19 May 2021 — Black Agenda Report

Freedom Rider: The Palestine Litmus Test 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
President Joe Biden continues to proclaim endless support of apartheid Israel, but millions have decided that defense of Palestinian rights and lives is the only civilized response to barbaric aggression.

Poem: June Jordan, Moving towards Home,

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Seventy-three years after the Nakba began, the Zionists continue their land and rights thievery, to which June Jordan, the Black American poet, bore powerful witness.

The Hoops and the Hype: Basketball Africa League Debuts 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
The decision to debut the Basketball Africa League in Rwanda is a huge public relations coup for totalitarian, war criminal, and US military partner Paul Kagame.

Herd impunity? 

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
What if a colonial settler state accidentally vaccinated 61% of its population With a virulent variant of a vicious virus?

BAP US Out of Africa Network Statement On the Latest Zionist Genocidal Assault in Palestinian 

US Out of Africa Network
The ongoing Nakba is only possible because of the Pan-European white supremacist and imperial support for the crimes of the Zionist entity.

Caribbean Organizations Call on CARICOM, the US, Britian and EU to Take Urgent Action 

Caribbean Pan-African Network
The Zionists are continuing a campaign of dispossession, terror and murder of Palestinians that began in 1948.

Digital apartheid: Palestinians Being Silenced On Social Media 

Omar Zahzah
Social media companies, from Zoom to Facebook and Twitter, are reinforcing Israel’s erasure of Palestinians.

Afro-Pessimism and the (Un)Logic of Anti-Blackness 

Annie Olaloku-Teriba
Entrenched in anti-racist theory and practice today is the belief that all racial and ethnic domination is structured around a global hierarchy, with “white” people at the top and “black” people at the bottom.

BAR Book Forum: Katrinell M. Davis’ “Tainted Tap” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Activists and community organizers should be inspired by the work of elders engaged in social change.

BAR Book Forum: Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Rachel Elizabeth Harding’s “Remnants” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
There is a need and desire among folks in activist communities for resources of ritual and spiritual grounding.

US Fakes ISIS Threat in Congo to Justify AFRICOM Presence 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The US continues to insist that ISIS is to blame for recent violence in the Congo, where six million people have died since 1996, despite the fact that hardly any Muslims reside in the mineral-rich country. A UN Group of Experts found “no link” between Islamic jihadists and rebel groups, said Kambale Musavuli, a Congolese analyst with the Center for Research on Congo-Kinshasa. The phony ISIS connection “is just used to justify” new military agreements with AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa., said Musavuli.

October Tribunal to Probe US Crimes Against Humanity 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“We’re going to present expert witnesses to flush out” centuries of genocide and other US crimes before an International Tribunal on US Human Rights Abuses, said Jihad Abdulmumit, co-chair of the Jericho Movement. The results of the proceedings will form the basis of school curricula and fuel the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of activists, said Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther political prisoner.

Israel Deliberately Provoked Violence 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The bloodshed that has taken more than 200 Palestinian lives is the result of “a planned provocation to feed the ultra-right” in Israel, said Sara Flounders,  of the International Action Center. The Israelis periodically provoke such confrontations, confident that they “have the support” of the United States, said the veteran activist.

Left Lens Live: Justice Not Served by Verdict in George Floyd’s Murder

Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges in the murder of George Floyd last year. Just two hours before the verdict, Ohio police killed Ma’Khia Bryant. Margaret and Danny discuss why justice has not been served as liberals and Democrats have so enthusiastically proclaimed.

Saying Her Name 

Heather Ann Thompson
Remains that were found to be those of a Black MOVE teen-ager who was killed by Philadelphia police in 1985 were treated as an anthropological specimen.

The Police “Just Launched a War” 

J. Lester Feder
Do some, most or all US police departments have a pattern and practice of racial bias that makes them fundamentally unable to regulate themselves?

Military Industrial Complex Poisons Black Town 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Water and land in the small Black town of Tallevast, Florida, was for two generations contaminated by beryllium refined for Lockheed Martin, NASA and other big players in the US war and space business, said Dr James Manigault-Bryant, professor of Africana Studies at Williams College and a descendant of a Tallevast founding family. “What makes Tallevast distinct is the clear connection to the military industrial complex,” said Manigault-Bryant, author of the Boston Review article, “Poisoning Tallevast.”

Alphaeus Hunton: The Unsung Valiant, by Dorothy Hunton 

Denise Lynn
Hunton’s devotion to peace and “mutual cooperation” came out of his understanding that “war and militarism were endemic” to capitalism.

Disinformation in Tigray: Manufacturing Consent For a Secessionist War 

New African Institute
Corporate media in the imperial countries have spread disinformation on the real nature of the fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray state.

Israel/Palestine Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier 

Gregory Shupak
Media coverage of heightened violence in Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the scale of Israeli brutality.