Hugo Chavez, New World Rising, Obama Tortures Bradley Manning, Sequestration Tango -- BA Report for March 6, 2013
This week in Black Agenda Report
Hugo Chavez: New World Rising
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The great Bolivarian is gone – which means
the U.S. will soon escalate its destabilization campaign against his country.
“Washington hopes that Venezuelan socialism cannot survive without Chavez.” But
the U.S. cannot roll back the movement that Chavez did so much to ignite, “the
dark awakening in the barrios, favelas, rural villages and native highlands of
the continent.”
Freedom Rider: Obama’s Torture of Bradley Manning
by
BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret
Kimberley
The simple
decency of Bradley Manning, who faces life in prison for being a good citizen,
throws in graphic relief the infinite depravity of the current U.S. regime.
“Lawlessness has now become perfected and
normalized under the Obama administration.”
The Sequestration Tango: Obama and GOP Dance Through the Graveyard of the New Deal
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor
Glen Ford
The Obama regime has been remarkably
successful – in pushing forward a Republican agenda. Obama, especially, has
“moved with such elegance and poise, his fans forgot that he was dancing with a
partner: the GOP.” Together, they have starved the federal beast and forged a
consensus on the inevitability of austerity. Let the gruesome-twosome take a
bow.
Washington Aims to Turn Congo Military Mission into a U.S. Proxy Force
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor
Glen Ford
The new agreement in the Democratic
Republic of Congo – which has already been violated by U.S.-allied forces –
would field a peace-enforcement mission. However, “if the U.S. and the Europeans
pay for this nominally African force, and train and equip it, as they do in
Somalia, then the U.S. will actually be running the show in
Congo.”
Black Political Class Could Pick A Fight Over Postal Service Privatization --- But Won't. Why?
A Black Agenda Radio
Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon
Back when there
used to be something like a black middle class, a lot of them were postal
workers. Black postal workers were leaders in every struggle of the historic
Freedom Movement, and the backbone of civic activism in African American
communities everywhere, and played a crucial role in making the careers of black
politicians possible. So why isn't the black political class disposed to defend
the postal service?
Whistleblower Bradley Manning Pleads Guilty to Exposing US Atrocities
by Kevin Zeese and Marsha
Coleman-Adebayo
Bradley Manning, a prisoner of the U.S.
military and the national security state, could serve life in prison for
revealing the “true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare.” His
crime was to expose the real “purpose, posture and pretenses of the US
government around the world.”
The U.S. Holds the Key to Duvalier Prosecution in Haiti
by Fran Quigley
The United States claims that human rights
is central to its foreign policy – a dubious proposition, and one that is
certainly false, in Haiti, where former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier
is trying to make a comeback. Washington is taking a “hands off” approach to
Duvalier – as if the U.S. has ever embraced a “Hands Off Haiti”
policy.
My Wise Country Cousin On Baby Doc
by Raymond Nat Turner
Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier should be
sentenced to “meet up wit his daddy,” down deep in the hole with “de
Debil.”
Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 3/4/13
Supreme
Court Puts U.S. Spy Agency “Above the Law”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s
dismissal of a suit against the National Security Agency’s wholesale spying on
telephone and internet systems “essentially holds the NSA above the law,” said
Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Committee. Unless the
plaintiffs can document that they, personally, have been monitored, they “have
no right to appear in a federal court to challenge the program,” Shahid
explained. But, since the program is secret, it is all but impossible for
individuals to prove their case.
DNA vs. the Bill of
Rights
The High Court is considering how
police departments can collect and use people’s DNA. The case centers on
Maryland’s DNA law, under which at least one victim of crime was later convicted of another,
subsequent crime, based on his DNA. All 49 other states have filed briefs
supporting Maryland’s law. Black Maryland state lawmaker Jill Carter, of
Baltimore, who opposed the law when it was passed in 2009, said “every state in
the country could be permitted to collect DNA from people who are not convicted
of any crime.”
Detroit to Lose Control
of Finances
Michigan’s Republican governor plans to name a financial manager to
oversee the 83 percent Black city of Detroit, which would join five other
Michigan municipalities and three school districts that have been stripped of
local financial control. “Both Democrats and Republicans have had it in for
Detroit ever since the 1967 uprising,” said Joyce Schon, of the activist
organization BAMN, By Any Means Necessary. Resistance to the takeover must go
beyond legal appeals, Schon said. “I think it’s got to be direct action,
anything we can possibly bring to the streets.”
The Ruling Austerity
Consensus
There is a consensus among both major political parties on the need for
austerity, said Left Business Observer publisher Doug Henwood. “The only
controversy among the ruling elite is, just how much and what kind” of
austerity. Meanwhile, U.S. organized labor “has no independent politics, and no
independent capacity for thought.”
Philly Schools
Turn Back Clock on Equality
Philadelphia school authorities are calling for draconian changes in the
system’s operations, including elimination of limits on class size – on top
massive school closings. “I think that it’s turning the clock back on
guaranteeing every child equalization of opportunity,” said State Rep. W. Curtis
Thomas. Many schools don’t have libraries, safety officers, nurses, clean
bathrooms, books, computers, or “teachers that are teaching in their areas of
competency,” said Thomas, who wants Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “along
with the federal courts, to step in and straighten this situation
out.”
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