by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In focusing on King, the man of peace, Tavis Smiley’s PBS special corrects a history that has been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition – not the least by the revisionist and poseur in the White House.
Mumia Abu Jamal on the passing of Black music great Aretha Franklin: “She returns to the celestial choir after 76 summers of earthly life.”
“Those hearings that are coming up on August 30th could lead to a new trial for Mumia,” said Orie Lumumba, of Family and Concerned Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal.
The underground radicals of the 1960s and 70s were prescient in their political analysis, according to Stephen Dillon, author of Fugitive Life: The Queer Politics of the Prison
Wall Street bankers brought their brand of racism to the US imperial project in the Caribbean and Latin America, said Peter James Hudson, author of Bankers of Empire: How Wall
“The whole imperialist system is in a state of severe crisis,” said Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela, at the coalition’s annual conference, in St. Louis.
