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


  • Jemima Pierre on Democracy NOW
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    Empire's Laboratory: How the 2004 U.S.- Backed Coup Destabilized Haiti & Led to the Current Crisis
    13 Mar 2024
    Watch Black Alliance for Peace member and scholar, Jemima Pierre, in this interview on 3/11/24 on Democracy NOW. Here, she discuss the current events in Haiti, where she asserts that the crisis in…
  • Biden SOTU
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The State of the Union is "Failed"
    13 Mar 2024
    The State of the Union address exemplifies everything that is wrong with this country. Trivialities are spun as being important, the most serious issues are glossed over, and lies are said to be true…
  • Haiti
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: United States Oppresses Haitian Masses, Hermina Dumont, 1930
    13 Mar 2024
    A 1930 essay by Black activist Hermina Dumont Huiswood tells of the bold resistance of the Haitian population to U.S. occupation, and offers hope for the resistance to come in 2024.
  • African Stream host
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    African Stream
    13 Mar 2024
    African Stream is an anti-war, anti-imperialist video and text website based in Nairobi, Kenya. Ann Garrison spoke to its founder, Ahmed Kaballo.
  • Democracy political cartoon
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    When bagman Vigor Moribund came to town
    13 Mar 2024
    "When bagman Vigor Moribund came to town" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us