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Fisher v. UT Austin: The End of Affirmative Action as We Know It?

Mon, 04/08/2013 - 18:13 — Sally Chung

by Sally Chung

The U.S. Supreme Court’s history of affirmative action rulings has led to a dead end, in which the University of Texas “has to argue in favor of the system it really ought to be arguing against.” The legal catch-22: “Those who want to advocate for racial consciousness can only do so by recourse to reasoning, set forth by the Supreme Court, intended to restrict racial consciousness.”

Capital: The Only Winner in Kenya’s 2013 Elections

Mon, 04/08/2013 - 17:52 — Wangui Kimari

by Wangui Kimari

Multinational capital and its superpower enforcer, the United States, treated the recent Kenyan election like their own property. As it turns out, “Our new president is the biggest land owner in Kenya and our almost president has the support of American imperialism.”

My Wise Country Cousin On: How Negroz See Quest Stray Shun…

Mon, 04/08/2013 - 17:02 — Raymond Nat Turner

by Raymond Nat Turner

The Country Cousin is wise to our folks’ ways.

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 4/8/13

Mon, 04/08/2013 - 14:13 — Glen Ford

High Stakes Testing Makes Cheating Inevitable

Over the last four years, standardized test cheating cases have been confirmed “in 37 states and the District of Columbia, and patterns of systemic cheating in about a dozen jurisdictions,” said Bob Schaeffer, of Fair Test. “The only solution is a comprehensive overhaul of No Child Left Behind and the over-testing system that has been mandated.” Schaeffer said evaluation of student progress should be “based on the work students do in the classroom over time.”

Mumia on the Real Dr. King

Political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison, sent a message to a gathering at New York’s historic Riverside Church on the anniversary of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. “ MLK, who broke with President Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Riverside on April 4, 1967, “was an adversary of the military industrial complex and the mammoth business interests that support it. This is why state power marked him, quashed his voice, and gave him up to a violent death,” said Abu Jamal.

Free the Cuban Five

“The U.S. government categorically denies it has political prisoners in its gulags,” said Luis Rosa, a Puerto Rican activist from Chicago who spent 19 years in prison on political charges. Rosa spoke at a Columbia University event demanding freedom for the Cuban Five and all U.S. political prisoners. The U.S. “uses denial to violate our most basic human rights,” said Rosa, “to perpetuate the lie that it is the ultimate defender of freedom, justice, democracy and human rights in the world.” Imani Brown, of Columbia’s Caribbean Students Association, said “American neocolonial systems of power…is the driving force of the prison industrial complex.”

Petition to Take Back Obama’s Peace Prize

Norman Solomon, the former anti-war congressional candidate and co-founder of RootsAction.org, says the state of peace in the world “has gone from bad to worse” in the 40 months since President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. RootsAction.org is circulating a petition, asking the Nobel committee to take back the prize, which was awarded early in Obama’s first term. As one petitioner wrote: “A pre-emptive peace prize works about as well as pre-emptive war.”

“See No Evil, Hear No Evil” at EPA

“When you consider the level of assaults that the planet is under, if ever in our history we needed a strong voice at the agency for communities and people, it’s now,” said Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, noted whistleblower and a leader in the No Fear Coalition. She said Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s new choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is just another representative of the “envirotocracy – green paint on top of a corporate structure” – very much like former EPA chief Lisa Jackson and other predecessors who “hear no evil, see no evil.”

Where Did Haiti Aid Money Go?

A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, calls for more transparency and accountability in U.S. AID’s dispensing of monies to Haiti. “The Haitian people know how much money was pledged, and they know how little they’ve seen,” said the CEPR’s Jake Johnston. “There’s becoming a whole lot of resentment.”

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Why Was Atlanta's Beverly Hall Indicted For Racketeering While Michelle Rhee Won't Be?

Wed, 04/03/2013 - 10:27 — Bruce A. Dixon

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Atlanta's black former school superintendent and 34 other black teachers and administrators have been indicted for “racketeering” in a cheating scandal. Why aren't others like former DC Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and her team indicted? Should we be rallying the racial wagons around Dr. Hall and the other 34? No way.

Freedom Rider: Hidden War Crimes in Iraq

Wed, 04/03/2013 - 10:27 — Margaret Kimberley

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The United States leaves an indelible impression on the peoples that come in contact with it: in the case of Iraqis, a legacy of death by bombs, bullets, incineration, starvation, disease and genetic damage. The U.S. didn’t event war crimes, but its global reach and high tech style of killing makes America unique in the annals of inhumanity.

News Flash: Rich Black Man Pays for Useless Poll, Thinks He’s Done Something Important

Wed, 04/03/2013 - 07:08 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The billionaire former owner of BET commissioned a poll on Black political opinion that utterly fails to measure anything meaningful or useful. “What does it tell you about Black America, that Congresswoman Waters has about twice the following of Congressman Clyburn? Does it tell you anything at all?” The NAACP is more popular than the Urban League. Why? The poll didn’t bother to ask.

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U.S. “Human Rights” Wars: Arms Control as a Weapon

Wed, 04/03/2013 - 00:55 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“The newly minted international Arms Trade Treaty is simply another device to strip nations targeted for U.S. attack of the ability to defend themselves.” The world’s biggest arms exporter and purveyor of war has once again “made human rights a weapon of mass destruction.”

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How Can Blacks Love Obama So Much When They're Doing So Bad?

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 20:45 — Your Black World

Is there a disconnect between the actual economic well-being of African Americans and their uncritical, unconditional love for their first black president? Your Black World's Yvette Carnell interviews Pascal Robert.

The Assassination Of Dr. King And The Suppression Of The Anti-War And Peace Perspectives

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 19:22 — Ajamu Baraka

by Ajamu Baraka

This week marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. In those years, a King has emerged who bears little in common with the man who lived and struggled and died in the Freedom Movement. Killing the man was the work of an instant. Suppressing and distorting his legacy have been full time projects ever since.

Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 13:34 — Carl Dix

by Carl Dix

Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow takes us in the right direction to understanding mass incarceration – but it doesn’t go far enough. “It is essential to not fall into seeing the necessary resistance movement being a rerun of the movement that broke the back of Jim Crow.”

World Social Forum Highlights Both Unity and Dissent Within Global Movements

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 13:34 — Jordan Flaherty

by Jordan Flaherty

The World Social Forum convened in Tunisia, North Africa, animated by the currents of the Arab Spring. Although the Occupy Wall Street Movement is no longer in the headlines in the U.S., “when Occupy was mentioned in the opening ceremony” in Tunis, “it brought one of the largest cheers of the night.”

U.S. and Al-Qaeda: The Best of Frenemies

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 12:24 — Mike Pirsch

by Mike Pirsch

The American on-again, off-again relationship with Al-Qaeda is back in the hot-and-heavy phase, with the U.S. “leading a coalition including, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, The United Arab Emirates, Croatia, England, France, and Al-Qaeda to destroy and break up targeted countries.” The jihadist and imperialist mobs are once again married.

Fox-box Foot Soldiers

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 11:10 — Raymond Nat Turner

by Raymond Nat Turner

“… firing fully automatic fat cat, fair and

Balanced, blue dog, chicken-hawk opinions; long

On wind, short on facts— melodramatic, Psy Op,

Shock and awe actors— accessories to mass murder…”

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 4/01/13

Mon, 04/01/2013 - 22:17 — Glen Ford

Chokwe Lumumba Makes Bid for Mayor of Jackson

Human rights lawyer and former Republic of New Afrika official Chokwe Lumumba has his sights set on the top job in Mississippi’s biggest city. “It give us an opportunity to demonstrate that we are great in terms of administration of human rights – something that would Martin Luther King proud,” said Lumumba, who is a city councilman. Jackson, the state capital, is 80 percent Black. Back in 1971, when the Republic of New Afrika came to town, “there was only one Black on the police force, and he could only arrest other Black people,” said Lumumba.

Rally for Temple University African American Studies

“There has never been an educational institution in America that truly wanted to educate Black people properly,” said Dr. Molefi Asante, speaking to a student rally in support of Temple University’s beleaguered African American Studies program. Asante is credited with establishing Temple’s doctoral program in African American studies, in 1988. Since then, “every successive administration has sought to destroy the program,” he said.

Blacks Saddled with Obama for Eternity

President Obama’s “Kill List” and preventive detention legislation “have created conditions for people of color in this country that makes our survival very tenuous, indeed,” said Dhoruba bin Wahad, a former leader in the Black Panther Party and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army who spent 19 years in prison for his political activities. Speaking at a rally for political prisoners. bin Wahad said: “The sad part is, we’re going to be saddled with Obama for the rest of our lives, as the senior, elder statesman of Black politics in America.”

Double-Barreled Protest Against NAACP

Demonstrators will gather at the Washington offices and Baltimore headquarters of the NAACP, on April 3 and 4, respectively. Organizer Rev. Edward Pinkney, the former chief of the Benton Harbor, Michigan, NAACP, the civil rights organization has sold out its legacy to corporations. “The people on the top are being paid, and yet they don’t do anything” for the membership or the masses of Black people, said Pinkney.

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