip-hop’s radical roots.”

Feds Rediscover Police Brutality In City of Brotherly Love…er…Beat City

by Linn Washington, Jr.

The U.S. Justice Department’s latest report on police brutality in Philadelphia reveals much the same pattern of excessive use of lethal force as charged in a 1979 lawsuit and confirmed by a Human Rights Watch study in 1998. The city registered “an average of one citizen shot by police per week between 2007 and 2013” – five times the rate of their counterparts in New York City.

The Pan-African Cultural Revolution

by Benjamin Woods

“Our common oppression is not what makes us African, it is our movement for freedom that give us consciousness of our identity.” Black people’s political and cultural revolutions go hand in hand. It’s cultural component “is a class struggle in the realm of ideas and culture wherein our current leaders must transform or be replaced.”

Rahm Emanuel & Bruce Rauner On Jihad to Eliminate Unions in Chicago, says Former Union Organizer Jane McAlevey

by Doug Henwood at KPFA’s Behind The News

US living standards for ordinary people have deteriorated the last 40 years because Democrats and Republicans have systematically de-unionizeds the country, says former union organizer Jane McAlevey.  Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel are on a jihad to kill the last unions in Chicago, the better to impose more privatizations, cuts in child care, wages, education and more austerity.

Surviving Climate Disaster in Africa’s Sahel

by Thomas C. Mountain

The small, fiercely independent nation of Eritrea has mobilized its entire population to combat the effects of climate change. “When the rains failed in 2013, we had enough to eat while in much of the rest of the Sahel hundreds of thousands starved to death.” Reforestation and reservoir-building are key to surviving drought in new climate disorder.

Black Agenda Radio, Week of April 1, 2015

Bottom Line: Fire Some Cops

A U.S. Justice Department report shows Philadelphia police are five times as trigger happy as cops in New York City. The report contains 49 findings and 91 recommendations on better training and community relations, but Linn Washington Jr., a professor of journalism at Temple University, isn’t impressed. Over the past 25 years, the city’s police department has been the subject of “two dozen reports, federal consent decrees and executive orders,” said Washington. “The issue is not the ideas, the issue is implementation and enforcement. The bottom line is, you have to make police accountable. The police who engage in misconduct need to be fired.” But, that seldom happens in Philadelphia.

The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform

Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka held a third public hearing on his proposal to create a Civilian Complaint Review Board with subpoena powers. Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, which would be empowered to appoint one member to the board, has no illusions that the board will compel cops to respect Black people’s rights. “We fight for reforms in the hope that these reforms will ameliorate the suffering of the people,” said Hamm. “But, we also fight for reforms because we believe that people have to go through the reform process to deepen their understanding of the need for more fundamental, structural social change.”

Black Martyrs, Old and New

Cinque S. Djahspora, a 20 year-old online MIT student shot in the back by a policeman last November, is among the many victims of racist violence who will be honored on April 4, in Jackson, Tennessee. The town is near the site of Fort Pillow where, on April 12, 1864, hundreds of Black soldiers and civilians were massacred by Confederates under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who went on to become the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. “What we want folks to understand is that the killing of one person, based on his membership in a group, is genocide,” said Dr. Randy Short, one of the organizers of Black Martyrs’ Day, in Jackson.

“Black Lives Matter” Resonates in Johannesburg

South African labor and social activists marched on the American embassy in Johannesburg in solidarity with the U.S.-based Black Lives Matter mobilization. United Front organizer John Manana said South African Blacks are all too familiar with police brutality. “Our protesters everywhere in South Africa continue to suffer the same way from the capitalist regime.” Police killed 34 striking miners at Marikana in the summer of 2012, accelerating a split between leftists and the ruling African National Congress regime.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.