14 December 2016 — Black Agenda Report
Corporate Democrats Stir Up War Fever Against Russia to Turn Election
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The orchestrators of the anti-Russian war hysteria “have shown over the past several weeks that they are willing, and even eager, to bring down the whole edifice of U.S. social and political ‘checks and balances’ — freedom of speech and other civil liberties — to sustain the momentum of their neoliberal offensive in the world.” White Republicans stole the election, as usual, not Russians. Corporate Democrats want to steal the Bill of Rights.
Freedom Rider: Fighting for Southern Human Rights
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The South, where more than half of the Black U.S. population lives, has based its economic appeal on the stinginess of its social safety net, the relative poverty of its people, and the savagery of its criminal justice system. Capitalism truly turns morality upside down. Mississippi is considered good for business because its “retrograde history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation creates a compliant and largely non-unionized source of labor.”
Gabbard’s Law: To End War on Terror, Stop Arming Terrorists
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
If Tulsi Gabbard, Barbara Lee and a handful of other lawmakers have their way, Washington’s so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria would be cut off from American money and arms. The U.S. would also “be compelled to cut off aid to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.” The U.S. proxy war on Syria has always been illegal; Gabbard’s bill would make it doubly so.
A Lesson from Standing Rock
by Danny Haiphong
There have been very few people’s victories under the Obama administration. His corporate policies have prevailed mainly by default, due largely to the failure of progressives to confront the First Black President. “The anti-war movement has been buried in the Democratic Party graveyard throughout the duration of Obama’s tenure.” The Standing Rock Sioux, however, never waivered in their determination, and faced down Big Energy and the U.S. government.
Understanding the Grim economics of Incarcerated Labor
by our friends at ThisIsHell Radio
Prison labor activist Azzurra Crispino explains how a nation-wide prison work stoppage revealed mass incarceration’s large-scale exploitation of incarcerated labor, and the brutal lengths the state will go to protect its interests – and calls for the public to embrace love in the face of fear, and humanizing prisoners as a starting point on the road to prison abolition. Azzurra last spoke to This Is Hell! on day two of the nation-wide prison work stoppage
The Election of Donald Trump and the Implosion of Liberalism
by Samir Amin
Trump’s victory signals the inevitable implosion of the liberal order. This will pave the way for construction of the alternative, which comprises: at the national level, the abandonment of liberal economic management for the benefit of sovereign projects, giving rise to social progress; and at the international level, the construction of a system of polycentric globalization.
Trump’s Education Pick Will Continue Chartered Destruction of Detroit Schools
by Shea Howell
A fabulously rich white woman who has never been a public school parent or student — and who seems to despise public education – has been tapped for secretary of education. Betsy DeVos is largely to blame for the fact that 80 percent of Michigan charter schools are for-profit. She comes from a world that is implacably hostile to Black and poor communities. “Their reality sees our children as sources of profit and our educated adults as threats.”
Red Alert
by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Now that Democrats are practically out of office, corporate donors are sponsoring empty spectacles of their own design, including another Climate March.
Can the Black Panthers Offer Jamaicans Lessons on Checking Police Violence?
by Ajamu Nangwaya
The Caribbean is the source of many voices of liberation — Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Kwame Toure, Bob Marley — but Jamaica, in particular, might do well to study the experience of the Black Panther Party, which began as an armed cop-watch program. Tivoli Gardens, where police killed 70 people in 2010, would also “be in full agreement with Franz Fanon’s articulation of the role of the police.”
Fidel’s Legacy to the World on Theory and Practice
by Arnold August
People who know nothing about history or politics try to frame Fidel Castro as a stereotypical doctrinaire communist. The opposite is true: Castro has been described as “the anti-dogmatist par excellence.” He had an extraordinary ability to link theory and practice “like no other revolutionary of the 20th and early 21st centuries.” Castro seized “the moment based on the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of Cuban people at any given time.”
The Oil Siege Is Over, “The Cartel” Looks East
by Caleb T. Maupin
The western-backed collapse of oil prices has abated, and most of the targeted governments are still standing, partly because China has not cooperated with the siege. “The intention with the drop (siege) was to put Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Ecuador, and Bolivia out of business.” The lesson is clear: “Despite the US victory in the Cold War, the monopolists do not have the unipolar world they desire.”
Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 12, 2016
Baraka: Fear of Trump Defeated the Green Party
Dixon Defends Stein Vote Recount
The Democratic Party Can’t Be Fixed
No to Trump and Clinton – Yes to Black Self-Determination
The New Dark Age 
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