Thursday News

 

We are after 50 years after the March on Washington. There is nothing wrong with having a Dream. The Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. should be respected since all of humanity should be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. Human beings of numerous backgrounds marched to the nation’s capital as a means to seek freedom, jobs, and justice. The vast majority of the masses of the people in both marches (in 1963 and 2013) sincerely wanted justice. They had love and compassion. Yet, justice is not done by marching alone. The act of marching or protesting is not immoral, but solely doing marching is not effective. We have to embrace positive militancy, independent organizations, and independent programs to help our society.  I love Bernice King's speech. Her oratory ability is out of this world. She is a better orator than many folks in her family. Bernice King is a genius. There were many other activists, ex-Presidents, celebrities, and others have spoken about issues and about the Dream. Also, the President Barack Obama delivered his speech recently. The President is a great orator in his own right as well. His speech discussed about the wider agenda of American society instead of explicit policy agendas. His speech oratory wise was very strong. Here is my critique of the President's speech. Now, President Barack Obama even admitted that he can't speak like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His administration has a long way to go in being like the true human rights ethos of Dr. King and so many other heroes. It is ironic that the President spoke his words in the time that U.S. warships in the eastern Mediterranean are preparing to rain down bombs on another impoverished mostly Arabic nation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to mobilized workers and humanity in the South and across the Earth to advance democracy and equality. The White House is still too much tied to the military intelligence apparatus and Wall Street. He can talk about the middle class, but not explicitly on the plight of the poor. The President praised those going to jail to protest unjust laws and cells swelling with freedom songs back decades ago. Yet, the current administration wants the extradition and prosecution of Edward Snowden and he condemned Private Bradley Manning for years in prison. He advances the unconstitutional surveillance program carried out by the National Security Agency or the NSA, which is similar to the spy programs of the FBI (that carried out illegal spying against Americans back then and still today like against the Occupy Movement). The White House abhors civil disobedience now, but he praises it when civil rights heroes did it. If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today, he would have opposed the war on terror. Not to mention that back then Dr. King was harassed by the FBI. The establishment called Dr. King a threat since he was opposed to American foreign policy. King called the US war in Vietnam “one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world,” and one that had “torn up the Geneva Accord” and “strengthened the military-industrial complex [and] the forces of reaction in our nation.” He or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quite accurately called the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” President Barack Obama admitted that we have seen the growth of social and economic tensions in America: “[W]orking Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate,” he said. “Even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes, inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence.” Yet, we have to understand that the Wall Street banks are having record profits at the expense of wage cuts and cuts in social services in America. The President was wrong to blame the victims of oppression instead of the oppressor for our modern oppression with this Booker T. Washington lite quote that he loves to do: “Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior,” he declared. “[What] had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead,” he continued, “was too often framed as a mere desire for government support…as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child...” That is funny since the real source of the social crisis are not excuse making or the poor, but the system of white supremacy and its arms of cartel capitalism, war, socioeconomic attacks on us, etc. Dr. King criticized capitalism since he questioned class oppression and wanted social equality via his Poor People's Campaign. We need revolutionary changes not a reform of capitalism. We must not turn into the Richard Nixonian token black capitalism, but revolutionary changes to address war and social oppression. We must reject the mainstream political establishment. We must be independents and reject banker and corporate exploitation of our communities and workers in the world. This day should motivate us to do better and be better human beings. We all wished that he or President Barack Obama would talk about police brutality, imperialism, the War on Drugs, the evils of white supremacy, etc. but he said many words that were legitimate and real that dealt with economic disparities in America. Ironically, the President has many neoliberal, centrist positions yet the irrational reactionaries still view him as a super socialist Muslim (which is a slander). The Dream calls us to oppose war, oppose police state methods, and oppose the harm to the living standards of all humans. We should follow the agenda of the people not of the ruling class. We know that the CIA and the FBI are terrorist organizations. The DHS violated human rights and they are not to be trusted as well. I do believe that the White House is completely wrong in following the neo-conservative path on foreign policy issues. We should be Independents politically. Regardless of what you think of the White House, we can't just issue legitimate critiques of the White House (which is fine). We should also advance solutions in our communities too and help out our neighbors as well like so many are doing now (including those in the younger generation). We should continue to use action as others have said. The older Brothers and the older Sisters in the world are right  to say that the March of 1963 suppressed numerous militant black voices (even John Lewis censored his words by force) as a means to wrongly stir much of the movement into the establishment 2 party system (to gain concessions not revolutionary changes. A concession can be eliminated and the Supreme Court has harmed many of our concessions. Much of the establishment civil rights movement has been infiltrated by Big Corporate Foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation). Still, there are still real Brothers and real Sisters in the Civil rights movement and the black liberation movement in general. So, I want to make that clear. Today, we should be comprehensive in our approach. We should fight for our liberation in our communities via boycotts, using self defense when it is necessary, being morally upright, fighting for laws to be changed, organizing with our people, funding real businesses, funding real black conscious organizations, advance global pan-Africanism (as we oppose the wicked system of white supremacy), improving our health, having mentorships, developing more skills including trades as a means to harness our power base, and to advance the dignity of Black Men and Black Women (including Black Children). We have no choice but to act constructively.

 

The White House is considering a military strike in Syria. The White House claimed that intercepted phone calls document that Bashar Al-Assad was behind the chemical weapons attack in Syria. The phone calls were made by the Syrian Ministry of Defense. They were intercepted by the Mossad and passed to the U.S. It revealed that Syrian government officials, “exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people,” in the hours after last week’s attack. Why would the Syrian Ministry of Defense make panicked phone calls demanding answers about the attack if they had ordered it? The reality is that the highest levels of the Syrian government apparently had no knowledge of the attack. This strongly suggests that they did not directly order it. There is a worst case scenario of being that the attack was “the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds,” writes Foreign Policy’s Noah Shachtman. “We don’t know exactly why it happened,” a US intelligence official told Foreign Policy. “We just know it was pretty f____ stupid.” Right, we do not have a lot of the details about what happened, why it happened, or who ordered. We have the sabotaging of the UN's investigation of the incident. Now, the U.S. is about to launch cruise missile attacks and this could enflame the whole region. The evidence now suggests that the Syrian government doesn't know who was behind the chemical weapons attack. There has been leaked other phone conversations that emerged earlier this year between two members of the Free Syrian Army contain details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer. We know that are much video footage shows U.S. backed rebels preparing and using chemical weapons. The U.S. government once lied that Iraq had massive weapons of destruction. The Iraq caused thousands of human beings to die as a result of the Iraq War. The Syrian government called for an international and scientific investigation backed by the United Nations to find out who has achieved the chemical attack. Also, it would to not intelligent for Syria to use chemical attacks against their own citizens since that would give the West the justification to strike Syria. There is no military strategic logic in the use of weapons of mass destruction. And, more recently, we could again witness how the United States misled and misused the United Nations when the American government used Resolution 1973 (the establishment of a no-fly zone and the use of “all means necessary” to protect civilians within Libya) to carry out regime change in Libya. The violation of international law and the reactionary foreign policy of the West harm real international diplomatic actions. John Kerry made the error in saying that Syria refused UN investigators to visit the site of the attack. On Thursday, Reuters reported: “The United Nations demanded Syria give its chemical weapons’ experts immediate access on Thursday to rebel-held Damascus suburbs where poison gas appears to have killed hundreds just a few miles from the UN team’s hotel.” In fact, according to an exchange at a news conference at the UN today, the UN did not make a formal request of the Syrian government until Saturday and the Syria government responded positively the next day. Syria is having a civil war and it is not a threat to America. The war crimes of the rebels are ignored by the West, but the Western elite (including their allies found in Israel and Gulf Monarchies) have members who desire a military strike in Syria. At the final analysis, we should be opposed to Empire that is backed by the ruling 1%. So, we will always be opposed to imperialism and any form of oppression.

 

Rand Paul recently made extreme statements. Many Republicans refuse to respect the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington situation. Senator Rand Paul compared food stamps to slavery, which is an old reactionary lie. My ancestors suffered slavery. Slavery dehumanized humanity. Slavery murdered and brutalized innocent human beings because of their background or race. Slavery caused psychological, physical, and emotional turmoil in the lives of human beings too. There is no comparison between food stamps and slavery at all. Food stamps and the social safety net prevented many Americans from facing starvation in the USA. Rand Paul wants no government intervention even if it can be constructively used to help the poor. “As humans, yeah, we do have an obligation to give people water, to give people food, to give people health care,” Paul allowed, “but it’s not a right because once you conscript people and say, ‘Oh, it’s a right,’ then really you’re in charge, it’s servitude, you’re in charge of me and I’m supposed to do whatever you tell me to do.” His views are Randian. The reality is that good government is made up of the people. Since the people represents government then the people via government can help humanity if government is fair and just. There are many human rights explicitly not mentioned in the Constitution. Just because something is not mentioned in the Constitution, doesn't mean that something is not a human right. I have the human right to not be harmed, but that right is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Also, humans are forced to do things sometimes. Humans are forced to not do murder. Humans are forced to not commit perjury. Humans are forced not to do pedophilia. So, these legitimate restrictive actions are meant to enhance society and morality. Many libertarians lack an appreciation of true morality. Even economist and libertarian icon Friederich Hayek believed in a basic guaranteed income and a social safety net (including health care) to ensure a fair democratic society. Rand Paul would disagree with an extreme libertarian like Hayek on that issue. He made the same point in a less popularly known work, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, where he writes that “a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.” In a modern society, Hayek’s saying, we’re obligated to collectively take care of the people who aren’t being provided for by the people immediately around them. Some of the public good can be positive for society. Human rights are not slavery. Human rights are human rights and human rights are superior to states’ rights. Folks in Rand Paul's ilk want to harm Social Security, which has helped tens of millions of the elderly and disabled, avoid falling into poverty.  Ron Paul thinks that the poor should go it alone, without any government help. According to Paul's every-man-for-himself philosophy, any regulation mandating a minimum wage or safer working conditions are a part of "big government," and should be eliminated. Many of the Rand Paul ilk claims to want to end militarization of local communities and oppose militarism overseas, but some of them want to militarize the border in America. So, we are still fighting for justice. We are still fighting for true freedom and equality. I reject xenophobia and other evils in the world. So, our role models are Fannie Lou Hamer, Kwame Ture, Malcolm X, Gloria Richardson, Ella Baker, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., not the Koch Brothers. We should continue to fight for economic justice, social justice, and true equality for all of humanity.

The genocide against our Black Brothers and Black Sisters in Brazil continues to this very day. It did not stop during the time of slavery. There is the recent police brutality against mass demonstrations in Brazil. There is also the massive state violence by the Brazil police forces against the poor Blacks of Brazil. Many Black communities in Brazil are under siege or under attack. This is genocide. Any legitimate community has the right to live and exist without state violence. Now, black human beings in black communities in Salvador, Bahia, etc. created the "React or be Dead" campaign. These activists are fighting against police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and the genocide in black communities. Communities have the right to survive in the world. We should always reject the evil actions of paid death squads, murderous militias, evil police, and extermination groups that want the status quo. Many blacks have died by these murderers as a means to maintain the power structure. Afro-Brazilians are literally fighting for their dignity and survival. This new campaign of genocide since 2005 has not stopped. The homicides in Brazil are more than those in Iraq (which experienced a violent imperialist occupation). The Black movement has delivered reports to the UN and the Organization of America States. Homicides are the principal cause of death for Black males between the ages of 15 and 29.  Furthermore, even the Ministry of Health documented in 2010 that over 53.3% of the roughly fifty thousand homicide deaths in Brazil are youths and from these 76.6% are Black Brazilians and 91.3% are young men. This is coupled with poverty and lack of access to services such as health care and education -- all wide spread manifestations of the white supremacy that is pervasive in the lives Black Brazil and which mark Afro Brazilians as “enemies to be combated” by the Police and injustice systems. We know this to be genocide. Many Black Women in Brazil suffer death, mutilation, and murder. These are our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and aunties in Brazil. These are our people. The Black Communities in Brazil nationally have organized the “March against the Genocide of Black People.” It is indeed “React or be Dead” since the color of homicides is indeed telling of the situation of many Black communities in Brazil. All Afrikan peoples of the world must be protected. We will never forget Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and Zoltan Hyacinth either. We should have solidarity with our Afrikan peoples of the world.
 

Rick Perry has those neo-Confederate tendencies. He wants to cite the Tenth Amendment as an excuse to claim that the federal government has no authority to protect minority voting rights. He is wrong in both constitutional analysis and he is wrong on the Fifteenth Amendment. We witness a new era of voter suppression aimed at minorities, the poor, the elderly, the youth, etc. The reactionaries exaggerate the significance of the Tenth Amendment as a means to bash any expression of a social safety net. That is why the Justice Department announced plans to contest a new Texas law that would require voter IDs supposedly in response to the virtually nonexistent problem of in person voter fraud. Many Republicans want to block blacks, Hispanics, and the poor from voting (since many human beings lack the mandated photo IDs). Texas Governor Rick Perry was well known for his infamous 2012 GOP Presidential campaign. Rick wants to mention the 10th Amendment as a justification to justify his evil anti-voting law. He feels that the Justice Department's move was unconstitutional. “We continue to defend the integrity of our elections against this administration’s blatant disregard for the Tenth Amendment,” Perry declared. Unfortunately, The NY Times and the Washington Post including other mainstream news outlets failed to stand up against the reactionaries' deception on made up constitutional history. The Tenth Amendment amounted to a sop to the states. It was heavily irrelevant since the Constitution already granted an array of broad of powers to the federal government like the elastic language for acting to “promote the general Welfare” and to pass “necessary and proper” laws to implement those powers. However, at the time of the Constitution’s ratification in 1788, supporters of the old structure, the Articles of Confederation, recognized how the new governing document made the federal government supreme and made the states subordinate. The Articles had deemed the states “sovereign” and “independent” with the central government only a “league of friendship.” The Articles of Confederation failed to stabilize the government, so  George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris (who drafted the famous Preamble) – came to hold a convention in secret in Philadelphia to throw out the Articles and to craft the Constitution. Replacing the language about state “sovereignty” and “independence” was the phrasing “We the People of the United States.” Anti-Federalists opposed these changes. They wanted the states to maintain slavery in states. Also, the Fifteenth Amendment explicitly grants the federal government the authority to protect the voting rights of minorities. The Fifteenth Amendment states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” So, Rick Perry's argument makes no sense unless he uses a Confederate view. The Confederate view is that all other Amendments after the end of the Civil War and during Reconstruction are illegitimate since they were imposed on the South. So, whites should still be allowed to own black human beings (prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment) and that legal protections of minorities (contained in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments) should be ignored. That sick view is evil indeed. Yet, some of the Confederate views (that makes states’ rights supreme over human rights) is embraced by many in the Republican Party. The mainstream media in many cases refuses to call these retrograde views as vestiges of slavery, segregation, and racism.

 

By Timothy