by BAR Editor
and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley

Senator John McCain, a man who would be
president, thinks it's funny to joke about bombing Iranians. McCain shares a
moral sickness with many others in positions of power - most notably, George W.
Bush. Yet the relative silence surrounding McCain's macabre behavior is also an
indictment of a society that casually contemplates mass murders of Others,
while holding days of national mourning for their own dead. Cho was a sick man,
in excruciating psychic pain. McCain and his ilk treat truly mass murder as
comical.

by Manuel Garcia, Jr.

The core imperative of those who control U.S.
policy is "the protection of White Supremacy Super-Nationalism, or Empire."
Control of global energy resources and such are merely elements of a larger
crusade that operates "at the level of the central nervous system,
subconscious and unconscious." U.S. alliances are based on a brotherhood of
"Pan-Whiteness" - "a bond that expresses itself in a tribal level of
identification." The rest of the planet and its peoples are just "Injun
country."

A Black Agenda
Radio Commentary by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

Through his own statements, Barack Obama relentlessly
destroys his former anti-war credentials. In an effort to establish himself as
a "statesman" in the eyes of the power structure, Obama now advocates a much
larger Army and Marine Corps to allow the U.S. to "lead the world in battling
immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good." Do not expect a "peace
dividend" under a President Barack Obama. The only genuine peace candidate is
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, of Ohio - which is why the corporate media pretend
Kucinich doesn't exist.

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

‘It's time for the streets to rise up," says Rev.
Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, whose "Make Hip Hop, Not War" tour
is traversing the country. The tour showcases the best political elements of
Black youth culture - the "conscious" rap that huge media corporations have
tried to eliminate from the airwaves, record stores and public discourse. The
real "gangstas" are the U.S. government, and the poets of the people continue
to tell the story. Contrary to the corporate media line, hip hop is not just
about "nappy-headed hoes" - but the liberation of a people, and the unification
of the world through the strongest cultural and political message that America
has yet produced.

by Dr. Edward Rhymes

Despite the firing of Don Imus, corporate media continue to attempt to divert attention from long-established institutional sexism, in order to depict Black youth culture as the vector of the disease. The American reality is one of pervasive celebration of violence, in general, and violence against women, in particular - a white cultural invention. Black rappers, who are owned and controlled by white corporations, did not create this culture of violence and misogyny, but are made the scapegoats for a much deeper national social crisis - a landscape in which "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas" are revered as "classic" films.

by Dedrick Muhammad

What has America really "overcome" since Dr. Martin Luther King's famous 1963 speech on the Washington Mall? In the same week that MSNBC patted itself on the back for - finally - firing Don Imus, white students at Duke University held a pep rally in support of lacrosse players, "some of whom called two young African American women niggers, and one who wrote about how he wanted to kill ‘the bitches'... then cutting off their skin while ejaculating in [his] Duke-issue spandex."  Such barbarity remains acceptable in U.S. society. Corporate media has no right to congratulate itself for ending an Imus career that was always based on racism.

by Dilip Hiro

The American occupation of Iraq, which was never
intended to empower the Iraqi people, has resulted in the political ascension
of two Shi'ite clerics: Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has twice battled
U.S. troops, and Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shia figure in Iraq.
The two play complementary roles, and both oppose U.S. intentions to remain in
Iraq for an unlimited time. So do most Iraqis, three-quarters of whom,
according to the latest opinion polls, demand the withdrawal of the
Anglo-American troops within six to twelve months. The Bush administration's
crusade for "democracy" - always a farce - has produced a perfect storm of
enemies.