U.S. rulers are experiencing a “crisis of political governance, a meltdown of the political system,” due to the “collapse of the parties of the duopoly,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. The policies and practice of both parties “became antagonistic to the minimal expectations of the masses. ”The elite didn’t see it coming,” said Monteiro. “In order to reestablish their legitimacy, they have to say that the Russians hacked the election and are threatening western ‘democracy,’ itself.” The real crisis is “their inability to govern the country.”

U.S. Becomes Ungovernable, Elites Blame it on Russians

Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 27, 2017
U.S. Becomes Ungovernable, Elites Blame it on Russians
U.S. rulers are experiencing a “crisis of political governance, a meltdown of the political system,” due to the “collapse of the parties of the duopoly,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. The policies and practice of both parties “became antagonistic to the minimal expectations of the masses. ”The elite didn’t see it coming,” said Monteiro. “In order to reestablish their legitimacy, they have to say that the Russians hacked the election and are threatening western ‘democracy,’ itself.” The real crisis is “their inability to govern the country.”
Washington’s “Humanitarian” Military Doctrine Based on a Lie
It is a crime in Rwanda to point out that Hutus were massacred by Tutsis, as well as the reverse, during the bloodbath of 1994, or even to refer to the events as the “Rwandan genocide,” explained Ann Garrison, an Oakland, California-based journalist and frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report. The United States backs the regime’s narrative, that it was a one-sided genocide against Tutsis, because “the ideological infrastructure of ‘humanitarian war’ is that” the U.S. failed to intervene in Rwanda, and “therefore we have to bomb Syria, Libya, etc,” said Garrison. However, the U.S. did intervene in Rwanda in 1994 -- to prevent international efforts to halt the violence, in order to insure that the U.S. favorite, the Tutsi warlord Paul Kagame, would win the war.
“There is a Storm a’Coming: Repression Breeds Revolutionary Resistance”
That’s the title of an essay by Khalfani Malik Khaldun, published by Prison Radio. Khaldun is an inmate of Wabash Valley prison in southern Indiana, and an activist in the prison abolition movement. “The condition of imprisonment is tantamount to enslavement,” he writes. “When prison crafts start walking off their jobs, or refuse to be agents of prison exploitation, the movement is winning. When we can improve our lines of communication from state prison to federal prison, to move as one, we are winning.” And, “when social media can be taken advantage of to promote a prison wide national protest, we are winning.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

Black Agenda Radio 20170327

The U.S. attack on a Syrian air base last week was designed to “prolong the war” and ultimately “destroy secular government in the Arab world,” said Margaret Kimberley, an editor and senior columnist at Black Agenda Report. The claim that Syria used chemical weapons against civilians is bogus, said Kimberley, speaking on Sputnik radio. The U.S.-backed Islamic jihadists stand to benefit most. “It’s interesting that these attacks always occur at some moment that is very opportune for them,” she said.  President Trump hopes to increase his approval levels and ward off Democratic attacks. “Because he’s been accused of being under Putin’s influence, carrying out an attack against a Russian ally gives him some protection from those charges.”

Margaret Kimberley

The Democrats “know what they need to do to get out the vote,” said Margaret Kimberley, editor and senior columnist for Black Agenda Report. “They need to raise wages, stop the student loan debt, and protect people’s homes. But none of these things are acceptable to their patrons” among the 1 percent,” said Kimberley, who recently authored an article titled “The Democratic Party Death Spiral.” The Democrats “cannot depend on corporate money and do what the people want them to do.”

Democrats' Formula For Losing Elections

“Dumping the Democrats for good is the only way to resist Trump,” said Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, addressing BAR’s panel at the Left Forum, in New York City. “What have they done since Election Day?” Kimberley asked. “They have refused to give even the appearance that they are willing to push for even meager reforms. We have to talk about replacing them and having a true workers party, a true peace party.”

Democrats Don’t Even Pretend to Back Change

Part Two: Speakers at the UNAC Conference in Richmond, Virginia
Ralph Poynter, New Abolitionist Movement; husband of the late political prisoner and people’s lawyer, Lynne Stewart
Ajamu Baraka, co-founder, Black Alliance for Peace; editor and columnist, Black Agenda Report; Green Party 2016 vice-presidential candidate
Larry Hamm, co-founder and chairman, People’s Organization for Progress, Newark, New Jersey
Margaret Kimberley, member of UNAC administrative committee; editor and senior columnist, Black Agenda Report
Jaribu Hill, Founder and Executive Director of the Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights

UNAC conference Part 2, Ralph Pointer, Ajamu Baraka, Jaribu Hill, Larry Hamm, Margaret Kimberley

U.S. efforts to topple the socialist government in Venezuela are largely driven by Washington’s quest to control the global energy market. “The energy question hovers above all others,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It is felt among rightwing Texas oil men that if the United States can get a stranglehold over Venezuelan oil, then Texas and the U.S. will be in position to dominate what remains of the oil industry” in the future, said Horne. “Washington feels it is on a roll” with the rise of rightwing governments in Brazil and Argentina, said Horne.

U.S. Aims to Claim Venezuelan Oil

BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley said it’s “silly” to debate whether Donald Trump is a white supremacist, or not. “Yes, Trump is racist,” said Kimberley, “but 60 million people voted for him.” Racism pays political dividends in the U.S. “We should spend our time talking about obvious evidence of white supremacy in the entire system,” she said.

Trump AND America are White Supremacist

Anyone that claims to be “on the left” must defend 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, the latest victim of the anti-Russian dragnet.

First They Came for Jill Stein

“Democrats are waging an all-out war against anyone that opposes them from the Left,” said Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley in her Freedom Rider column, “First They Came for Jill Stein.” The Green Party standard bearer “has been a convenient scapegoat” for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, said Kimberley. The vendetta against Stein “is an attack on the ability to publicly oppose U.S. foreign policy and freely communicate with people and governments all over the world.”

Stein is Clinton’s Scapegoat

The US state of permanent war threatens the health, housing, education and quality of life of all Americans, and the literal lives of millions overseas. But the resistance isn't resisting empire, only the Republicans.

The So-Called Resistance Isn't Resisting the State of Permanent War

Cooperation Jackson activist Kali Akuno said the grassroots movement can count on broad aspects of unity with the overwhelmingly Black capital city’s political class. However, “in the era of neoliberalism we are fighting to get those same political forces to not concede to the dictates of big business, to the corporations, to capital, and to not make concessions to privatization” or weaken protections to working people.

Holding the Line Against Neoliberalism in Jackson MS

“We should hear about these killings every day, because they happen every day,” said Margaret Kimberley, editor and senior columnist (“Freedom Rider”) for Black Agenda Report. Kimberley is encouraged by the response to Stephon Clark’s death-by-cops in Sacramento, California, but the scale of protest is dwarfed by the crimes. “Every day, an average of three people are killed by police, and one of these people will be a Black person,” said Kimberley. “These protests should be constant.

Every Murdered Black Person Deserves Protest

Russiagate “has blossomed and blossomed until it’s this huge thing that obliterates rational thought,” said veteran media critic Jeff Cohen, of the Park Center for Independent Media, at Ithaca College. The Democrats have inflated the controversy beyond all reason in order to avoid confronting how they “failed to stop someone who clearly has fascist tendencies -- the current president.”

Russiagate is Excuse for Democratic Party Failure

“The elders” told Jenifer Wilson that there would soon be an assault on Harem “to take the community from us, all the spaces.” So Wilson founded the Sisters’ Uptown Bookstore and Cultural Center, the only Black-owned bookstore in upper Harlem, in 2007. “My efforts became directed to putting my energies in the community.”

A Premonition of Gentrification in Harlem

“They won’t do anything for us and, in fact, they’ll vote alongside our enemies,” said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, referring to the Congressional Black Caucus’s overwhelming support for a bill to make police a protected class. “They are actively supporting a group of people that have a license to kill,” said Kimberley.

The “Bought-Off” Black Caucus

“We see the Democrats, who are supposed to be a party of civil liberties and human rights, adopting McCarthyist tactics,” said Jeremy Kuzmarov, co-author, along with John Marciano, of The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce. Putin is “rather conservative” on the Russian political spectrum,” said Kuzmarov. “He’s not a threat to the West, at all.”

Russiagate is an Historical “Farce”

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 State. “They knew that deindustrialization was coming; they knew that dismantling of the welfare state was coming; they knew that an unprecedented regime of racialized capture was coming in the form of mass incarceration.”

Underground Fugitives Foresaw US Decline and Repression

“In the 8 years that Barack Obama was president, “AFRICOM went from 3 military bases to 84 bases” on the continent, said Paul Pumphrey, co-founder of Friends of Congo, speaking at a conference against US and NATO bases in Dublin, Ireland. Between 1996 and 2006, the US-backed regimes of Rwanda and Uganda, “by UN estimates, killed over 6 million people in Congo,” said Pumphrey.

Obama Militarily Occupied Africa

With the CIA on point, U.S. militarists are implementing Joseph Goebbel’s formula to reignite the Cold War. “You tell a very big lie, and tell it over and over again, and it becomes the truth,” said Ron Ridenour, author of The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon On Alert.

Russiagate is “The Big Lie”

Not only have Russiagate-mongers “instilled fear of Russia as an enemy, but also a seemingly omnipotent enemy that can swing U.S. elections, somehow,” said Dan Kovalik, author of The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.

Anti-Russian Hysteria Makes Americans Stupid

Precisely because the claim of Wikileaks-Russian-Trump “collusion” remains unproven, the Democrats and the corporate media “have to find new ways of whipping up this story,” said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley. “Every time something is disproven,” said Kimberley, “it actually prolongs this story because they cannot admit that they have carried out this scam for so long.”

Russiagate: The Scam That Will Not Die

“The hard work of becoming a billionaire is called exploitation,” said William Anderson, co-author of the book “As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation.” Anderson calls for the immediate abolition of poverty.

Exploitation + Capitalism = Wealth

The conspirators have accomplished their marathon disinformation mission.

When Does Post-Russiagate Begin?

Asked why purported “progressives” insist on expressing their personal dislike for Julian Assange, noted author Maximillian Forte, a professor of anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, said some are angry because they blame Wikileaks’ publication of embarrassing emails for Hillary Clinton’s presidential defeat. Others simply call Assange a “traitor,” said Maximillian. “I suppose they don’t know that he’s not actually an American citizen.”

Corporate Media and Fake Leftists are the Real Traitors to Press Freedoms

During the 1950s, the NAACP conspired with the CIA to lure South African Black liberationists into the US orbit, said Dr. Gerald Horne, prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. The NAACP failed to “flip” African National Congress activists into the anti-communist camp, according to Horne, who’s newest book is titled White Supremacy Confronted: US Imperialism and Anti-Communism Versus the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela.

NAACP Worked with CIA to Subvert African Liberation

Daoud Andre: The US only respects its own rigged elections, like Haiti & Venezuela; Jennifer Harvey: white parents need to train their kids to be anti-racists; In Them Goons Rule Marquis Bey offers four essays on radical black feminism.

Black Agenda Radio, Week of January 14, 2019

The corporate media seemed disappointed that President Trump “pulled back” from attacking Iran after that nation shot down a US spy drone. Said BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley: “For all of their alleged opposition to Trump, we can see that they are all still very much on board with the imperial project and with the belief that the United States has the right to intervene anywhere in the world, at any time.”

Corporate Media Monger for War

“Pervasive racism in the medical profession” is to blame for the fact that three times as many Black mothers die in child-birth as whites,” said Dana-Ain Davis, author of “Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy and Premature Birth.” Bad medical outcomes will continue for Blacks until the medical structure “is able to acknowledge that racism permeates the system,” said Davis, director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the City University of New York.

Racist US Medical System Kills Black Mothers

Jay-Z isn’t just trying to make another billion bucks by undermining Colin Kaepernick and the “take a knee” movement, said Louis Jefferson, funder of the San-Jose, California-based African Liberation Lab for Revolutionary Qulture. The rapper is jockeying to join football league owners in glorifying the flag and luring volunteers into the US war machine. “A lot of that is being marketed through the NFL” and “through commercials that promote the military,” said Jefferson.

Jay-Z Seeks to Profit from the War Machine

If the Democrats were a real, mass based party, they would never consider Joe Biden as their nominee because he has no support among the people that energize parties: the youth.

The Quinnipiac poll shows Joe Biden running fourth in the Democratic presidential field in Iowa, behind Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and  Bernie Sanders, in that order. That’s very bad news for the corporate oligarchs that actually control the Democratic Party and have been counting on Biden to be the guardian of the oligarchy’s interests. But, there’s another poll result that shows what a scam – a rich man’s scam -- the duopoly electoral system really is. Joe Biden is supported by only six percent of Iowa Democrats aged 18 to 49. Just six percent. The rest of Biden’s support comes from people 50 and older. That means, hardly any Iowa Democrats that are not deep into middle-age want Biden to head the party ticket. Iowa is, of course, an overwhelmingly white state. But Biden is not very popular with Black younger people, either. An Essence magazine poll taken in September showed Biden to be running fourth among Black women, aged 18 to 34, behind Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Warren, in that order. And an October Morning Consult poll had Biden garnering the support of only one out of four Black voters, aged 18 to 29. Other polls show that, even those Democrats that plan to vote for Biden aren’t enthusiastic about him.
What these numbers actually show, is that the Democratic Party is not a political party in the classic sense, at all. If it were, a Biden nomination would already be out of the question because real mass political parties run on the energy of their members, people who believe in the party’s principles and policies. The most energetic cohort of all real political parties, is the youth, who infuse the organization and the political mission with their dynamism. It is inconceivable that a real political party, answerable to its members, would even consider running a candidate for president that was roundly rejected by nearly everybody below the age of 50. But the Democrats and the Republicans are not mass political parties. They are not run the people who vote for them. They are controlled by their corporate funders, who make sure that rich people’s interests are protected at every money-soaked stage of the electoral game. 
Real political parties move on people power, mass mobilizations, and the hyper-enthusiasm of the youth. The Democrats and the Republicans run on television ads and professional consultants paid for with bundled money from the fat cats at Goldman Sachs. 
Tens of millions of Americans call themselves Democrats or Republicans, but they don’t pay dues to the party, and only a tiny fraction of them participate in the process that chooses local party officials. The vast majority of people are only Democrats or Republicans in the sense that they vote for candidates on those parties’ menus on Election Day, every couple of years. Other than that, they have no connection to the party, and the party has none to them. 
And that’s the way the rich people like it.  The American two-corporate party electoral system is designed to keep the people as far away from the decision-making process as possible, and to make money the decisive factor. That’s why Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can arrogantly dismiss the Green New Deal, even though it’s supported by 9 out of 10 people that call themselves Democrats, nationwide, and by most of her San Francisco constituents. But the rich people don’t like the Green New Deal.  And Pelosi works for them.
The U.S. party system is a farce, a trick, a bamboozelment of the masses, who have no more say over Democratic and Republican party affairs than baseball fans have over which players get hired. They are, essentially, spectators at a rich man’s game.
I’m Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report.

The Dems and Repubs are Moneypots, Not Real Political Parties

Journalist and activist Aneri Pattani, in an article for Truthout, said a number of factors contribute to high rates of post-birth depression among Black mothers in the US, including “toxic stress from enduring racism,” poverty and “abusive relationships,” mothers’ fears of being labeled mentally ill, and unresponsive health care institutions.

Black Women and Babies Endangered by Untreated Depression

Dems Won’t Impeach Trump for Crimes They Favor
Donald Trump is guilty of many impeachable acts, but the Ukraine scandal “pales into insignificance compared to everything else Trump has done,” said University of Illinois professor of international law Dr Francis Boyle. The US assassination of Iranian general Suleimani violated US and international law and is an impeachable offense, for example, but “most of the mainstream Democrats have supported” the killing of Suleimani.
British Colonial Racism Comes to Roost
Although Britain never experienced a civil rights movement on its own soil, such movements did take place “in its colonies...in anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles,” said Adam Elliott-Cooper, a Black activist and doctoral student at Oxford University. Black protest in Britain is informed by that colonial history.
Uncle Sam the Hit Man
Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, says the US is living up to its reputation as an international assassin with its hit on an Iranian general on Iraqi soil. “America is more hated today than ever,” said Abu Jamal, co-author of the multi-volume book, “Murder, Incorporated.”
Black Women and Babies Endangered by Untreated Depression
Journalist and activist Aneri Pattani, in an article for Truthout, said a number of factors contribute to high rates of post-birth depression among Black mothers in the US, including “toxic stress from enduring racism,” poverty and “abusive relationships,” mothers’ fears of being labeled mentally ill, and unresponsive health care institutions.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 13, 2020

Yafeuh Balogon, a leader of the Dallas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which advocates armed Black self-defense, said the club was inspired by the “founding of the Black Panther Party, more than half a century ago. When armed white supremacists tried to stage a show of force in the Black section of Dallas in 2016, “we were able to drive them out,” However, “ideology is more important than the weapons,” said Balogon.

Black Self-Defense is Important, But Ideology is Paramount

On January 31 activists plan to confront New York City cops in protests over high transit fares and police brutality, under the banner “F.T.P,” according to Shannon Jones, of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability. The initials stand for “’F’ the Police, Feed the People, ‘F’ the Politicians , and ‘F’ the Prisons,” said Jones.

Catch the “‘F’ the Police” Train

The US became deeply involved in global counterinsurgency after World War Two, said Stuart Schrader, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Badges Without Borders: Howe Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.” In the Sixties, Washington “replicated domestically what the United States was already doing oversees in the guise of preventing communist revolution.,” said Schrader.

Roots of Imperial Policing

Black Self-Defense is Important, But Ideology is Paramount
Yafeuh Balogon, a leader of the Dallas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which advocates armed Black self-defense, said the club was inspired by the “founding of the Black Panther Party, more than half a century ago. When armed white supremacists tried to stage a show of force in the Black section of Dallas in 2016, “we were able to drive them out,” However, “ideology is more important than the weapons,” said Balogon.
Catch the “‘F’ the Police” Train
On January 31 activists plan to confront New York City cops in protests over high transit fares and police brutality, under the banner “F.T.P,” according to Shannon Jones, of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability. The initials stand for “’F’ the Police, Feed the People, ‘F’ the Politicians , and ‘F’ the Prisons,” said Jones.
Roots of Imperial Policing 
The US became deeply involved in global counterinsurgency after World War Two, said Stuart Schrader, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Badges Without Borders: Howe Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.” In the Sixties, Washington “replicated domestically what the United States was already doing oversees in the guise of preventing communist revolution.,” said Schrader.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 20, 2020

Omali Yeshitela said his African Peoples Socialist Party’s upcoming plenary gathering is designed to “build and strengthen the regional components of our party through the world.” The APSP aims to “turn every African community in the world into a bastion of anti-colonial hostility,” said chairman Yeshitela.

Africa Peoples Socialist Party Heightens Struggle

Black women played a central role in the fight against European colonization, said Annette Joseph Gabriel, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book, “Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire.” Joseph-Gabriel examines the lives and struggles of seven women activists who “understood that white supremacy was global in scale and scope, and that the resistance – and imagining of new worlds – also had to be global,” she said.

Black Women Against White Supremacist Empire

Zifeng Liu, a doctoral student in Africana Studies at Cornell University, has authored a paper on Black activist Claudia Jones, who was deported from the US for her communist affiliations. Jones was an unstinting fighter for socialism and decolonization. Liu’s paper is titled, “Decolonization Is Not a Dinner Party: Claudia Jones, China’s Nuclear Weapons, and Afro-Asian Solidarity.”

Claudia Jones: Black Feminist Fighter for Socialism

African Peoples Socialist Party Heightens Global Struggle
Omali Yeshitela said his African Peoples Socialist Party’s upcoming plenary gathering is designed to “build and strengthen the regional components of our party through the world.” The APSP aims to “turn every African community in the world into a bastion of anti-colonial hostility,” said chairman Yeshitela.
Black Women Against White Supremacist Empire
Black women played a central role in the fight against European colonization, said Annette Joseph-Gabriel, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book, “Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire.” Joseph-Gabriel examines the lives and struggles of seven women activists who “understood that white supremacy was global in scale and scope, and that the resistance – and imagining of new worlds – also had to be global,” she said.
Claudia Jones: Black Feminist Fighter for Socialism
Zifeng Liu, a doctoral student in Africana Studies at Cornell University, has authored a paper on Black activist Claudia Jones, who was deported from the US for her communist affiliations. Jones was an unstinting fighter for socialism and decolonization. Liu’s paper is titled, “Decolonization Is Not a Dinner Party: Claudia Jones, China’s Nuclear Weapons, and Afro-Asian Solidarity.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

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