Black Agenda Report 9 August 2017

9 August 2017 — Black Agenda Report

Every US President Makes Unilateral Nuclear Threats. It’s an American Tradition.

Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Every US president since Harry Truman has menaced humanity with unilateral nuclear destruction. When Trump balls up his little fists and bleats about raining death and destruction he’s following in the footsteps of the last dozen presidents. He’s making America great again. And again.

The Indecency of the Black Misleadership Class

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
If Rep, Barbara Lee (D-CA) is among the best of the black political class we’re in deep trouble. Our cohort of black politicians are self-serving cowards, utterly unfit to lead anything, least of all 40 million African Americans.

Freedom Rider: UAW Loses Election at Mississippi Nissan Plant

by BAR Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley
There should and there will be a lot of searching analysis to determine how and why the UAW failed to win its union election at Nissan’s Canton Mississippi plant. Maybe they relied too much on rallying outside support, and not enough on slow and patient organizing on the shop floor. Maybe it was something else. In any case, the struggle will continue.

5.4 Million Dead Since 1998 in Congo Genocide: An Interview with Sylvester Mido

by BAR contributor Ann Garrison
In 1998 the US puppet armies of Rwanda and Uganda invaded neighboring Congo, followed by armed forces from five other African nations. Millions of Congolese perished, as their nation’s wealth plundered to enrich African warlords and sustain the industrial engines of Western Europe, the US and China. The killing goes on to this day.

Barbara Lee and Tulsi Gabbard Join the War Party
The Democrats’ two leading congressional dissidents have finally surrendered, now that the party has “taken the lead in the project of endless war.” U.S. imperialism demands unanimous support from its servants in Congress.

“Reparations is Dead” Authors Seek to Spark Public Discussion of New Legal Strategy

Dr. Jahi Issa , Reggie A. Mabry , Patrick Delices

The authors elaborate on their contention that activists have bungled the legal battle for reparations. They are willing to debate N’Cobra, December 12th Movement, Dr. Ron Daniels, Assemblyman Charles Barron, Dr.
Claude Anderson, Randall Robinson, Ta Nehisi Coates and others.

Black Agenda Radio, week of August 7, 2017
This week BA Radio talks to Dr. Gerald Horne about the latest predicaments caused by the US drive for world domination,
to UNAC’s Sara Flounders about the 1,000 overseas military bases maintained by the US, and to the Sentencing Project’s Marc Mauer on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who blames an alleged rise in crime on Trump’s predecessor President Obama.
Click the link for the whole show, or any of the next three links for those individual segments.

Anti-War Coalition: Shut Down U.S. Global Empire of Bases

“Any campaign which is really talking about U.S. wars and U.S. intervention has to address the role of the foreign military bases and aircraft carriers, which are huge floating military bases,” said Sara Flounders, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. UNAC has been joined by other peace organizations in demanding closure of the approximately 1,000 overseas U.S. bases. This “infrastructure of U.S. imperialism,” said Flounders, “exercises total control over the economies and social and political life of countries all over the world,” and “completely distorts life here in the United States.”

U.S. Aims to Claim Venezuelan Oil

U.S. efforts to topple the socialist government in Venezuela are largely driven by Washington’s quest to control the global energy market. “The energy question hovers above all others,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It is felt among rightwing Texas oil men that if the United States can get a stranglehold over Venezuelan oil, then Texas and the U.S. will be in position to dominate what remains of the oil industry” in the future, said Horne. “Washington feels it is on a roll” with the rise of rightwing governments in Brazil and Argentina, said Horne.

Sessions Blames Obama for Crime

Attorney General Jeff Sessions claims crime has gone up in some U.S. cities because the Obama administration was too lenient in sentencing offenders. But the facts don’t back him up, according to Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, in Washington. “It’s discouraging that, in the 21st century, we’re making policy decisions based on sound bites and gut instincts rather than evidence,” said Mauer. “There is no lack of evidence to show that mass incarceration has been counter-productive to public safety and devastating for low-income communities of color.”

Richard B. Moore: “Dogs and Slaves are Named by Their Masters; Free Men Name Themselves!”

by Norman Otis Richmond aka Jalal’
Not so very long ago, most Black Americans answered to the term “Negro.” But, not Richard B. Moore, a “race man” who was also a socialist and a member of the African Blood Brotherhood, the Black Panthers of the 1920s. Moore later “joined the Communist Party and stayed until he was expelled in 1942 for being an African-American Nationalist.”

“Nissan, You Made Us Mad”: Union Promises to Fight Mississippi Defeat

by Mike Elk
A coalition of community groups, students, clergy and environmentalists joined with labor to attempt to unionize the Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi. “Despite having only a narrow majority of Nissan workers signing cards, the union decided it was time to call an election.” But Nissan won this time with more than 60 percent of the vote.

The Latest Challenges to the South’s Felony Disenfranchisement Laws

by Olivia Paschal
Florida accounts for almost half of the 6.1 million Americans that cannot vote because of a felony conviction. Every state in the South disenfranchised felons after the Civil War, “for the specific purpose of disenfranchising as many emancipated slaves as possible.” Today’s laws have the same effect on their descendants.

Tillerson Threatens Regime Change in Venezuela
TeleSur
President Trump’s Secretary of State hhttps://blackagendareport.com/felony-disenfrachisement-in-the-southas made it explicitly clear that the U.S. wants regime change in Venezuela. The country is under “imperialist attack,” said President Nicolás Maduro, whose personal assets have been targeted. “I feel proud to be sanctioned, Mister Imperialist Donald Trump,” said Maduro.

Cuba Trains Medical Students From the US and Around the World Free

Cuba News Agency
Under Fidel Castro’s direction, Cuban became a “medical superpower,” setting new standards for global solidarity in the interests of human health. Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) has been training students from the United States to be doctors since 1999, and “has graduated more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, free of charge

An Anatomy of the Black South African “Middle Class”

by Henning Melber
The question of who is “middle class” is as perplexing in Black South Africa as it is in Black America. A study of residents of Soweto showed “two-thirds of the respondents classified themselves as middle class” — far more than called themselves “working class.” The term is largely aspirational, but to what do they aspire?