Late February News in 2023.

 

This time is one year after the war in Ukraine. This brutal war continues. It all started with Putin's military forces invaded Ukraine preemptively and without justification at all in February of 2022. Since this, Ukraine has been fighting for its life and for democracy. Zelenskyy asks for more aid to Ukraine. Right now, China wants to have a 12-point peace plan to end the conflict. Russian forces have attacked civilian infrastructure like apartments, schools, and other locations. These acts constitute war crimes. Millions of Ukrainian people have been displaced to places globally. The common lie promoted by far-right extremists is that Putin is some superhero. The reality is that Vladimir Putin is a tyrant, a liar, and a person who passed laws suppressing the freedom of press, the freedom of speech, religious liberty rights, and other basic fundamental human freedoms. The lie promoted by some pseudo left people is that NATO is completely at fault for the invasion. The reality is that NATO isn't perfect and made many mistakes for decades, but ultimately Putin invaded Ukraine unjustly. President Joe Biden wants billions of dollars to be sent to Ukraine in the form of missiles, drones, and other supplies. Secretary of State Blinken supports Ukraine. Many people have accused China of planning to send material in the form of military aid to Russia. We desire the war to end as soon as possible. The issue is that Putin refuses to acknowledge Ukraine's sovereignty as a nation. The U.S. $2.5 billion military aid package is very important.

Tucker Carlson is pushing the narrative to minimize the terrorism found in the January 6th insurrection. It was an insurrection and harmed human lives. The GOP via Kevin McCarthy send footage to Kevin McCarthy. The insurrection was violent, and it was seditious. Tucker Carlson made a racist remark that the terrorists involved in January 6th didn't look like "terrorists" but "tourists." He is trying to imply that terrorists look like certain people. Tucker is using coded language, and we know what he means. Kevin McCarthy once condemned the January 6th insurrection, and now he is allying with the propagandist Tucker Carlson. FOX News is not a legitimate, fair and balanced news channel. It is a biased channel that is basically GOP and Trump TV. Carlson once called McCarthy a Democratic puppet which is false, but McCarthy is groveling at the feet at far-right GOP extremists including Tucker Carlson.

This week, Neo-Nazis protested outside a NYC theater. In the past 10 years, far right acts of violence have increased in America. This reality is shown by the January 6th attack, the murder of black people in Buffalo by a racist, the murder of Jewish people in the Los Angeles area, and other people motivated by hate and bigotry. Hatred of any sort of any human being by virtue of background is wrong, because that action is antithetical to the Golden Rule. We can agree to disagree on many issues as free-thinking human beings. Yet, there is nothing moral or free thinking about racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and any form of bigotry against human beings. At the end of the day, we have to treat people like we want to be treated period. All human beings being created equal doesn't have exceptions or asterisks next to it. That precept means every human is born equal and are entitled to fundamental human rights.

Yesterday was the Birthday of the late W.E.B. DuBois. Genius describes him. He wrote some of the greatest prose in human history that details the complex lives of black Americans. He was more than a sociologist and historian. He was a great researcher and a Pan-Africanist civil rights activist including a socialist. A Pan-Africanist is a person who believes in the political, social, and economic justice for black people of African descent globally. Pan Africanists also believes in the fundamental unity of all black people of African descent too. He was born in the North at Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He lived to be 95 years old and passed at Accra, Ghana. We know him from being educated at an HBCUs and in places of Europe to be a huge scholar of politics, culture, and black history. We know him of being part of the Niagara Movement, which included African Americans who wanted equal rights and justice for black people. DuBois wrote against Jim Crow apartheid, lynching, and discrimination. He worked with many Pan-African Congresses for fight for the independence of African people against European imperialism. He lived during the Berlin Conference of 1883 that advanced the injustice of colonialism in Africa. He lived to see Ghana to be free from tyranny too. DuBois wrote literature like The Souls of Black Folks (that says that black Americans have a dual consciousness of American and African influences that we black Americans have to deal with in a racist society).

DuBois wrote his magnus opus of Black Reconstruction in America that refuted the lie that black people were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era. He documented massive racism in the United States military against black soldiers during World War I. He was an editor of the NAACP journal called The Crisis. He criticized capitalism overtly, he was a peace activist, and advocated nuclear disarmament. He met many leaders like Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and Claudia Jones for years. Many of the policies that he promoted would exist in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. DuBois was educated in Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee from 1885 to 1888. He earned a bachelor's degree from Fisk University and earned a Ph.D. too. He taught history and economics at the historically black Atlanta University in Georgia. The FBI and the establishment illegally monitored him, stripped his passports, and used agents to harass him. DuBois knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he wrote about him. He loved his wife and his daughter. His daughter was Yolande Du Bois. His child and grandchildren continued in scholarship. W.E.B. DuBois never let obstacles stifle his cause of Pan Africanism. He fought the good fight. 

Rest in Power Brother W.E.B. DuBois.

By Timothy