Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Embassy crawlers, kidnappers, Butchers and Boss Tweet…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
15 May 2019
🖨️ Print Article
standoff at the Venezuelan embassy
Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy

“The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.”
— Article 22 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.

Whistles blowing, sirens blaring through bullhorns,
strobe lights flashing to pounding, banging rhythms
It must be the embassy medieval thugs mistook
for a butcher shop—or the one thugs entered to
kidnap towering truth-teller?

Instead, evening’s infested with
pot and pan-banging blue arm bands, Assault-Right
hipsters with Hitler haircuts; choreographed from
The War House and Capitalist Hill.

Ordinarily, big banner headlines splash
Post, Times, Wall Street Journal:
Americans Holed up in Foreign Embassy
surrounded by secret police blocking food,
medicine, supplies; shutting off electricity,
assaulting, arresting peaceful protestors:
Replacing rule of law with Law of Jungle;
Violating Vienna Convention, abdicating
responsibility
to
protect…

Ordinarily, Fox-box foot-soldiers/State Department
stenographers are on the ground grindin’— 24/7
with talking heads hopping mad—shit-fit, send-
in-the Marines-mad—for Boeing’s war of the week
versus strongman who became the wrong man!
Rogue state with redacted 1st and 4th amendments,
we wait for wet, cold, Wikileak words: “Live from New
York, it’s Saturday…”

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Our poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performning artist, educator and an oficial of the National Writers Union.
Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

Venezuela

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • The Editors
    Black Agenda Report July 4th Special Issue
    01 Jul 2026
    “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Barack Obama, George Washington and the 4th of July
    01 Jul 2026
    The opening of the Obama Center has brought Barack Obama back into the spotlight, although he offers nothing new. He will be in the pocket of the oligarchy for the rest of his life, and that means he…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LYRICS: Bicentennial Blues, Gil Scott-Heron, 1976
    01 Jul 2026
    “George Washington/Slave-owner general/Ironic that the father of this country Should be a slave owner/The father of this country a slave-owner.”
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    F$$K the Fourth: Declaring Our Collective Independence from the Sinking Ship of U.S. Empire
    01 Jul 2026
    The settler colonial state is now more corrupt and more unequal than even the genocidal "founding fathers" imagined.
  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Disaster Capitalism In Haiti Gives A Glimpse Into the Imperialist Shock Doctrine That Could Rattle Venezuela Long After The Earthquakes
    01 Jul 2026
    The same U.S. military that kidnapped President Maduro is now directing earthquake relief in Caracas, and if Haiti is any guide, that aid is a Trojan Horse bringing plunder and control.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us