[Peace-discuss] Fw: [BA_Report] The KONY Scam / Farewell Kucinich / Racist Empire / Obama Role Model? - BAR March 14

Wed Mar 14 20:57:13 UTC 2012

----- Original Message ----- 
From: glen.ford at blackagendareport.com 
To: ba_report at lists.blackagendareport.net 
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:38 AM
Subject: [BA_Report] The KONY Scam / Farewell Kucinich / Racist Empire / Obama Role Model? - BAR March 14

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

Social Media Scam Alert: Top Ten Ways to Tell Kony is Phony 

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon<

A week ago Invisible Children released a video that was immediately picked up and promoted by every corporate news and entertainment outlet till it went "viral".  Kony 2012 allegedly "promote awareness" of and contributes to the end of child soldiering in Africa.  But is that really what it's about?  Is it, like the old Save Darfur war dance, another propaganda campaign to justify US intervention in Africa? 

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Freedom Rider: Farewell Congressman Kucinich

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
With the gerrymandered defeat of Dennis Kucinich, the Congress has lost its last, best progressive. "Called crazy or wacky, Kucinich is nothing more than what other Democrats ought to be." Kucinich stood firm, when all in the Progressive and Black Caucuses folded. "If there is no room for one, not even one true Democrat, then there should no longer be any allegiance to that party." 

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The U.S. Empire's Achilles Heel: Its Barbaric Racism

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
American racism will always cripple its ability to occupy non-white countries, whose people the U.S. fundamentally disrespects. "The United States cannot help but be a serial abuser of the rights of the people it occupies, especially those who are thought of as non-white, because it is a thoroughly racist nation." The latest atrocities in Afghanistan are just par for the course.

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Obama Deserves Impeachment for War Policies, But Few Dare Say So - and Most of Them are Republicans

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
It has fallen mainly to Republicans to challenge President Obama's military flaunting of both U.S. and international law. A North Carolina congressman named Jones has submitted a resolution that would hold Obama liable to impeachment if he attacks Syria or any other country without an act of authorization from Congress. It is an action that "should have emanated from the Congressional Progressive and Black Caucuses, rather than the Republican Right."

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No FEAR: Chapter 3 -- Ultimatum To Public Service

by Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo, a heroine of the whistleblower movement, tells her story in the book No Fear: A Whistleblowers Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA. She is also an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report, and has graciously allowed us to serialize her book. This is the latest installment. 

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Is Barack Obama a Fit Role Model for Black Youth? 

by Paul Street
The last refuge of the Obama apologist is to hold up the president and his family as role models for Black America, especially Black youth. The reality is that Obama has "put a technically black presidential face on each of what the democratic socialist King called 'the triple evils that are interrelated'i - economic exploitation (capitalism), racism." This alleged role model is better described as "the latest and re-branded out-front Don Corleone for the biggest mob outfit of all time - the white-owned and white-run American State-Capitalist Empire." 

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Occupy Education vs Gates Foundation: Policy Throwdown!

by Jesse Hagopian 
The direct ancestors of today's high stakes tests were "designed by racist pseudoscientists of the early 20th century" to "prove that whites born in the U.S. were the most intelligent of all peoples." Today's tests, championed by corporations and the Obama administration, are designed to "prove that some students - Black students, students of color generally and working-class kids - belong at the bottom." Occupy movement teachers challenged the billionaires' minions to a debate. 

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Attorney General Eric Holder: Wrong on the Law, the Politics, and on the Wrong Side of History

by Wilmer J. Leon III, Ph.D.
The first Black president and first Black attorney general have so twisted the Constitutional guarantees of due process of law, that "not only can American citizens be indefinitely detained, they can also be assassinated by their own government at the will and whim of their President." Eric Holder's interpretation of the nation's basic law is both sinister and incompetent. "Holder sounds a lot like former Bush administration counsel John Yoo, the author of the opinion justifying torture." 

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Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey - Week of March 12, 2012

Civil Rights Groups "Dropped the Ball" on Affirmative Action
In their zeal to help the Democratic Party, mainline civil rights organizations have "dropped the ball" on affirmative action, said Donna Stern, of By Any Means Necessary. "They are very much responsible, in terms of their inactions, for the loss of rights that were gained during the civil rights movement. Their deep ties to the Democratic Party" means not talking about race, if they can avoid it," said Stern. Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary mounted student demonstrations outside federal district court in Cincinnati, where lawyers argued that referendums on affirmative action be outlawed. "A white majority does not have the right to vote up or down whether minorities have equal rights," said Stern.
Obama: The Assassination President
"When the history books are written, Obama is going to be known as the assassinations president," said Kevin Alexander Gray, the Columbia, South Carolina-based writer and political activist. "Everything that he has done in regards to the Constitution and transparency and protecting human rights and the due process rights of all people, regardless of nationality, has been a failure." Attorney General Eric Holder's narrow definition of "due process" of law is really "the due process of the star chamber. Traditional civil rights organizations have not moved to "checked" Obama because "they are all in the tank for the administration," said Gray.
Call to Support May 1 General Strike
In an Open Letter to Occupy Wall Street and the movement's supporters, OWS activist Dennis Trainor called a proposed May 1 general strike "one of the biggest opportunities to demonstrate our power, and that we have not gone away." Organized labor cannot be expected to be central to the action, because "the right to strike, for unions, has been all but taken away." Rather, the strike would mobilize student and community groups in targeted cities. Trainor's latest documentary, "Which Side Are You On?" is scheduled for release at the end of April.
Bring Me the Head of Ed DeMarco!
President Obama must fire Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director Ed DeMarco because he "has flatly refused to do any kind of principal reduction for the millions of 'underwater' homeowners that are suffering, that are drowning in debt because of how the banks crashed the economy," said Tracy Van Slyke, co-director of New Bottom Line. The coalition of faith-based and community organizations demand a "minimum of $300 billion in principal reduction." Van Slyke claims New Bottom Line and other Occupy Wall Street-related efforts have "moved the administration far along from where they were. We have moved the dial."
Obama and Wall Street Money
Scholar and activist Paul Street finds it curious that at study of 68 most influential Wall Street firms shows the fat cats giving Mitt Romney 12 times as much money as Obama. "The real test will come when Obama and Romney go up against each other," said Street, author of The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. He notes that Obama has held a record 191 fundraisers in the last year. "It would be pretty ironic" if Wall Street abandoned Obama, said Street, "because he has given them everything they wanted."
UNAC Conference March 23-25
The United National Anti-War Coalition's conference, in Stamford, Connecticut, "is THE antiwar conference and, perhaps, the main conference on the left, this year," said UNAC spokesperson Joe Lombardo. The Obama administration plans new aggressions, at home and abroad, which is why they are narrowing the definition of "due process" of law. "What they're really doing," said Lombardo, "is preparing for increased military and economic attacks, and they don't want to see an opposition and a protest movement built up." 

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