Thursday, May 9, 2013

Obama Brands Assata Shakur "Most Wanted Terrorist": -- BA Report for May 8, 2013

 
Home

This week in Black Agenda Report

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Assata Shakur could not have been named "most wanted terrorist" without the explicit approval of the first black president and his attorney general. In doing so, they have declared open war on the black liberation movement, something that J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO were only able to do in secret.
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
By his silence, President Obama is giving the wink and nod to guest worker programs under immigration reform, further institutionalizing the displacement of African Americans from farm work. "The farm owners, like their historical brethren, seek the closest approximation to slave labor that society will allow," but "African Americans refuse to be treated as slaves or fugitives in a foreign land."
 
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Thanks to The First Black President and The First Black Attorney General, "the only people safe in speaking of or contacting Shakur are those who mean her harm." To speak of Black liberation, its heroes and history, is a crime of terror. "Barack Obama has made manifest his predecessor's desire to create a truly fascist machinery in this country."
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
Assatu Shakur has been made the face of terror on the FBI's Most Wanted list, but there is a larger target. "They are publicly defining the Black liberation movement as a priority domestic target for repression." On Thursday, the Black Is Back Coalition holds a demonstration for Assata's safety and freedom for all political prisoners.
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Back in the day, the "race men" and women, graduates of America's historically black colleges and universities imagined it was their duty to stand and lift up the interests of African Americans and their communities as a whole. If the choice of commencement speakers means anything, that's not what HBCU leaders expect of their graduates nowadays. It's not about fighting the power, it's about serving that power.
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The total U.S. prison inmate population held in solitary confinement on any given day exceeds 100,000 – "the equivalent of locking up every man, woman and child in Charleston, South Carolina, in their own little 8 by 12 foot box – for an eternity." Prisoners in solitary at California's Pelican Bay may once again go on hunger strike, July 8. They need support from the outside.
by Tom Stephens
A system in terminal decay has no mercy. The Emergency Financial Manager regime imposed on Detroit is "an entirely new and unprecedented form of antidemocratic local government directly controlled by the corporate agents of 'the 1%" that is designed to steal everything: land, water, air, lives, and every right not associated with capital. The people are getting EMF'ed.
by Sikivu Hutchinson
Studies show that Black children do not commit more offenses in the classroom than whites and Latinos. Nevertheless, "in many American classrooms black children are treated like ticking time bomb savages." Black girls are suspended from school more than any other ethnicity – except Black males.
by Pascal Robert
How does one become rated "the best writer on race today?" By telling white people what they want to hear. Ta-Nehisi Coates is "the new favorite Black cultural tour guide of the chattering class" because he "talks about racism in a way that makes White Liberals feel good."
by Norman (Otis) Richmond
President Obama likes to associate himself with "change." But his altering of the name of the month set aside to celebrate Black music is quite unwelcome. "By not recognizing Black Music Month and changing the name in 2009 you have taken a step backward Mr. President."
by Raymond Nat Turner
Capture her and bring her back to justice,
Before she can blowup the Black community,
With weapons of mass destruction: credit
Default swaps, collateralized debt obligations
And sinister sub-prime schemes siphoning off
Generations of wealth.
Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 5/6/13
 
America: A Law Unto Itself
Longstanding principles of international law "have given way to the idea that there are two sets of rules in the world: one for the United States, and one for everyone else," said David Swanson, anti-war activist and publisher of the influential website, WarIsACrime.org. "Even so-called 'human rights' organizations like Amnesty International are sending out emails lamenting the war-making arsenal of Assad and never mentioning similar actions by the other side, in order to provoke a wider war," and in which even Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Keith Ellison holds up the U.S. assault on Libya "as a model."
Release Lynne Stewart, Now
Human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart's prospects for compassionate release from a 10-year prison sentence have increased because of the many "voices from around the world, the petitions that people have signed," said Ralph Poynter, Stewart's husband and partner in activism. "There is no one who can argue whether Lynne has been the sister of us all, or not." Stewart is suffering stage four breast cancer.
Corporations Too Big for the Law
"The Justice Department is handing out these non-prosecutions and prosecution deferred agreements like candy," said Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter. The publication sponsored conference, in Washington, under the heading, "Neither Admit Nor Deny: Corporate Crime in the Age of Deferred Prosecutions, Consent Decrees, Whistleblowers and Monitors." Corporations are "too big to fail, too big to indict, and too big to challenge, apparently," said Mokhiber.
Mumia Lauds Student Fight Against Mass Imprisonment
"You and those you inspire can be the spark that spells the end of mass incarceration – because movements change everything," said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, in a telephonic address to the first national conference of Students Against Mass Incarceration, at Howard University, in Washington.
"The system of mass incarceration is about controlling the people at the bottom of society so that they will not rise up against the 1%," said Baruch College professor Johanna Fernandez.
Pam Africa, head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, told the conference that Abu Jamal's death sentence was set aside "because the movement was large, and it needs to get a whole lot larger."
 
This email was sent to you by the publishers of Black Agenda Report, your weekly source of news and commentary from the black left since 2006 at www.blackagendareport.com
If you received this message in error, please do Unsubscribe
130 Pemberton
Plainfield, NJ 07060
United States


No comments:

Post a Comment