Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

To America, Black Lives Only Sometimes Matter

Posted on by
Reply

By Tony Cartalucci

Source: Land Destroyer

There is no doubt that colonialism and racism sit at the root of America’s domestic problems. The push to dominate others abroad is directly linked to the belief that those who are different at home should also be dominated.

There are still Americans alive today that remember segregation laws that denied black Americans their basic rights and dignity. Before that, there was outright slavery.

Even today, racism is still institutionalized. It also permeates American culture, laying just beneath a superficial layer of tolerance and equality.

This is not just about white people who remain racist against blacks and other minorities – a product of America’s terminally ill culture – it is also about fundamental racism that still very much sits at the heart of American foreign and domestic policy – against not only blacks, but virtually every race on the planet from Africans to Asians to even Slavs.

The US is a nation that encourages its people to hate entire groups of people abroad to help justify otherwise unjust wars. Arabs, Chinese people, Russians – are all vilified with bigotry and hatred sanctioned by mainstream American culture. It isn’t hard to see why in a nation like this, hatred for other groups is easily justified in the minds of racists and the unjust.

Not Just Police in America – Racism is a Key Feature of US Foreign Policy 

It was under US President Barack Obama that the US decimated the North African nation of Libya, deposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – a champion of African dignity and progress and the champion of tens of thousands of blacks from all over Africa who travelled to Libya to find work and a better life – work and a better life Gaddafi provided them until he was brutally murdered and his government replaced by heavily armed, racist terrorists backed by the US and its European allies.

US-backed militants in Libya would hunt down Libya’s black population, killing them, torturing them, and even enslaving them in open air slave markets – a spectacle one might have believed was unthinkable in the 21st century – but something made possible by America, its foreign policy, and its deeply rooted racism and sense of supremacy – despite having a “black” president at the time.

President Obama is hardly the only one to blame – he simply picked up where others left off – and his successor, US President Donald Trump is simply next in line to carry forward systemic US injustice worldwide. The fact that President Obama was black made no difference and simply helps illustrate how while superficial milestones are waved in America’s face – the fundamental rot of injustice, racism, and supremacist thinking persists.

When a nation is able to justify denying one group of people their dignity, worth, and rights as human beings it is a slippery slope that easily leads to other groups likewise being stripped of their humanity and abused.

If Black Lives Matter – They Must Always Matter, Everywhere, All the Time 

Any case of police brutality is tragic and needs to be addressed -a problem in its own right. If officers killed George Floyd because he was black, it represents an additional problem that must also be addressed.

If Americans genuinely believe black lives matter – then they need to commit to fighting injustice against them, and all other victims of American racism and supremacy. If they speak up only when it is popular and “trending” it’s as good as not speaking up at all.

If they are silent when America is mass murdering blacks overseas, killing brown people across the planet, or attempting to normalize racism against Asians – Chinese people in particular – they are complicit in the very sort of deeply rooted, institutionalized racism that underpins US foreign policy and the globe-spanning industrialized injustice it represents – and the very sort of racism that manifests itself as injustice against blacks at home.

America needs genuine opposition to racism. Not opportunistic posturing.

US politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pose as dedicated to racial equality and fighting racism – yet she regularly finds herself in support of US military aggression abroad which exclusively targets nations populated by black, brown, and Asian people.

Her most recent display of supreme hypocrisy was her support of US meddling in Hong Kong – an extension of the British Empire’s seizure from and subjugation of this Chinese territory.

The British Empire – of course – also pursued its foreign policy based entirely on the belief that white Westerners were superior to all others and that it was their right – even duty – to impose British “civilization” upon “heathen” races – China was no exception to this belief.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may or may not appreciate that her support for US meddling in Hong Kong helps continue this disgraceful tradition and agenda – believing instead that supporting “democracy” in Hong Kong is not simply the same brand of Anglo-American racism merely repackaged for more sensitive global audiences. But she is supporting racism, supremacy, and hegemony all the same.

Black lives will never matter as long as “Black Lives Matter” remains a hollow political slogan shouted by interests easily able to ignore or even support injustice purveyed by the US against others abroad – including blacks.

Deeply rooted racism in the US is just one of many symptoms of an overall desire for hegemony and the notions of racial, political, and cultural supremacy that underpin it. Until this is addressed, racism will continue, with only the most superficial and unsustainable efforts made to stop it.

As long as America believes it is better than all others abroad – able to justify exploitation, coercion, and even military aggression to assert itself and pursue its “interests” – racism and injustice will persist at home. The same corporate-financier interests driving US injustice abroad see the US population – white and black – as merely another market segment to use and abuse – to divide and conquer – to put under itself for its own benefit.

Black lives matter, whether they are being strangled by a racist white cop in America or being bombed by US warplanes in Libya. Once Americans can unite in both understanding and opposing this across-the-board racism and injustice, something might actually be done about it besides kicking the can down the road for a few more months until the next video of police abuse emerges online.

America will not heal its domestic hatred and divisions if it remains built entirely on projecting and profiting from hatred and division abroad. It was no coincidence that legendary champions for equality like Martin Luther King Jr. were both opposed to racism and injustice at home and ceaselessly opposed  to American aggression and hegemony abroad. The two are linked by the common thread of fundamental injustice. Until they are both exposed and smashed completely, they will both continue.

How To Tell If Someone Is Controlled Opposition

Posted on by
Reply

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

Every day in my article comments and social media I get people warning me that this or that journalist, activist or politician is “controlled opposition”, meaning someone who pretends to oppose the establishment while covertly serving it. These warnings usually come after I’ve shared or written about something a dissident figure has said or done, and are usually accompanied by an admonishment not to ever do so again lest I spread their malign influence. If you’ve been involved in any kind of anti-establishment activism for any length of time, you’ve probably encountered this yourself.

Paranoia pervades dissident circles of all sorts, and it’s not entirely without merit, since establishment infiltration of political movements is the norm, not the exception. This article by Truthout documents multiple instances in which movements like the 1968 Chicago DNC protest and Peter Camejo’s 1976 anti-establishment presidential campaign were so heavily infiltrated by opaque government agencies that one out of every six people involved in them were secretly working for the feds. This trend of infiltration is known to have continued into the current day with movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, and we’d be ignorant not to assume that this has been at least as rampant in online circles where people organize and disseminate ideas and information.

So it’s understandable that people are extremely vigilant about prominent figures in dissident circles, and it’s understandable that people feel paranoid. Over and over again we see shining anti-establishment movements fizzle or rendered impotent, often seemingly with the help of people we once trusted, and it’s hard not to get frustrated and become suspicious of anyone who starts shining bright in antiwar, leftist, or other dissident circles.

The trouble with this paranoia and suspicion is that it doesn’t seem to function with any kind of intelligence. I have received such “controlled opposition” warnings about pretty much every prominent dissident figure in the English-speaking world at one time or another, and if I believed them all there’d be no one in the world whose words I could share or write about, including my own. I myself have been accused at different times of being a “plant” for the CIA, the Russians, Assad, the Chinese Communist Party, the Iranian mullahs, the alt-right, Trump, Pyongyang, and the Palestinians, which if all true would make me a very busy girl indeed. Since I know I’m not a plant for anybody, I know for myself that such accusations don’t come from a place of insight with any degree of reliability, and I’ve therefore had to find my own way to navigate this confusing landscape.

So since I know that infiltration and manipulation happens, but I don’t find other people’s whisperings about “controlled opposition” useful, how do I figure out who’s trustworthy and who isn’t? How do I figure out who it’s safe to cite in my work and who to avoid? How do I separate the fool’s gold from the genuine article? The shit from the Shinola?

Here is my answer: I don’t.

I spend no mental energy whatsoever concerning myself with who may or may not be a secret pro-establishment influencer, and for good reason. There’s no way to know for sure if an individual is secretly scheming to sheep dog the populace into support for the status quo, and as long as government agencies remain opaque and unaccountable there will never be a way to know who might be secretly working for them. What I can know is (A) what I’ve learned about the world, (B) the ways the political/media class is lying about what I know about the world, and (C) when someone says something which highlights those lies. I therefore pay attention solely to the message, and no attention to what may or may not be the hidden underlying agenda of the messenger.

In other words, if someone says something which disrupts establishment narratives, I help elevate what they’re saying in that specific instance. I do this not because I know that the speaker is legit and uncorrupted, but because their message in that moment is worthy of elevation. You can navigate the entire political/media landscape in this way.

Since society is made of narrative and power ultimately rests in the hands of those who are able to control those narratives, it makes no sense to fixate on individuals and it makes perfect sense to focus on narrative. What narratives are being pushed by those in power? How are those narratives being disrupted, undermined and debunked by things that are being said by dissident voices? This is the most effective lens through which to view the battle against the unelected power establishment which is crushing us all to death, not some childish fixation on who should or shouldn’t be our hero.

Have no heroes. Trust nobody but your own inner sense-maker. If someone says something that disrupts establishment narratives based on what you understand those narratives to be, go ahead and help throw what they’re saying into the gears of the machine. Don’t make a religion out of it, don’t get attached to it, just use it as a weapon to attack the narrative matrix.

This by the way is also a useful lens to look through in spiritual development, if you’re into that sort of thing. When you enter spiritual circles concerned with enlightenment, you’ll see all sorts of debates about what teachers are really enlightened and which ones are just pretending, and these conversations mimic precisely the exact kinds of debates you’ll see in marginalized political circles about who’s the real deal and who’s controlled opposition. But the truth is there’s no way to know with certainty what’s going on in someone else’s head, and the best thing to do is to stop concerning yourself with who has and has not attained some special realization or whatever and just focus on what they’re saying. If a spiritual teacher says something which helps you notice something you’d never noticed before about consciousness or perception, then use what they said and maybe stick around to see if they have anything else useful to say. If not, move on.

There’s no reason to worry about what journalists, activists and politicians are coming from a place of authenticity if you know yourself to be coming from a place of authenticity. As you learn more about the world and get better at distinguishing fact from narrative, you will get better and better at seeing the narrative matrix clearly, and you’ll come to see all the things that are being said about what’s going on in the world as weapons in the battle of narrative control. Pick up whatever weapons seem useful to you and use them in whatever ways they’ll be useful, without wasting energy concerning yourself with the individuals who created them. Call the bullshit what it is and use the truth for what it is.

Or maybe I’m fulla shit! Maybe I myself am being paid to say these things by some powerful influencer; you can’t know for sure. All you can know is what’s useful for you. If you really find it useful to try and organize individual dissident figures into “hero” and “controlled opposition” boxes, if that genuinely helps you take apart the system that’s hurting us all, you’d know that better than I would. But if you find what I’m saying here useful, pick it up and add it to your toolbox.

Russia-gate and the Crisis of American Exceptionalism

Posted on by
Reply

By Danny Haiphong

Source: Black Agenda Report

“Indications of deep unrest that occurred under Obama, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Sanders phenomena, have all been blamed on Russia.”

The era of Trump has been just as frustrating as the era of Obama. Over the last six months, I have channeled some of this frustration into the co-writing of a book with Professor of Liberation Theology Roberto Sirvent titled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Fake News of US Empire. The book will consist of twenty-one chapters detailing just how important the ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence are to the promotion of US empire, racism, and capitalist exploitation. Russia-gate was a catalyst for the work and has its own chapter in the book. The psychotic narrative has dominated political discourse in the United States for over two years with no end in sight. There was no way to avoid it.

Russia-gate is a manifestation of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism posits that the American way of life is the most superior way of life. It is the white man’s burden personified in the nation-state. The ideology burdens Americans, defined as white and preferably capitalist, with the duty to civilize those outside of their class and racial affiliation. The twin evils of white rule and capitalist plunder reign supreme and are expanded and protected by a third evil: militarism. American exceptionalism says that war redeems the uncivilized from the perils of ungovernability, capitalist plunder leads the uncivilized to prosperity, and white rule bestows humanity itself upon the non-white world.

“American way of life is ‘white man’s burden’ personified in the nation-state.”

Russia-gate has profoundly challenged the logic of American exceptionalism in a period of American decline. Unlike the first Cold War, Russia has been labeled a threat not for its socialist political economy but because it has been accused of helping elect Donald Trump. The imaginary Russian threat to America is not terrorism or communism, but Russia as a state itself. Russia-gate is predicated upon the notion that the Russian Federation possesses both the will and the power to shape politics in America. This assumes that the American nation-state is neither invincible nor its political system exceptional. A contradiction to say the least.

Russia-gate is another myth of American exceptionalism made for and by the American oligarchy. It follows a long history of the American oligarchy’s need to create an “enemy” to vanquish as proof of its racial and economic superiority. Russian meddling in the 2016 elections has not been proven and will never be proven. The mental gymnastics that the US ruling class has performed to prove their own lie are truly astounding to watch. We have heard everything from Russian President Vladimir Putin conspiring with WikiLeaks and Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton to Trump benefitting from $100,000 worth in supposedly Russian purchased advertisements on social media to promote efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and white nationalists alike. It seems that with each passing day, examples of Russian meddling in US politics become only more absurd and detached from reality. That is, unless one could conceive of $100,000 worth in social media ads superseding the most militarized and high-tech surveillance apparatus in human history or the most corporately-controlled, war-thirsty political system in human history.

“The imaginary Russian threat to America is not terrorism or communism, but Russia as a state itself.”

Russia-gate has buried all truth underneath the lie that the US is under attack from Russia. Putin is under every bed and in every wireless router in America. Untold numbers of Russians are hacking into social media accounts and turning the “alt-left” into Russian trolls. Russia has been conveniently positioned as the most dangerous and heinous nation in the world to instill fear and pro-American chauvinism into the minds of struggling workers and poor people. Who better to promote the lies of American exceptionalism than the spooks in the American intelligence services that have been at the vanguard of Russia-gate since day one?

All seventeen intelligence agencies led by the likes of James Clapper and John Brennan coalesced with Hillary Clinton and her big tent of Wall Street donors to spread the Russia-gate lie back in 2016. Russia-gate’s intelligence objectives were always numerous. The first objective was to make Trump’s campaign promise to ease relations with Russia a political impossibility regardless of the orange billionaire’s actual intentions. The second was to politically neuter the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the DNC’s theft of the primary. And the third was to demonize radical and revolutionary forces capable of moving struggling workers and poor people, especially Black people, in the United States away from the two-party system and toward efforts to imagine independent political alternatives. These goals ultimately explain why publications like yours truly have been labeled dupes of Russia and subsequently censored on social media and why the Green Party’s Jill Stein was subject to federal investigation for ties to Russia.

“The mental gymnastics that the US ruling class has performed to prove their own lie are truly astounding to watch.”

American exceptionalism is a potently racist and diseased ideological force that has prevented a public discussion on the consequences of Russia-gate from taking place. We have the Democratic Party and their allies in the intelligence services to thank for this. One can find banners and signs condemning Trump as Putin’s puppet or, homophobically, as “his bitch” at Democratic Party-led demonstrations. Hardline Democrats have expressed outrage over Trump’s mythical connections to Russia but have directed none toward the professional liars leading the campaign. American intelligence agencies are responsible for the COINTELPRO operations that assassinated scores of liberation fighters like Fred Hampton and sent many others like Mumia Abu-Jamal to a life of imprisonment. They are the same liars who told us there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq and Gaddafi-led genocidal crimes in Libya. These professional liars have led US operations to overthrow over fifty foreign governments around the world in the same number of years, killing millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to enrich monopoly capital.

American exceptionalism requires that people in the US forget the atrocities of its government to be truly believed, especially in this time of crisis. The architects of Russia-gate have attempted to place the entirety of what calls itself the left in the US into a permanent political coma by blaming Russia for Trump. Under the spell of Russia-Trump fever, the racist and capitalist rulers of US imperialism can rest comfortably knowing that eight years of Obama-led imperialism — let alone, the genocidal foundations of the US — have been forgotten. Indications of deep unrest that occurred under Obama, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Sanders phenomena, have all been blamed on Russia. Trump has been vilified as a product of Russian-backed “alt-left” and “alt-right” insurgency when the reality is that the blame for Trump falls at the feet of the hobbling imperialist system.

“Russia has been conveniently positioned as the most dangerous and heinous nation in the world to instill fear and pro-American chauvinism into the minds of struggling workers and poor people.”

Russia-gate personifies everything that is wrong with narrow, Democratic Party-led anti-Trumpism. Trump has been made into a larger than life character in part because US imperialism needs him in the spotlight. If you can’t get rid of him, use him. Criminalizing Trump as a “Manchurian candidate” of Russia has given US imperialism room to continue its NATO-led war provocations in Eastern Europe, its imperial ventures in Syria, and its incessant war maneuvers toward Iran and Korea. It has also given the ruling class a convenient scapegoat to avoid accountability in the rapid decline in living standards across world. Millions are living half-lives under the threat of racist state-sponsored terror and mass unemployment and underemployment. Billions have no wealth at all. All of this is just fine so long as those pesky Russians stop meddling in US affairs.

Russia-gate is what American exceptionalism looks like in its most desperate state. The ideology makes it easy to fall into the trap of blaming Trump for everything, into calling him a fascist or worse, a Russian, as nearly the entire ruling class has pushed us into doing. It is easy to turn a blind-eye to the bi-partisan consensus on endless war and austerity when you have Putin on the brain. Trump can be labeled a fascist for scapegoating immigrants and blamed for Obama’s immigration policies, as prominent CNN and New York Times journalists were caught doing late last month. We can forget the hundreds of years of racist, capitalist oppression inherent to US empire and betray the impoverished masses whose lives are only becoming more imperiled by a system that has nothing to offer but worsening degrees of poverty and war.

“It is easy to turn a blind-eye to the bi-partisan consensus on endless war and austerity when you have Putin on the brain.”

Our commitment must be to the truth. There is no truth to Russia-gate. Russia-gate has muzzled the Black left and pushed the entire left into an even more conservative position than it was prior. Russia-gate has villainized Russia in a period when the world needs the people of the US to align with Russia and China and whoever else is willing stop endless US wars abroad. Russia-gate has once again exposed why it is so difficult for workers in the US to view themselves as an exploited class even when the system has so obviously failed them. That the ruling class can so easily criminalize Russia as it kills Syrians and lynches Black Americans with impunity only amplifies the urgency of the moment. We must vigilantly struggle to expose Russia-gate as a farce, a farce rooted in the mythology of American exceptionalism. We need more to reject this mythology if we are to participate in the global class war with any hope for victory.

 

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He is currently writing a book with Roberto Sirvent entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Fake News of US Empire. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

Why Ajamu Baraka? Why Vice President? And Why the Green Party?

Posted on by
Reply

Ajamu-Baraka-final

What does the Green Party nomination of longtime Black Agenda Report contributing editor Ajamu Baraka for Vice President mean for the Green Party and the 2016 presidential election?  Is he just a black face on the ticket, or is it really time to begin organizing in black and brown communities outside the matrix of the bankrupt black and brown misleadership class?

By Bruce A. Dixon

Source: Black Agenda Report

In Houston on the first Saturday of August, the Green Party nominated Jill Stein, a Massachusetts physician, and Ajamu Baraka, a longtime human rights activists as its presidential and vice presidential candidates for 2016.  Stein’s nomination was a foregone conclusion, having been the Green candidate in 2012 and the only one of several aspirants to raise money, hire staff and campaign across the country full time for more than a year.

Ajamu Baraka followed a different road to the nomination, having been an interested observer but with no organizational connection to the Green Party till now.  Ajamu Baraka was the founding executive director of the US Human Rights Network, which still seeks to have the framework of internationally recognized human rights law applied to the victims of social and economic injustice in the US.  This is a truly radical concept because the supreme law in the US is the Constitution, which chiefly guarantees property rights and the rights of corporations but not necessarily the rights of human beings to a quality education, the vote, decent housing, health care, renumerative jobs and the right to organize, or to a safe and clean environment, none of which are mentioned.
Ajamu Baraka was among the first to demand, in the wake of the Katrina disaster, that the 300,000 or so persons uprooted, the majority of them African American, be classified as “internally displaced” under international law, a status which would have guaranteed them the right to return to the cities and towns from which they were displaced and dispersed to the four corners of the US.  Since the 1980s Baraka has been a consistent and principled critic of imperial US foreign policy over the years in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East.  He’s served in and led fact-finding delegations to Central America, Cuba, Israel-Palestine, Colombia and other places.  In the wake of the 2010 hunger strike waged by Georgia prisoners, Baraka led an unprecedented civilian inspection team into two state prisons where they were able to interview staff and prisoners alike.

I should say here that I count both Jill and Ajamu as comrades and personal friends, that I was on Jill’s campaign staff for several months and that Ajamu Baraka has more than 50 articles published at Black Agenda Report.
So why Ajamu Baraka?

It’s not a simple matter of putting a black face on the ticket.  Greens have run black candidates in local and national races before without managing to make a significant dent in traditional black allegiances to the Democratic party.

Stein chose Baraka because one of her campaign’s objectives is to strengthen state and local Green parties.  As a result of his more than four decades of work in the movement, Baraka has longstanding personal ties with and has been mentor to many of the activists involved in the Black Lives Matter movement around the country.  If anyone can carry the message to these forces that now is the time for organizing alternative centers of struggle for political power, centers of struggle outside the two capitalist parties and outside the nonprofit industrial complex, that someone is Ajamu Baraka.

African American voters have long been the rock upon which the Democratic party’s voting coalition rests.  But since blacks vote Democratic mainly out of fear of the Republicans, they are a captive constituency whose votes are counted but whose demands are ignored.  Jill and the Greens know it will take more than running good black or brown candidates to make its black, Latin and working class captive constituencies climb out of the Democrats’ trunk.  Realistically that won’t much happen this election.  The candidacies of Greens like Joshua Harris in Baltimore and Ashley Flash Gordon in Travis County TX are signs that something new and unprecedented is peeking over the horizon, something that will challenge the vacuity and lack of vision of the black political class.  It’s not a challenge mature enough to accomplish a string of local electoral victories across the country.  But it’s real, it’s gaining ground, building experience and it’s not going away.

The present black political class and the leadership model that supports it have been in place pretty much since the days of Booker T. Washington twelve decades ago.  They won’t be displaced this election cycle, but their political bankruptcy is every bit as real and obvious as that of their white counterparts.

Why Vice President?

A frequently asked question is why Greens run candidates for president every year, but haven’t elected or even run candidates in many states for state reps and state senators, for county commissioners and members of congress.  The answer is really simple.

The two capitalist parties protect themselves against competitors with a briar patch, a minefield of provisions and conditions expressly designed to make it all but impossible for parties not financed by the one percent to appear on the ballot.  In many states, candidates who are not Democrats or Republicans are prohibited from appearing on the ballot until after their parties have scored one percent, two percent or five percent, depending on the state, in a statewide election.

This legal requirement in states like Georgia that Greens must score tens or hundreds of thousands of votes in statewide races before being allowed to run in local races is one more of the deliberate obstacles Democrats and Republicans have erected to competition from third parties at the ballot box.  And it’s why Ajamu Baraka is running for vice president and Jill Stein for president much of the country were Greens are not allowed to run for local office.

Why the Green Party?

For the last fifty years, Republicans have deliberately made themselves the party of white racists and nativists.  There’s simply in the Republican party or African Americans except a shorter line.  Democrats talk a different game, but are responsible to the same one percenters who fund Republicans, so once in office, Democrats govern pretty much like Republicans.  In fact Democratic presidents and governors frequently enact the oppressive policies we won’t allow Republicans to enact.

NAFTA came up twice during the first Bush presidency and failed.  It took a Democrat, a President Clinton to rally enough right wing Democrats to ally with Republicans to get it into law.  Ending public aid was also something no Republican could do, but Democrats only need  the support of the black and poor when they’re candidates, not so much when they’re governing.  The 2008 Bush bailout went before a Democratic Congress and it failed.  Barack Obama had to suspend his campaign for a week and come to DC and work the phones to flip the Congressional Black Caucus and enough other Democrats to pass the Bush bailout, which he quadrupled down on once in the White House.  Again it was a blow no Republican could have struck, though many wanted to.

Barack Obama used stimulus money to fund what he called “Race To The Top”, a drive to privatize public education that resulted in the closing and privatization of thousands of public schools, and pushed hundreds of thousands of qualified experienced public school educators out of the classroom.  This too was something no Republican could have accomplished, much as they wanted to.  There are many, many similar examples of Democrats accomplishing the right wing goals Republicans can only talk about on the state and local levels.
Republicans like Donald Trump talk about how they’d like to do mass deportations.  But our First Black President has deported two million people, more than any other three presidents combined, after promising Latino voters “a road to citizenship” in both his campaigns.

The only reason to vote for Democrats is our fear of Republicans, and as Jill Stein says, this politics of fear has delivered to us everything we were afraid of.  People voted Democratic to end the war in Iraq but we got more war in the Middle East and Africa.  People voted Democrat to raise the minimum wage and see millions of new jobs created.  But the minimum wage has barely risen and the only reason official unemployment figures are down is that his policies have pushed millions of people out of the formal workforce into increasingly precarious economic situations.

At the end of the reign of our first black president, a Democrat when blacks have been the rock and mainstay of Democratic voting coalitions for two generations, forty percent of black children are growing up in poverty.  Isn’t it time for some new questions?

Why must “progressives” ride to Hillary’s rescue if we don’t get progress?

Trump is a bumbling clown and a bogeyman.  He’s raising a fraction of the money Romney raised, four years ago.  Hillary Clinton has a billion dollars to campaign with and most of the corporate media. If she can’t beat this fool with all the resources available to her, why is it up to us?  Why?  Hillary ought to be, and ought to have been helping us, not the other way around.

I don’t expect the Greens to win the presidential election.  But the US system is almost 250 years old, one of the most elderly on the planet.  Its creaks and cracks are highly visible and aren’t going away.  Isn’t it time to start imagining and building what comes next, what comes after capitalism, what comes after genocide and ecocide, what comes after patriarchy and white supremacy?

Isn’t it time to start being the change we want to see?

That won’t happen inside the Democratic party.  It’s been tried again and again.  It’s time to build something different.  So why not the Green Party?
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party.  He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

 

Dallas Shootings: White Supremacists Succeeded in Provoking Black Extremism

Posted on by
1

(Editor’s note: Though at this time it’s still too early too tell whether the shooting was in fact an act of black extremism and/or a more complex situation intended to appear that way, the author’s central argument, that the social chaos created by such events benefit a select few, remains valid.)

By Eclinik Learning

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Considered to be one of the worst in US police history, five police officers were shot dead and scores wounded by snipers, presumably as a retaliation to the blatant killings of two black men this week in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Initial reports said that the three snipers were not part of those who joined the Black Lives Matter rally where the shootings occurred.

This event has just raised the confrontation between the white police and the black community to a new level.

The existence of a well-organized group of white supremacists that are occupying positions of power and within the armed services of the government is at the root of all these perennial deadly and racially loaded confrontations.

The graphic video of the murder cannot be subjected to wild speculations because it shows beyond doubt of a cold blooded murders by police officers who happens to be white.

These fanatics are not just hurting black people but they are those same extremists who were aiming their pepper spray to black and white kids alike during those massive Occupy Movement rallies, in close coordination with those same mindless talkingheads who are still running the mainstream media today.

Their aim is to provoke racial, political, and cultural conflict wherever possible. It would be a complete waste of our time to try and change their trajectory considering that these extremists completely believe in their own superiority just by the virtue of the color of their skin.

A more drastic action, like removing them all from power, should be done. These people don’t respond positively to vocal street protests.

As far as this recent event is concern, there is now a very high probability that a counter-retaliation will occur against the black people. But we don’t think that it could reach the level of a full blown racial confrontation considering that a sizable number of the Americans know exactly who the real enemy is.

Who has benefited from this drastic shift of the national attention?

This event undoubtedly and effectively shifted the national conversation away from the FBI’s absolution of one Hillary Clinton for her “extremely careless” handling of state secrets via her personal email server, which in itself was just a mere diversion of more heinous crimes that the Clinton couple have to cover-up all these years.

It would not surprise us a bit if something bad will happen on the other side of the Atlantic to stop the fallout from the Chilcot Report indicating that Tony Blair was lying about everything that has to do with the invasion of Iraq.

Aside from these obvious motivations of escaping executive accountability by covering lies with more lies, and by putting the people of the world constantly on the edge, the endless appetite for gun control and mass surveillance lies at the very foundation of all these unprovoked police shootings and false flag operations.

Only this time, those who survived for a while begun to shoot back. The only problem is that the wrong police may have been the casualties.

It is therefore a lot wiser for those would-be snipers to set their sight directly on the Eye of the Pyramid.

 

Related Video:

The Belated Downfall of Bill Clinton

Posted on by
1

Bill-HIllary-Clinton-Corrupt

One of the unintended consequences of Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been the renewed and often revealing public appearances of Bill Clinton. His involvement in Hillary’s campaign has been a series of awkward events, from violating election campaigning laws back in March to his condescending treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in April. Throughout May he was hounded on the campaign trail by criticism of corrupt practices of his foundation. In late May what what was supposed to be a routine campaign stop at a New Mexico diner escalated to a grueling 30 minute argument with Bernie Sanders supporter Josh Brody.

At another restaurant appearance in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhhod last Saturday, Clinton had the misfortune of being there at the same time as 23 year old Sarra Tekola of Women of Color Speak Out, who did exactly that when she ambushed him by shouting “Hey Clinton, fuck you! My people are still in jail from your crime bill! Three strikes – you’re out, mandatory minimum, then you wanna take pictures with my people here? We’re still in jail for what you did!” (an inspiring moment documented by a widely viewed viral video).

The next two days while giving a speeches in Boyle Heights and Richmond, Clinton faced more heckling from Sanders supporters and on Monday he was also confronted with the news that his brother Roger, who on his last day in office Bill pardoned for cocaine dealing, was jailed for drunken driving.

Though it’s likely Hillary and Bill will be back in the White House (barring a surprise intervention of hackers/whistleblowers), their public image is unlikely to get any less loathsome and any illusions citizens may still hold regarding positive aspects of their legacy will continue to crumble. Angry disenfranchised voters of all stripes will never cease to hold them accountable for their misdeeds for the rest of their days.

Militarization of the Police: A Reflection of United States Foreign Policy

Posted on by
2

Outrage In Missouri Town After Police Shooting Of 18-Yr-Old Man

The war is both domestic and international

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Source: Global Research

Over the last 14 months the notion of the United States as a bastion of human rights and democracy has been further shattered.

With the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, it set off not only a rebellion in this St. Louis County suburb but nationwide demonstrations across the country. The rebellion in Ferguson forced the Obama administration to pay some symbolic attention to the plight of African American people who have been largely ignored as it relates to domestic policy over the last several decades.

In fact when it comes to Civil Rights and Human Rights, there has only been regressive legislation and “benign neglect” since the late 1960s. Realizing the complexity of the crisis facing the African American people, other people of color communities and working people in general, the system would rather ignore the problems rather pay any attention to them.

Nonetheless, Ferguson proved to be a turning point in U.S. history. Periodicals published in states that are aligned with Washington issued editorial questioning the domestic and foreign policy posture of the administration of President Barack Obama.

Even though the Justice Department was sent into to St. Louis County to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing of Michael Brown, no federal charges were ever filed against Darren Wilson or anyone else within the law-enforcement, judicial and municipal systems in the area. The lack of critical response by the Obama administration compounded the discontent after the local authorities decided that there was no probable cause for charges to be brought against Wilson and others in Ferguson.

The report issued by the Justice Department Civil Rights Division did demonstrate clearly that collusion was rampant within these various departments in St. Louis County. Electronic communications were retrieved which illustrated that the African American community was being grossly exploited through traffic stops, citations, questionable arrests and prosecutions.

Many of the suburban municipalities within St. Louis County are economically unviable and consequently utilized racial profiling and targeting as a means of generating revenue. The New York Times reported several weeks after the rebellion and mass demonstrations began in Ferguson that over 12,000 outstanding warrants existed in the small city of barely over 20,000 residents. This came out to approximately two warrants per household in Ferguson.

Residents with outstanding warrants were subjected to immediate arrests and even higher fines or possible jail terms. Such legal problems hampered people’s abilities to find and retain employment as well as maintain a stable family life.

What appears to have happened in regard to the situation in Ferguson and St. Louis County is there was an apparent agreement that Wilson and other officials would resign their positions in exchange for not being pursued further by the federal government. It was also announced that some form of amnesty would be granted for residents facing high fines and jail time after being systematically targeted by the police throughout the County.

Such a compromise does not approach the resolution of the deeper problems of national oppression and racism so prevalent within law-enforcement culture. High rates of unemployment and poverty are by-products of national oppression and class exploitation which the American system is built upon.

Militarization Unveiled in Ferguson

Rather than examine the causes behind the explosion in Ferguson, the response of the political superstructure and the law-enforcement agencies was to put down the rebellion with a vengeance. Police came on the scene with armored vehicles, batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, long range acoustic devices (LRAD) and other forms of highly-sophisticated and deadly weaponry.

Numerous law-enforcement departments were deployed in Ferguson along with the National Guard. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a “state of emergency” while law-enforcement implemented a “no-fly zone” over the region.

The youth and workers who took to the streets both violently and non-violently were immediately criminalized. Journalists seeking to cover the story were attacked and arrested.

Corporate media pundits took to the airwaves over cable television networks to put their own spin on developments surrounding the mass demonstrations and rebellions. Those who fought back against the police and destroyed private property were labeled as criminals and thugs. These characterizations provided a rationale for the use of deadly force and the denial of basic democratic rights of due process.

Governor Nixon and local authorities blamed the unrest on “outside agitators” seeking to deflect attention away from the exploitative and repressive conditions so widespread in St. Louis County. President Obama and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sought to define the forms of dissent that were acceptable those that were not.

Moreover, the question becomes: where did these weapons, tanks, noxious gases and sound devices come from? These are the same weapons that have been used against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and other geo-political regions over the last several decades.

The federal government through the Pentagon supplies these armaments through grants to local law-enforcement agencies. Are these the best tools to fight street crime? Or are these weapons supplied to fight existing unrest and more violent rebellions and revolts that are bound to come in the future?

We Can’t Breathe: Eric Garner and the Impunity of the State

In Staten Island New York the police killing of Eric Garner provided additional lessons in our understanding of the current character of state repression. Garner’s encounter with the police was caught on a cellphone video and transmitted worldwide. His last words gasping “I Can’t Breathe” became a rallying cry for those who went into the streets by the tens of thousands in New York and across the country.

Apparently recording of this crime did not matter to the grand jury that acquitted the only police officer investigated in the killing. The billions around the world who saw the video knew that there were many officers who were involved in Garner’s death by holding him down, applying pressure to his vital areas and refusing to provide any medical attention while he lay dying.

The youth who videoed the killing was himself targeted for prosecution and jailed. Once again the Justice Department did not take any action against the cops or the grand jury which allowed the police and emergency medical technicians to walk free.

In response to the grand jury decision, tens of thousands of people went out in protest in Manhattan and other areas of New York City. They blocked streets, expressways, businesses and bridges. The city had not seen such an outpouring of spontaneous demonstrations in many years.

New York City has been notorious for its “stop and frisk” and “broken windows” theory of policing. This style of law-enforcement conduct rides the waves of gentrification and forced removals of African Americans, Latinos and working class people in general throughout the municipality.

Obviously there is a concerted effort to drive millions of oppressed, working class and poor people out of the cities throughout the U.S. In New York, despite claims by officials that crime has been reduced by 80 percent, the plight of marginalized working class has worsened.

The homeless problem in New York is worse than it has ever been in the city’s history. A recent front-page article in the Sunday New York Times published on August 29 exposed the plight of those living in homeless shelters.

Those are the ones who are inside although living with bed bugs and other vermin in over-crowded buildings. Others are unfortunately sleeping on the streets in subways, storefronts, in Times Square and other areas.

Nonetheless, the liberal administration of De Blassio has no program for providing decent housing to those who need it. Wall Street with all of its propaganda about an economic recovery ignores the conditions of the most vulnerable and miserable.

Baltimore: A Flashpoint for Repression and Impoverishment

Just earlier this year in late April young Freddie Grey was killed by the Baltimore Police Department. This was by no means an isolated incident since the city has a long tradition of systematic racism in housing and police-community relations.

However, after the killing of Grey who died in police custody, the community rose up in rebellion. Immediately the Governor declared yet another “state of emergency” moving into Baltimore personally and effectively taking control of the city from its African American woman Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

What was interesting about the rebellion in Baltimore was the more developed counter-insurgency strategy and tactics implemented. Thousands of police officers from various agencies were deployed from across the state as was the case in Ferguson, along with thousands more National Guard troops.

Nonetheless, the authorities utilized a cadre of so-called “community groups” including churches, gang members, elected officials, and other operatives to come into the unrest areas encouraging youth and workers to leave the streets and go home. They were told by these “community activists” to abide by an unjust curfew and to work with the cops and the National Guard.

Tactically they were also covered by the corporate and government-controlled media to present another face of the community to the public. After the first three days of demonstrations and unrest, the media portrayed the community as being hostile to law-enforcement and private property. Suddenly by the time the National Guard and Governor had entered the city, the people who were presented to the press were residents opposed to the unrest and working towards “restoring order”, or we should say restoring the existing order.

Hundreds of these “community activists” stood between the crowds and the police with their backs to the law-enforcement agents and their faces towards the people. This was quite a symbolic effort to turn a section of the city against those who were fed up with the repression and exploitation.

Baltimore, like Detroit, has been hit over the last decade by massive home foreclosures and neighborhood blight. Hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore to make room for the “developers and investors.” The banks were at the root cause of this displacement.

Also in Baltimore, it was announced during the spring that 25,000 households would be subjected to water shut-offs as what has been happening here since the imposition of emergency management and bankruptcy in 2013-2014. Although the emergency managers are being ostensibly withdrawn in Michigan, those who are the purported “elected officials” are carrying out the same draconian program of forced removals and benign neglect of the masses.

The lessons of Baltimore, Ferguson, New York and here in Detroit is that the workers and oppressed must be organized independently of the established two-party system. There must be a link drawn between law-enforcement repression, economic deprivation, gentrification and the denial of public services. The militarization of the police is designed to reinforce the system of oppression. All of these variables must be taken into consideration in any program of resistance and fightback against the structures of exploitation and political repression.

Militarization: From the 1960s to 2015

The militarization of U.S. society is as old as the American system itself. However, for the purpose of this discussion tonight we must look to events of the 1960s when cities exploded from Watts to Detroit during the period of 1965-1968.

Detroit proved to be a turning point in the militarization of the U.S. police when thousands of National Guard and federal troops were deployed to put down the rebellion in July 1967. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder found in its report that the police played an integral part in sparking urban rebellions.

Rather than heed to a program of reform, the society became more militarized and repressive. Under the presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson an Office of Law Enforcement Assistance was created.

According to a website entitled “What-When-How”, it says that “In 1965, the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance was created in the U.S. Department of Justice. This was the predecessor to the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which was established as a result of the work of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.”

By 1968, as a result of a Congressional Commission on crime in the streets, the Law-Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) was created continuing to the early 1980s. This same above-mentioned website notes that to ostensibly achieve the aims of reducing crime in the cities:

“To achieve this objective, the notion of criminal justice planning was introduced to the country. Heretofore, planning in criminal justice was virtually nonexistent. With the passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (1968), LEAA was authorized to provide funds to create a ‘state planning agency’ in each state that would have as its primary function the responsibility to develop a comprehensive statewide plan for the improvement of law enforcement throughout the state. The act also authorized the states to make grants from a population-based block grant allocation to units of local government to carry out programs and projects in accordance with the planning effort to improve law enforcement.”

By the early 1980s the further criminalization of African American and other oppressed communities was well underway. We have witness the growth in the prison-industrial-complex with a rise in the incarcerated population by 500 percent over the last three decades. The “school to prison pipeline” is a reality for the majority of the African American people.

A recent article in Atlantic magazine looks at this phenomena through the experiences of former inmates and the families whose loved ones have been incarcerated. With no real jobs program on a federal level and the rising rates of poverty and marginalization, this problem will not be solved short of drastic and sweeping policy initiatives that are well beyond anything that is being advocated by the White House, Congress and the corporate community.

Therefore, the struggle for justice in the U.S. is up to the people themselves. The organized masses working in solidarity with the oppressed and working people around the globe are the remedies to seriously address these concerns.

This is the charge of the labor movement and the international solidarity struggle. We are part of both and will work with any and every one to achieve total freedom.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire.

Note: This address was delivered on October 7, 2015 before the UAW Local 140 School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) Labor Caucus mobilization and recruitment meeting held at the union hall in Warren, Michigan right outside of Detroit.

The meeting entitled “Resisting Oppression: Reflecting on Our Communities a Global and Local Perspective,” also featured Maria Luisa Rosal, Field Organizer for SOA Watch, who presented a historical review of the SOA in Latin America. Jerry and Laronda King of the Civil and Human Rights Committee co-chaired the meeting. Azikiwe began his talk with expressions of solidarity with the UAW members at Fiat Chrysler who were just hours away from a possible strike that would have shut down auto production. Another tentative deal was reached prior to the Midnight deadline at least temporarily averting a strike. This tentative deal like the first one will have to be voted on by the rank and file workers.