The New Dark Age

by Netfa Freeman

Brexit is cause for celebration for the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The European Union is the historical heir to the Berlin Conference of 1884 that divided the world into Euro-North American spheres of dominance. Europe has inflicted immense suffering on the rest of the planet. “Believing Brexit could represent the beginning of the end for international cooperation, is to believe that the world does or should revolve around Europe.”

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

She’s implacable, unmovable and inevitable. She’s the Democratic candidate. Deal with it.

by Danny Haiphong

Barack Obama is busy packaging his “legacy” as the First Black President – which is a fact – and as a “progressive” – which is patently false. His supporters tout the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as his crowning achievement. However, “from its very roots, the ACA was destined to consolidate the corporate insurance and pharmaceutical industry’s control over US healthcare.”

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

News media outnumbered protesters after a Baltimore judge acquitted the cop charged with murdering Freddie Gray. The judge, the cop, the mayor, and the prosecutor are Black. “If Black people get positions of power in the system and use those positions to continue operations of the system and the oppression it brings down on Black people then those are people who need to be opposed,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.

by Pascal Robert

The BREXIT referendum showed how the rulers of powerful states can be brought low by the efforts of common people – in this case, the British electorate. However, people from the lowest stratum of global society once brought low the mightiest empires on Earth. “Former African slaves in Haiti did the seemingly impossible and defeated all three of the major European empires of that day to obtain their freedom.”

by Ann Garrison

The next commanding general of AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa, wants the authority to assassinate people designated as “terrorists,” without first getting permission of the U.S. president. The question of getting permission from Africans never came up in confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate. 

BREXIT Panics Ruling Classes

“This cannot be a happy time for those people who run stock markets, big banks, hedge funds and the political system” in the global capitalist economy, said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the noted Duboisian scholar and member of the Black Radical Organizing Committee (BROC). The rulers are “panicked” because Britain’s vote to exit the European Union marks “a rebellion among the British working classes against the ruling elite and against the austerity and globalization” that pits native born workers against immigrant workers.

U.S. Jets Defend al Qaida Jihadists in Syria

The U.S. scrambled  F-i8 fighters to confront Russian war planes that were bombing al Nusra, the al Qaida affiliate in Syria, earlier this month. The Americans “want to protect these forces that they have armed and trained,” the same forces that are “recognized as terrorists trying to destroy Syria,” said Sara Flounders, of UNAC, the United Anti-War Coalition. “There are now 13 countries involved in bombing Syria that have not been invited in by Syria” – all allies of the U.S. “It’s a completely aggressive action, and they’re using it to destroy the infrastructure of Syria,” said Flounders.

Dred Scott and Freddie Gray

“What the system is telling us is that Black people have no rights that their police are bound to respect,” said Carl Dix, co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, speaking outside the Baltimore courthouse where a judge acquitted a cop charged with the “depraved heart” murder of Freddie Gray. “This was a modern day lynching, and they just gave us a modern day Dred Scott Decision.” The prosecution has so far failed to win convictions against any of the police officers involved. “These prosecutors must be very good at putting Black people in prison,” said Dix, since 72 percent of Maryland prison inmates are Black. “But, when a cop murders a Black man, all of a sudden they forget how to prosecute.”

Mumia: Look “Beyond Bernie”

The nation’s best known political prisoner said Democrats opposed to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid should “look beyond Bernie” Sanders for inspiration. “For millions of people, the Bernie Sanders campaign has led to a political depression” because the two major parties are led by “the least popular candidates in memory,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, serving a life term in a Pennsylvania prison. However, youthful idealism doesn’t have to die. “Why not form a new political party, a new political movement,” Mumia asked? “Don’t mourn Bernie’s failure to win. Organize!”

Temporary Work Agencies Do Employers’ Racist Bidding

Chicago’s Workers Law Office has sued six temporary employment agencies and their clients for favoring Latino workers over Blacks. “There’s a financial benefit from having a population that does not know as much about their rights in the workplace and is not as willing to fight to enforce those rights,” said Atty. Alva Ayala. One agency provided 5,000 workers to a baking company, 98 percent of whom had Latino surnames.

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A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The so-called “sit in” on the floor of Congress is a cynical and hypocritical joke, leveraging the image of the Southern Freedom Movement and piggybacking on secret, arbitrary terror watch and no-fly lists imposed by the Bush-Cheney administration after 911. Where was the sit-in when Congress cut $5 billion from food stamps, the sit-in for a living wage, or against police murders and mass incarceration or the stolen California primary vote?
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