Table of Contents

There are 16 chapters this this eBook

1 - About BlackCommentator.com

2 - Cover Story: The 2013 Inauguration and the Road Forward - The African World By Bill Fletcher, Jr., BC Editorial Board

3 - Gun Control - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

4 - Slavery Exists, and in 2013, Rich Nations Benefit From Slavery - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

5 - Obamas Biggest Challenge - People without Jobs - Left Margin By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

6 - Mr. Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore or Googles 24-Hour Spies - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

7 - Obama - Organizing for America - Action - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

8 - Pointing Fingers - Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

9 - Tyranny and Thugs - Sharp n Blunt - By Desi Cortez - BC Columnist

10 - Can We Raise a New Generation of Non-Violent People? - A Poem and an Essay - By Joe Navarro - BC Guest Commentator

11 - Zero Dark Nigger - Point Blank - By Chris Stevenson - BC Columnist

12 - Stay True to the Struggle - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

13 - Does Obamas Linking of Selma to Stonewall Divide the Black Community? Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

14 - Pope Benedict XVIs Homophobic Rhetoric - Political Cartoon By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

15 - Consider - Art/Sculpture By Margaret Warfield, Atlanta GA

16 - Quote to Ponder: The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation. - President James Earl Carter, Jr

This is an eBook version of BlackCommentator.com - An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace.

BC Provides commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world.

BC was established April 5, 2002 and is published weekly on Thursday.

Executive Editor: David A. Love, JD - Managing Editor: Nancy Littlefield, MBA - Publisher: Peter Gamble

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

The 2013 Inauguration

and

The Road Forward

Obama is definitely a great and compelling speaker, certainly by mainstream political standards. But that is not what I was pondering in listening to the Inaugural Address on January 21st. Rather, what struck me was that this was both a proclamation of the existence of a bloc of forces in this country that made it possible for him to win re-election, and at the same time, it was an unusual call to action.

Listening to Obama, he named names. He spoke of different segments of the population that have been historically oppressed and marginalized. African Americans, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, etc., were all named. He spoke of inequality and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. He spoke of climate change, as well as the need to end perpetual war. In other words, he spoke about and to those who constitute a bloc for progress in this country.

He also challenged his listeners with what I believe was a call to action, a call to action that includes taking on the irrationalism and anti-governmental fervent of the political Right.

So, it was quite a speech. But what does it mean?

Obama’s speeches have a tendency to confuse the listener, not at the moment, but in the aftermath. On the one hand, he regularly delivers powerful and thoughtful oration that is quite progressive. This takes place while he is also conducting the affairs of government in a manner that runs counter to those words. For those reasons, it is critical that we reiterate that there is Obama-the-individual and Obama-the-administration. The first is interesting, but not so important. The second is of critical importance.

The Obama administration is more than one person. It represents a governing body led by President Obama but not led as if by a Roman emperor. It is something of a hive mind that has various components with their overall objective being to strengthen the dominant role of the USA on the world-scale and to ensure the stability and growth of global capitalism. Obama is not a figurehead but he is equally not an absolute monarch. He, to borrow from Star Trek: First Contact, brings order to chaos. He is the ultimate decision-maker, but in making those decisions, myriad considerations and interests are factored.

For this reason Obama’s Inaugural Address should be understood as very important but not representing a promise of direction. The Address is important in that it publicly recognizes his constituency and also helps his constituency, much of which is the mass base for a progressive bloc in this country, gain awareness of their own existence as being more than just isolated pockets. Such recognition by the President, along with the growing self-recognition, lays the foundation for progressive action that can supersede the limitations of the President.

Yet, because Obama is and has been a corporate liberal and tied to the exigencies of this system, his words cannot be interpreted as a personal commitment to a specific form of action. To put it another way, just because Obama says ‘it’ does not mean that he will act upon ‘it.’ This is what makes the second issue so important: the call to action.

During his first four years, Obama demonstrated that he will do little, short of pressure. The political Right understands this. They also understand that Obama has an irresistible impulse to compromise. They take advantage of that. For that reason, Obama’s words must be used by those on the progressive side of the aisle as a ‘mandate’ for mass action. Irrespective of intent, President Obama has opened up a gateway through which we should march. Liberals and progressives need not wait for further instructions, signs, or signals. They will not be coming. The Inaugural Address is all that was necessary at a mass, mainstream level, to do what Franklin Roosevelt suggested so very long ago: make him do ‘it’!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board memberand Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is aSenior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum, and the author of “They’reBankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of SolidarityDivided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Jan 24, 2013 -Issue 501

Gun Control

Political Cartoon

By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

BlackCommentator.comcartoonist/artist Eric Garcia produces historically based, politically charged criticism, with the goal of creating dialogue about the contemporary issues”. That’s how Garcia describes his artwork. A versatile artist working in an assortment of media, from paintings, to hand-printed posters, to sculpture installations, Garcia’s art has a common goal of educating and challenging. Click here to contact brother Eric. His website is southvalleyart.com. Follow Eric on twitter garciaink@twitter.com or friend Eric J. Garcia on facebook.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Slavery Exists, and in 2013,
Rich Nations Benefit From Slavery

The estimate today is that there are some 27 million slaves in the world. Now, no one knows exactly how many there are, because, since slavery is outlawed around the world, it is a rather clandestine enterprise. Modern slavers don’t advertise.

They don’t have to, but their “wares” are not hard to find. Kevin Bales, who authored the book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, is founder of the U.S.-based Free the Slaves, sister group of the oldest human rights organization in the world, the U.K.-based Anti-Slavery International, founded in 1840.

Bales is also a statistician and he believes that the 27 million figure is a conservative estimate for the total number of people enslaved around the world. This compares with the number of slaves in the Americas during the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade: About 13 million.

After decades of abolitionist movements in many nations in the 19th Century, including the U.S., as well as a Civil War, which may have been one of the bloodiest in the history of war, is it not surprising that there are still slaves…everywhere? A definition of slavery is “the state of a person who is a chattel of another.” That means a human being that is owned by another human being.

The new definition includes those who, because of circumstances and usually because of abject poverty and other conditions that lead to depravity, are forced to perform work for little or no pay, to the extent that their condition in life does not improve and is not likely ever to improve. That goes for the individual and for his or her family.

Estimates are that, in the U.S. during slavery, a slave could be worth $40,000 in 2013 dollars, while a slave in today’s global economy is worth as little as $90. Bales and others have pointed out that it is not worth it for the slave master to “own” a slave today for a couple of reasons: Firstly, it is illegal. Secondly, why take on the responsibility for the food and lodging, for clothing and equipment, for a people who will work for small wages, much of which can be coerced from them by charging for the necessary supplies and equipment needed to do the job at hand?

In many ways, it is cheaper to force labor today under slave-like conditions than it was in the 18th and 19th Centuries in America. It is much more profitable, as well. And, today, race, ethnicity, nationality, and religious affiliation have no bearing on who is a good prospect for a slave job. It could be anyone in a condition of poverty or living in a failed country that has no structure of government that is able to protect men, women, and children under the laws and conventions that prohibit (in international agreements on paper) slavery or forced labor conditions.

The short explanation is that there are billions of dollars to be made by using slave labor, so companies and individuals will set themselves up to employ slave laborers in the hundreds of thousands and the millions. It is what has happened in most of the world since the advent of the “global economy.” The relationships between and among corporations of every stripe and size, in scores of countries, have quickly developed to take advantage of poverty, ignorance, sickness, and lack of democratic political structures, to set up factories, plants, and agricultural operations that hold out the promise of a real life for potential workers. The workers quickly realize that they are trapped and there is no escape. The promises are illusory.

At best, many millions of workers in shops that employ “sweated labor,” are paid wages so low that they can barely afford to get to work and back home. In the United States, the places of “sweated labor” were once the ignition points of union organization and the places where the workers rose up to demand their rights as human beings. The result was the union movement and a rising of a giant and relatively prosperous working class and an affluent middle class. The relentless attack on workers and unions in America has resulted in a diminution of unions, social and economic problems, a great political divide, and a vast disparity in wealth between the wealthiest 2 percent and the rest of the people.

So-called developed countries, the rich countries, may be devoid of actual slave labor, but they benefit from slave labor performed in low-wage countries. Not only do they buy the actual goods produced in slave-labor countries, but the simple fact that slave labor exists and corporations have taken their factories and production to those countries tends to keep a strong downward pressure on wages of workers at home.

In the U.S. are headquartered some of the largest and most powerful transnational corporations in the world. Much of their production is done in low-wage countries and work that was once done here is now done elsewhere. The jobs, the economic activity, and the wealth are gone, and they probably won’t be coming back soon.

Because workers in those countries are paid something, they may not be considered slaves, but their pay often is less than an American plantation owner would have had to pay for food, shelter, and clothing for their slaves (all figured in 2013 dollars). The workers in 2013 who are paid such wages cannot live on such paltry pay. They can’t move to another country. They can’t educate themselves. They can’t feed their families a diet that will make them healthy. They can’t buy needed medicine. They are slaves and their servitude lays low the global working classes in countries that take advantage of the produce of those slaves.

The U.S. is one of those countries. While there may be only a very small proportion of workers who are actual slaves, a huge percentage of consumer goods imported and sold in giant retail outlets in America are made by slaves or those forced to endure slave-like conditions. What of our 21st Century abolitionists? Most of the people, the customers and consumers, are not aware or are not interested. The press is not much interested (it’s too complicated to report on a 20-minute national news show). And, low wages, slavery (in other countries, that is), high unemployment at home, low prices for consumer goods, and high profits have just become a way of life for the corporations. Some of those same corporations even own the mass media, and that sometimes makes it difficult to report on that aspect of their parent corporations, which make huge profits from importation of slave-made goods.

Although the numbers of workers in the U.S. who could be described as slaves or who work in peonage conditions is relatively small, there have been domestic workers who are slaves and untold thousands of farm workers and other workers in the nation’s food system who work for so little that they are deemed wage slaves by many. For these latter, they cannot afford to send their children to school, to buy a house (or even rent a decent home), buy healthful food, and clothe their families properly.

The benefits enjoyed by the people of the rich countries at the expense of sweated and slave labor in other countries are enormous. The answer to the question “where are the modern abolitionists?” is that they are waiting to be educated. Most people do not want to benefit from the suffering of other people (probably with few exceptions), but they do not know what to do. There are dedicated abolitionists who are ready to teach them, but getting the word out to the general public is a slow process.

In addition to Free the Slaves (freetheslaves.net), there are various United Nations agencies that address the crimes of slavery and human trafficking, including the International Labour Organization.

To get an idea of the extent of slavery in the world, see the interactive map on Free the Slaves’ website. The map shows the presence of slavery and indicates who benefits from slavery. The most slaves are to be found in Asia (including India), Africa and parts of the Middle East, in Mexico and Central America and South America.

The abolitionist group describes North America, Europe, Australia, and the nations of the former Soviet Union as nations that are “mainly (receivers) of slave labor and products.” Also, Free the Slaves describes Asia, Africa, South America, and Central America as places where “slave labor is used both internally and exported.”

The crime of slavery and human trafficking is devastating to the slaves, to their families, and to their nations. It debases and destroys their lives and is like a cancer in their societies. And, it is no less a cancer to those in societies that benefit from such abuse, but how does one in a rich nation stop it?

- The first step is to educate oneself and to educate others about slavery, wage slavery, peonage, and other crimes against people.

- The second is to educate family members, friends, and neighbors, and then educate the community.

- Learn which products that are sold in stores you frequent are made by slaves or under questionable circumstances.

- Trace the global routes that the products take to reach your home.

- The very act of learning and teaching one or two others is a step toward abolition.

- Sponsoring a community forum on slavery is even better.

There aremany organizations that address this modern scourge, but a good place to startis the Free the Slaves website. From there, you will find others and they willgive a much broader sense of the scope of the problem and the crime. The sooneryou start, the better. Good luck!

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello,is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who livesin the Mohawk Valleyof New YorkState. Inaddition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as theystruggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory foodproducers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Obama’s Biggest Challenge

People Without Jobs

So much for the hopeful news. African American unemployment actually increased last month and - as has become usual - the rate for young black people remained at an alarming level.

While the overall jobless rate stayed at 7.8 percent, the percentage of African Americans looking for work and finding none went from 13.2 percent in November to 14 percent in December, and black teen joblessness rate rose 39.9 percent to 40.5 percent by the end of the year. It reached 44.9 percent among young black men. The rate for Latinos remains higher than the national average at 9.6 percent, down from 9.9 percent in November.

This Labor Department’s new report comes with the usual caveat: these figures do not include workers who have given up looking.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist, Heidi Shierholz, called the December job statistics a “status quo.” “The problem, of course, is that a status quo report in today’s labor market represents an ongoing jobs crisis,” she wrote. “The jobs deficit - the number of jobs lost since the recession officially began five years ago plus the number of jobs we should have added just to keep up with the normal growth in the potential labor force - remains nearly 9 million.”

A lot of the black jobless are part of the 1.5 million “99ers” (people without work for 99 weeks or more). That horrendous number is the lowest recorded in two years; however, there is ample reason to suspect the figures don’t mean those who have been jobless for that long a time actually found work. “That decline is likely not due to an improving labor market, because it just hasn’t improved much over the last two years,” Shierholz told the Huffington Post. “A lot of the decline in the unemployment rate we’ve seen is just due to people dropping out of the labor market.” In any case, that’s 4.8 million people who, for over six months, have been unable to earn a living and care for themselves and their families.

When what is referred to as hidden unemployment is taken into consideration the picture that emerges is dire indeed. “Thus, the black unemployment rate of 14.3 percent translates to an overall black unemployment rate of 26.4 percent,” wrote economist and NNPA columnist, Julianne Malveaux (BC Editorial Board member), in November. “That means more than one in four African Americans is unemployed. In some urban areas, as many as half of the African-American male population does not work.”

In an interview with The Root, then-Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), had this to say about the rate of unemployment among black Americans during the first black president’s first term: “Look, as the chair of the Black Caucus, I’ve got to tell you, we are always hesitant to criticize the president. With 14 percent [black] unemployment, if we had a white president, we’d be marching around the White House.”

“African-American activists must remind our president of this data,” says Malveaux. “They must suggest that there is a coordinated and comprehensive response to the disproportionate exclusion of African Americans in our economy.”

“The unemployment rate data is a monthly reminder of the State of Black America. If we are unsatisfied with the facts, what will we do to change them?” asks Malveaux.

“The One Economic Problem Nobody Seems to Give a Damn About,” is the title of a January 14 commentary by progressive political blogger, Heather Parton, aka Digby. “It remains one of the strangest and saddest aspects of our current economic debates that nobody seems to care all that much about our still painfully high unemployment,” she wrote. “And it’s probably a lot higher than we know.”

She’s right. Listening to most of the media analysis last fall you would have thought the November election results and the fate of the Obama administration hinged on the unemployment statistics. Now that the election is over, it seems mum’s the word.

So, as President Barack Obama begins has second term in office and a new Congress takes its seat, this would seem a good time to ask a few questions. Is this a really serious crisis or what? If it is, what can and is being done about it? Not just for African Americans but for all the 12 million unemployed workers in the U.S. who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have been out of work for an average of 38 weeks.

It didn’t have to be this way and pursuing a radically different approach than the one pursued over the past four years is the challenge before the second Obama Administration.

“Instead of pouring money into the banks, we could have tried rebuilding the economy from the bottom up,” wrote economist, Joseph Stiglitz, in last Sunday’s New York Times. “We could have enabled homeowners who were ‘underwater’ - those who owe more money on their homes than the homes are worth - to get a fresh start, by writing down principal, in exchange for giving banks a share of the gains if and when home prices recovered.”

“We could have recognized that when young people are jobless, their skills atrophy,” continued Stiglitz. “We could have made sure that every young person was either in school, in a training program or on a job. Instead, we let youth unemployment rise to twice the national average. The children of the rich can stay in college or attend graduate school, without accumulating enormous debt, or take unpaid internships to beef up their résumés. Not so for those in the middle and bottom. We are sowing the seeds of ever more inequality in the coming years.”

Stiglitz allows that the Administration is only partly to blame for the present state of affairs, adding, “President George W. Bush’s steep tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and his multitrillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan emptied the piggy bank while exacerbating the great divide. His party’s newfound commitment to fiscal discipline - in the form of insisting on low taxes for the rich while slashing services for the poor - is the height of hypocrisy.”

On December 17, a group of African American leaders and activists met in Washington to draw up a “black agenda” to be presented to President Obama on the eve of his second term. The tenaciously high jobless rate in the black community figured prominently in the discussion. Those attending the confab included Marc H. Morial, president of National Urban League, Rev. Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, NAACP National President and Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Chair Cloves Campbell, Southern Christian Leadership President Charles Steele and Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century.

“The plight of the African-American community underscores the urgency of our demand,” the attendees said. “The African-American community was disproportionately battered by the Great Recession, and has benefited the least from the fragile economy recovery. Unemployment remains unacceptably high; income inequality and the ever-widening wealth gap threaten to relegate the black community to perpetual underclass status. Those who wish to curtail investment education and career preparation further dim the prospects for upward mobility for our young people.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has expressed some optimism about the chance of effective action on the jobs front during Obama’s new stint in the White House. “It all starts with the political will, or the national appetite, to again create jobs that are going to be family-supportive and middle-class producing, and I think that’s underway right now,” Trumka has said. “People are talking about it. That’s the difference between this election and the ones in the past. We actually had a debate about what’s hollowing out the country and what isn’t. And our side won, big time.”

Still, there is ample reason for doubt about the Administration’s resolve and the chances of really getting something meaning accomplished. There was mention of trying to ensure that “every person can find independence and pride in their work” and adequate “wages of honest labor” in the President’s second inaugural address; there was no reference to those who cannot find work.

“On election night in Chicago two months ago, President Barack Obama triumphantly pledged to fight for a middle class he’d appealed to relentlessly - and successfully - on the 2012 campaign trail, wrote Dave Jamieson and Arthur Delaney of the Washington Post last week. “I believe we can build on the progress we’ve made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class,” Obama said. “I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard ... you can make it here in America.”

“The central challenge of Obama’s second term is whether he can keep that founder’s ‘promise’ to working Americans,” wrote Jamieson and Delany.” It won’t be easy, and in an era of divided government and amid cries for austerity and budget cuts, it does not seem likely that the president will offer sweeping new proposals to do so. The administration has said that its top two priorities at the outset of its second term are immigration reform and gun control. Despite an ongoing jobs crisis, creating quality jobs seems to have fallen a few slots on the president’s to-do list.”

“So, it’s not just African Americans who the GOP has it out for. And this is my concern about the future of the black agenda. We have all identified the bad guy and it’s not President Obama,” wrote Etan Thomas, an 11-year NBA veteran and author, along with Nick Chiles, of Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge, Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge, and the recently released, Voices of the Future. who participated in the black agenda confab. “The question I have for the over 60 civil rights leaders who convened this week is: how do we defeat the opposition when it appears as though they would rather see President Obama fail then see America succeed?’

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
or
Google’s 24-Hour Spies

Hitler left it to Goebbels to minister to the psychological needs of the German people, a task to which the Propaganda Minister brought his considerable resources of energy and imagination. He fed the people a carefully blended mixture of hopes and fears and threats and promises, cleverly seizing upon the Allied declarations…to prove that a future of slavery lay ahead for them unless the war was won.

-Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866-1945

The public library is one place you can go to ask questions and not be told to “check our website” for the answers. Checking out a website is fine and may save time, if you are one of those in possession of a computer or smart phone and you have access to an Internet connection or a public library. You can ask questions at a public library’s website, but you can also ask a live librarian.

I am at my neighborhood public library every day but Sunday, when it is closed. I am still in the stone age and access knowledge mainly from the books and journal articles I can carry home in my book bag. In the last year, I have come to rely heavily on my neighborhood library. Despite the fact that I continue to ask questions and continue researching in my field, the borrowing of books and journals from a college or a university library requires an annual fee for independent scholars (but not emeritus) who are no longer employed at a campus.

Accessing Jstor, at home or at the public library, for me, is out of the question!

Nonetheless, there is still the public library and a librarian who takes a pro-active and sincere interest in the interests of her patrons. (So far, this is something computers cannot do).

That is how I came to read Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. I might have missed this novel, given its subject. However, most all subjects under the Empire’s sun are connected.

Robin Sloan’s enthusiasm for the subject matter, writes George Sounders, sweeps the reader along (Blip Magazine). This is true! At least for a while! Like Clay Jannon, the twenty-something narrator, recently unemployed logo designer at the corporate headquarters of New Bagel founded by “a pair of ex-Googlers,” and whose design won an award from San Francisco’s AIGA Chapter, I was mesmerized imagining, as Jannon asks the reader to do, “the shape and volume of a normal bookstore turned up on its side.” It is as “dizzyingly tall” as it is “narrow,” with “three stories of books…may be more.” And the ladder - somewhat magical! The “ladder” from which our narrator can swing like a “monkey,” takes him to very high places. “You roll the ladder into place, lock its wheels, then bend your knees and leap directly to the third or fourth rung.”

Peculiarity hooks you! However, there is more. There always is.

The “economy” takes “a dip,” and ex-Googlers close small start-up operations while others start small project-oriented businesses featuring the graphic designing of “boobs.” Jannon, on the other hand, becomes the night clerk at Penumbra’s bookstore.

This is no ordinary box-bookstore or even independent bookstore job by which the flow of cash sustains the store and its employees and certainly brings wealth to the CEO. At Penumbra’s, “on Broadway, in a euphemistic part town.” The elderly Mr. Penumbra offers very old, dusty books that are returned and exchanged among a handful of “regular” customers. Cash is exchanged for the few postcards and fewer still Sci-Fi or fiction paperbacks by the occasional un-regular customer.

Jannon must take copious notes on each customer. His duty is to write a narrative “on the pages of the book labeled NARRATIO, numbered IX.” Besides noting the book dropped off and the one picked up, Jannon must note the attitude, that is, the disposition of the customer, and his or her expressions. Record the verbal exchange, if any. Describe how the customer dressed in detail and how he or she walked and talked.

“I do my best to keep a clear, accurate record of what transpires during my shift, with only an occasional literary flourish.” In a sense, Jannon and the reader realize, he is writing a book.

“‘We keep a record for every member, and for every customer who might become a member, in order to track their work,’” Penumbra tells Jannon.

Their work!

“‘What are they doing?’”

They read!

“‘They are reading.’”

Jannon is intrigued with his work as “narrator,” but he is more familiar with the graphics he can create with his keyboard and computer software. He begins to re-create a virtual image of Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore on his laptop.

Sloan, writes Sounders, is “in love with the idea that our technical abilities can serve as conduits for beauty.”

“Conduits for beauty”! Here is where I part with Sloan, Jannon, Mr. Penumbra - and the bookstore! I was willing to accept the regular customers engaged in the careful reading or the de-coding of medieval texts, but when Jannon discovers the bookstore is suddenly closed - he and the customers are locked out, and Penumbra is nowhere to be found, the narrative of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore shifts.

There are darkened streets and mysteriously ambiguous buildings where a committee of people meets, some cloaked. I think cult. There is the language of “dragon” myths and of warriors. Is this to appease readers of the Harry Potter series?

Then, the Googlers enter the narrative, another shape shift, and a guided tour of Google headquarters by a Googler whom the narrator describes as android, but brilliant. Her vision of the world is one big computer - and Google will do it!

I leave the novel to return to the world. In fact, I had one eye on the printed pages and the other on the real world where there are humans not speaking of dragons and warriors but confronted daily by drones and soldiers! When I was not reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, I saw visions of Blade Runner, the film that left me skeptical about the “future” with its repressive police state.

Nick Harkaway writes that Mr. Penumbra’s is an “optimistic book about the meeting of modern technology and medieval mystery, a tonal road map to a positive relationship between the old world and the new” (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore).

Neoliberalism tackles “balancing” a city’s budget by targeting schools and public libraries where books and the Internet (technology) do meet - already!

As I read Sloan’s more “optimistic” rendition of computer geeks, I thought about the geeks in the field now clicking on icons, and the future generation of geeks, android-like, creating and operating flying local and military patrol systems throughout the global.

I, who enjoyed the Star Trek series, Captains Kirk and Picard, optimistically expected that by now, every human being would be in possession of a “food synthesizer” that would feed the world’s hungry - and treat us to chocolate sundaes and Earl Grey tea.

“It is a book that gets it,” writes Harkaway. Gets what? Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore makes you think. Yes, technology will advance - but how will technology truly benefit the lives of ordinary people without a price tag that continues to promote inequality and without turning participants into androids?

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore fantasizes an idealistic and youthful vision of the world in which we all “get along” harmoniously with technology for the greater good of humanity. The author’s audience, unburdened by the knowledge that imperialist nation States have historically co-opted inventors and inventions, scientists and science, to propagandize an enemy (Indigenous, Blacks, communists) and weapons to annihilate them, and unaware of the reality of today behind the image of a “terrorist,” would unquestionably accept the novel’s vision of a new world order.

As a child in the mid-1960s watching Star Trek, I would not have imagined then or now humans who find it out of the question to use the advancements in technology to feed the poor and improve the conditions of everyone’s lives. I could have continued thinking as a child and believing that one day, these same humans or their descendants would start thinking and questioning - but for the countless dead who did dare to question and challenge the imperialist mindset. My “audience” consists of those people dying today from the “technical advancement” of Monsanto’s seeds and Exxon’s drills. My “audience” is the “invisible” majority for which the American Empire needs scientists and geeks to repress or outright eliminate.

Did I mention Google? The innocent Googlers is what did it for me. Of course, there are good-intended, creative, and brilliant workers at Google, but there are also the Googlers working to save the work at Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore and to save the work of reading (although they cannot save Penumbra’s bookstore)…

Google is perhaps not so innocently amassing knowledge from books into a collection that will revolutionize the way we access information. Google says it has good intentions. Google will profit! The exchange of cash in this revolution will advance Capitalism!

Remember that “economy” business that “took a dip,” and forced the pair of ex-Googlers to close the New Bagel shop and sent the narrator to locate a job (without the help of the computer, he tells us – a new experience for him!) at Penumbra’s bookstore? Well, that “economy” after the 2008 “dip” needs Googlers.

Here is Sloan’s narrator Jannon:

The buzz about Google these days is that it is like American itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed…But here’s the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.

I am unconvinced by Sloan’s “editorial” here. I did not break down and cry with his narrator’s description of unemployed ex-Googlers, and the image of Googlers doing “whatever the hell they want” is not, I think, quite true. Googlers, for the most part, will be guided - and not by a Mr. Penumbra! As the narrator, Jannon, points out, these are brilliant folks, “educated,” that is, taught to think and perceive the world in a certain way, at the top universities, the Harvards, Princetons, and MITs, and similar to the android Jannon meets, they are programmed to work on projects that will propel them to the top of the Google food chain. “They are making a 3-D web browser. They are making a car that drives itself…They are building a time machine…”

The Invisible Hand programs these Googlers as it programs the Empire and Google! The contractors building aircraft carriers for the Empire are not so far afield from the brilliant Googlers.

Americans may be already asleep in the car if not driving without a guide, but the Europeans are not - and they are alarmed.

According to the report, “Fighting Cyber Crime and Protecting Privacy in the Cloud,” this month, European citizens discovered that the car is driven by the recently Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Amendment (FISA) signed by the Empire’s Commander and Chief, President Barack Obama (December 30, 2012). The amendment, the EU charges, authorizes “‘purely political surveillance on foreigners’ data’ if it is stored using U.S. cloud services like those provided by Google, Microsoft, and Facebook” (“U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Citizens: Report,” Slate, January 8, 2013). This newest advancement of FISA terrifies Europeans because it “poses a much graver risk to EU data sovereignty than other laws hitherto considered by the EU policy-makers.”

Here in the U.S., as Jonathan Turley notes, FISA received a “bipartisan pass” (“FISA Extension Gets a Bipartisan Pass,” January 6, 2013). The U.S. media distracted Americans with the terror called the “fiscal cliff” while Obama signed a “5-year extension of the FISA amendment that was granted by the Senate in a bipartisan 72-23 vote.” So forget the “public discussion” of Bush II’s warrantless wiretapping program, Turley writes. It will “soon fade into the shadows.”

Obama does not ask questions. Androids cannot.

Google does not either. In 2010, it asked the National Security Agency (NSA) to help protect it from hackers, but failed to ask itself what would be the consequences, what will the real price tag read? According to Noah Shachtman, (“‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google,” WIRED, February 2010), Google may want geeks, but “it runs the risk of getting spies, too.” The “Don’t Be Evil” team, he continues, is “in bed” with “the spy agency known for the mass surveillance of American citizens.” Shachtman recounts the NSA’s “long history of spying” on people at home and abroad and the NSA’s history of spying during the Cold War and more recently during the “war on terror,” but this is history - who would expect the colleges and universities to permit their students, future geeks, access to this kind of knowledge!

Is Google even aware that the American Empire’s war to eliminate “terrorists” is Google’s war now too?

As a good Patriot, Google already sniffs through our email so capitalist marketers can easily find us and cater to our desires - for a profit. Are the invisibles, those without access to computers and the Internet, better off? At least the live librarians are still around to recommend books, including Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

In the meantime, Sloan leaves hisreaders with an image of Clay Jannon and the Googlers working on creating “aspecial-ops squad for companies operating at the intersection of books andtechnology” (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-HourBookstore). Never mind the people “educated” to read company logos ratherthan books. Here is one you should keep in mind: a young soldier in front of acomputer clicking that other logo and another “dragon warrior,” Google spy,reporting “suspiciously” anti-Patriotic language to the NSA. While you watchthe immediate consequences, anticipate the far-reaching ones.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has aDoctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Obama…Organizing for America…Action

First let me admit that I was wrong in my last column in regards to the Congressional Republican’s death wish because of the anger and disfavor generated through their holding the “faith and credit” of the country hostage to their demands being fulfilled before voting to lift the debt ceiling. It seems that some of the wiser heads in the Grand Old Party sufficiently blunted the self destructive tendencies of the Tea Party faction and “the can was pushed down the road” three months. Instead, Congressional Republicans changed their tactics to challenge the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass a budget bill. Thereby, Obama gains another slight victory. I still believe that Obama was wrong to back off the powers given him by the 14th Amendment and the debt payment solution offered by the platinum trillion dollar coin. His administration, with trickster energy and the promulgation of foolishness, has deprived the country of a better understanding of the central bank establishment’s chicanery that is embedded in our currency/debt system and thereby has deprived us of the realization that this system needs to be fundamentally changed.

The Republican Party’s move, announced by Tea Party favorite, Eric Kantor, briefly staunches the further fall of Congressional Republicans out of favor but it is far from the end of their peril as thoughts turn toward the 2014 midterm elections. It may seem too early to think about elections for most of us but such is never out of mind for elected officials of either party. Knowing that Democrats are also looking toward the next election highlights the decision of the 2012 Obama campaign to reform itself into something being called Organizing for Action (OFA).

After the 2008 election, the Obama campaign was subsumed within the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and changed its name from Obama for America to Organizing for America. This injected the Party with the phenomenally successful online fundraising operations and database network of national volunteers. However, the results of the 2010 midterm elections (when there was an historic surge of Republican and Tea Party candidates who captured state and federal positions) was testimony to the failure of this presidential campaign and Party amalgamation.

In addition, Barack’s 2008 campaign’s articulation of the need for “the people’s” continued attention and advocacy for him to be maximally successful was also unrealized. Buried within the DNC, there was very little advocacy from those millions of people involved in that campaign fighting with him for political change in Washington. The DNC-affiliated politicians and Party activists have a congenital belief in their individual righteousness and power and have great psychological difficulty tending to civilian activists in a way that is empowering. Such politicians are much more comfortable engaging with sycophants and regimented inferiors - soldiers - who simply follow orders.

The social change power engendered in Obama’s first campaign essentially died. He fought the health care fight and his other first term struggles surrounded by the typical Democrat politicians’ minions from the Clinton administration and Wall Street. Hope waned as opportunity after opportunity was truncated into the liberal marginal changes that do not threaten the fundamentally unjust status quo. The widespread disappointment that resulted was essentially overcome in Obama’s 2012 reelection effort by the miscalculation of Romney, the Republican Party’s entanglement with the idiocy and prejudice of the Tea Party faction, changes in the demographics of the electorate that could not be frustrated and continued improvements in the technology of campaigning by Obama’s operatives.

The establishment of Organizing for Action, the 2012 campaign organization reformation outside of the Democrat Party, seems to be recognition of the failure of the amalgamation of Organizing for America within the DNC. Whether this new arrangement will solve more difficulties than it causes is yet to be known. The traditional leadership of the Democrat Party has previously been successful in resisting and squashing such outside-the-Party arrangements.

I am reminded of the Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns and the Rainbow Coalition of which I was a part. Jackson’s campaigns and the Rainbow Coalition had been powerful enough to create a wave of liberal senatorial changes in the South in its wake. The same inside-but-outside arrangement contemplated for Organizing for Action was the intended derivation for the Jackson campaign structure post-elections. It was intended to have - just like OFA is intended to have - local chapters that would advocate for change at the federal level and also take up local issues. The hairs on the back of necks of traditional Party leaders stood on end because they recognized that this would mean that the Rainbow would easily be able to advocate against issues that they espoused and for progressive primary candidates who would challenge some of them. As I mentioned in an earlier column, Rev. Jackson was persuaded to squash The Rainbow Coalition in exchange for temporary individual seats on the DNC central committee; he immediately set about disbanding a national organization that had the potential to seriously push for fundamental social change.

“If it is able to sustain the passion that propelled Obama twice into the White House, the pro-Obama group may outstrip the role played by traditional interest groups, from organized labor to the environmental movement, and could form an independent power base outside the White House and the Democratic Party…This is no small development in Democratic (sic) politics,” said Steve Bene of the Maddow Blog. More likely, I believe, is that OFA will be seen as just another “Astroturf” grassroots army whose political force will be discounted because it will be seen - probably accurately - as a group directed and resourced from “on high.” Soldiers have loyalties to each other and to some generals but are relatively weakly engaged in the specific strategies, tactics, and compromises of engagements. Political activists most often have deeper and broader attachments to the meaning and purposes of the struggle, no matter how narrow that might be at times. Compromises on the debt ceiling, gun control, and immigration reform will winnow the political activists out of Obama’s OFA army and just leave some diminishing troop of “soldiers.”

There are a number of features needed for a sustainable, powerful, effective, progressive national organization that can move us towards the fundamental changes that are needed. Greater independence from candidates, politicians, and partisan Parties is essential. Two of OFA’s barriers to greater independence are (1) who controls the lists and the technology and (2) who facilitates access to the significant resources ($) that it is going to take to maintain such an organization. The 2012 Obama campaign ended with $5.3 million left in its coffers. Who will this organization turn to once those initial funds run out? Most often “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Self funding is absolutely necessary for sustainability. The loyalty of OFA is not to a set of principles or beliefs other than those that are embodied in one man. I severely doubt OFA will ever be critical of Obama even when it is needed. The DNC will be worrying about the potential criticism of it and the fact that this structure will likely not be helpful to the Party’s aspirations for the 2014 midterm elections unless the candidates meet Obama’s approval.

Sustainable,independent, local organizing with cross issue and cross cultural alliances andcoalitions remain the most hopeful means to advance progressive outcomes. Whereis Obama, the organizer-in-chief? What really are his goals and intentions?Facing a disoriented, stumbling Congressional Republican group, Obama hasturned again to soaring rhetoric and what seems to be poorly thought outorganizing structures and tactics. His reformed campaign structure seems to beheaded toward conflict with the DNC and inevitable membership decline as thefocus remains tactics and strategies that reduce the decision-making and the powerof those who choose to stay involved. At times, progressive organizations mightbe jointly working with OFA on issues or candidates. But as it currently exists,for me, does not mean committing or investing in this poorly constructed andpoorly understood behemoth. I do not seek to become a soldier for Obama oranyone else. I am a soldier for justice.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City CouncilMember. Click here to contact Mr.Riles.

Jan 24, 2013 -Issue 501

Pointing Fingers

Political Cartoon

By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

BlackCommentator.com artist/cartoonist Charles E. "Chuck" Siler's works feature a variety of themes ranging from New Orleans' lively and unique jazz scene to its lively and equally unique political scene. He uses his art and political cartoons to comment on life's complexities, warts and beauty marks.

His creations include fine watercolors and acrylics and pen and ink cartoons. His cartoons are featured on a regular basis in The Louisiana Weekly.

A Katrina evacuee, Siler has spoken on New Orleans history across the USA at universities and culural events.

Click here to contact Mr. Siler

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Tyranny and Thugs

What’s the “color,” and who’s the face of both tyrannical tyranny and treacherous thuggery in America?

A Black man.

Believe it. Despite the extreme contrast, yes, Black men sit, simultaneously at both ends of the spectrum

Interesting indeed.

President Obama, according to the reactionary Rednecks, is little more than a power hungry Commie/Pinko/Marxist/militant Black Nationalist tyrant. While the face of “crime” in America is a Black one. President of the strongest, most influential nation on the global block, as well as we’re the face of, the very-embodiment-of street thugs, gangsters and hoodlums.

We are “Public Enemy #1.”

Black men, predictably, are the official poster boys for “crime,” and an angry, unpatriotic one today runs the government, and of course he has a secret agenda to “transfer wealth,” with the ultimate prize being more than the obvious call for reparations, a cadillac for every thug... but he has the mission of disarming White men for the 1st time in the story of America.

This fear, the fear of Black men is precisely why gun sales are through the roof... because White people, specifically and particularly White males, fear Black men. Be that Black man, the duly elected President, or a card-carrying West side baby Piru Crip, they fear us. They believe we have some bone to pick with them, some “unsettled score,” and it’s their desire to be locked n’ cocked, ready to defend the White race.

Now, granted, I can understand this White paranoia... being born n’ raised in the good ol’ US-of-A. Additionally, I’ve read American History. I understand how this empire was constructed - employing a mentality of “the end justifies any barbaric means to attain it” - and even today Right Wing America, the entrenched Archie Bunker establishment, defends and minimizes the inhumanity of it all, even to this late date. It is no surprise many are walking-around watching their backs.

Black America’s concern? Angry White men and a few million White women are trigger happy and eager to declare “Open Season” on Black Americans, and for that matter all Americans-of-Color, all the rag-head wearing immigrants of color... hell dogs n’ cats of color if you really want to know the truth...

It was one thing when the face of Big Government was Bill Clinton, but when “Big Brother” became a Black dude name Barack... that’s when the fear of a strong central/federal government began to show itself.

Now hang on, the other side of this is, as a Black man, I’m alarmed White folks are preparing to “take back their country.” I’m unsure of where this White Backlash/revolt will go, and how quickly it will escalate to levels not seen since the last era when White folks went mad... the Tulsa Riots, The Chicago Riots and Rosewood.

It’s not the worst idea to attempt to disarm the extremists in US society although, granted, its to no avail - Ricky Bobby, Jethro and Archie Bunker will not turn their guns in. They see their guns as their first, last and logical line of defense. Just as most Blacks across America, understanding the numbers and the embedded racism in America, we’re not going to give up our arms.

I don’t believe the liberals at MSNBC, CNN or the Huffington Post can protect me from their brothers-in-law , nephews and uncles, nor do I know what atrocities the pacifist flower children might ask me to accept until they can have us freed - allowed to live, work, go to school or shop where we want.

Nonetheless, as the gun debate turns into an argument and possibly next a gun fight, let’s be clear here: White folks want their guns, not to protect themselves from Russians or to kill their dinner, no instead they want their guns to protect themselves from Black Presidents and Black gangsters, who according to Rush Limbaugh, are seeking vengeance.

Limbaugh is now promoting the incendiary thought “Lincoln” is so very popular amongst Blacks and nigger lovers because they want to finish the war Abe couldn’t.

The Republican TEA Party is looking for a fight, a reason, an excuse to halt the racial cold war and start a shooting-war... “take back their country” and the All-American culture that comes with it.

The National Rifle Association has dragged the President’s young daughters into the gun debate, and blowhards like Rush and Hannity are defending it - need we forget this is a faction of the US population that has demonstrated they will blow up churches with little girls inside - because a Black life has no more value today than it did in the times of a separate n’ unequal America.

The NRA has been walking the razor’s edge of decency for years, but the gun rights group goes to a new gutter low with an ad criticizing Obama for giving his daughters Secret Service protection while voicing concerns about installing armed guards in schools.

Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed guards in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

In other words, are these Black lives worth more than you and yours?

Surely, if the Obamas have protection from half mad White folks, than the everyday White family must be allowed to protect themselves from Black thugs and tyrants.

That’s the sentiment I want to hear from “The Right,” the truth. We’re scared and overly paranoid. That’s why so many Whites still characterize the brutality of the Rodney King beating as “well, he did resist” ...and the 24 cops were justified in beating him. Inherent and learned fears justify owning a tank and Bazooka, and believe me they are conservatives out there who own a couple of tanks... just for your Black ass.

There’s no Black Family in America who ought to be without a pump shotgun... lest we forget the tale of these so-called United States of America...

BlackCommentator.comColumnist, Desi Cortez, washatched in the heart of Dixie, circa 1961, at the dawning of the age ofAquarius, the by-product of four dynamic individuals, Raised inSouth-Central LA,the 213, at age 14 transplanted to the base of the Rockies, Denver. Still a Mile-Hi. Sat at the feet of scholars formany, manymoons, emerging with a desire and direction… if not a sheep-skin.Meanderedthru life; gone a-lot places, done a-lot of things, raised a man-cubinto agood, strong man, produced a beautiful baby-girl with mylover/woman/soul-mate…aired my mind on the airwaves and wrote some stuff along the way. Click here to contact Mr. Cortez.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Can We Raise a New Generation

of Non-Violent People?

A Poem and an Essay

By Joe Navarro

Hyphenated

As a young child I thought

I was an unhyphenated American

I was John Wayne, growing

Into my role, a real-American

Transitioning to a teen, who

Grew up in the other-America

Becoming the other-American

Whose life was consumed in

Survivalist strategies, where poverty

Was one welfare check away from

Extinction, where hue mattered

In slums on the other side

Of humanity, where I

Became a hue-American

As American as tacos, frijoles

And cornbread, with a scent

Of Apple pie on the tip of my tongue

That was before I became a

Conscious-American, where

Consciousness begged the question,

Why hast thou forsaken me, America?

Then I became an Angry-American

A Mexican-American who sat

At the back of the bus

Contemplating racism, discrimination,

Ghettos, barrios, poverty and oppression

Then I became so angry at injustice

I had been accused of being un-American

Cursing in English and español at Klansmen

Wrapped snugly in stars-and-stripes

Devotion to yesterday, and slave-owning

Presidents, and institutions that constructed

Glass ceilings, while thumbing their

Noses at drowning aspirations

As they taunted...Prove it

That’s when I became an analytical-American

Asking all the complex whys about a

Complex mega society that is America

Wondering what makes me look foreign to

Them, wondering what type of American

I am with so many hyphens,

I have evolved into a multi-hyphenated

American, navigating the social hyphens

That I’ve inherited from the

Socially constructed legacy defining

All Americans, every

American is hyphenated, from

The moment of birth to the

Last breath that extinguishes life

Let me see if I can avoid the

Tangles of hyphens as I describe

Myself: American; real-American; other-

American; hue-American; conscious-

American; angry-American; anti-

American; analytical-American; Chicano-

Mexicano-Indigenous-La Raza-Bilingual-

Bicultural-working-class-American...

A multi-hyphenated-American...

Orale, that’s who I am

Can We Raise a New Generation of Non-Violent People?

The debate over gun control has become a central issue in many people’s minds, especially with President Obama proposing changes to gun laws. The conservative right-wing is accusing Obama of moving to disarm everyone. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is leading a media campaign against the president, while they seek to defend the continued sales of military-style assault weapons.

The mood of people in this nation is affected by the high number of deaths associated with military-style assault weapons and murders in general. The Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in December, where 20 children and 6 adults were massacred not too long after the Aurora movie theater assault in July, has greatly increased awareness and interest in this issue. Most people are looking for a reasonable response that takes into consideration the question of selling military-style assault weapons, clips and magazines that carry large amounts of ammunition, and the need to limit weapons buyers so that people with mental illness cannot have access to weapons.

The NRA has approached this issue as the need to address mental illness and increasing security at schools. In other words, having wide-range access to assault weapons is a non-factor, according to them. “Throughout its history, the National Rifle Association has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership. Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority.”

But if we look at their role historically, the NRA has made conscious efforts to prevent the public from understanding the severity of gun related violence in the U.S. A New York Times article that discusses the lack of research on gun violence sums it up this way, “Scientists in the field and former officials with the government agency that used to finance the great bulk of this research say the influence of the National Rife Association has all but choked off money for such work.”

President Obama’s recent initiatives that address gun laws provide some restrictions on access to weapons and limitations on which weapons can be bought. Much of it addresses restrictions on assault weapons purchases, restrictions on persons who can purchase weapons, increasing penalties, improving research, school safety and funding for treating people with mental illness. During his press conference, President Obama challenged congresspersons to choose children’s safety over getting good ratings from the NRA.

Obama has never opposed the sale of weapons or made any proposals to disarm Americans, yet that is what he is accused of. His proposals make some significant changes, but fall short of encouraging a major culture shift in America.

We live in a violent nation. The genocide of Native peoples, the use of brutality and chains on African people, the policy of Manifest Destiny (presumably a God-given right to annex Mexico and Latin America) used to militarily invade Mexico and steal half of its territory, and the use of military force to colonize Island republics such as Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico and other nations are all examples of force through violence as a policy, historically.

This nation’s history is rooted in expansionism and rugged individualism. We live in the most armed nation in the entire world. Our children are constantly reinforced with this logic as they are taught that we are the most powerful nation in the world. This nation’s power was achieved, not by persuasion and cooperation, but through military might. Violence is an important part of our culture.

Additionally, violence is perpetrated historically and in contemporary times by hate groups. Any time right wing groups disagree with people, they use violence, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Minutemen and Neo-Nazi’s, who terrorize and murder non-white people and Jews. We have seen this violence from opponents of women’s reproductive rights, when they assassinate doctors and bomb medical clinics, and violence is evident in anti LGBT sentiments as LGBT people are beaten randomly. Wives and girlfriends are murdered by their husbands and partners routinely throughout this nation.

The issue of pervasive violence has to be addressed. The arming of hate groups must stop.

We currently spend tremendous hours training children to be good test takers in school. We focus on rote memorization of disconnected facts. Students are stuck in a drill and skill rut. They are not being prepared to become problem solvers and analytical thinkers. They are fed a restricted flow of information, disguised as social studies, giving them a sense of false patriotism, which is defined as blind loyalty to military aggression internationally.

Our children need to spend more time on problem solving, analyzing, civics and ethics. A balanced curriculum gives children academic skills and social developmental skills. We focus on competition when children need to learn cooperation. We live in a constantly changing society that needs children who will grow up into adults who will get along and work for the common good of society.

In addition to what President Obama is proposing I would add the following:

1. No military-style assault weapons for anyone.

2. No tolerance of domestic violence.

3. No tolerance of attacks on people because of their race ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

4. No weapons for anyone associated with hate groups.

5. Education reform that includes problem solving, analytical thinking, civics, ethics and cooperation.

6. Teach U.S. history in a way that explains the role of imperialism and colonialism as oppressive policies and acts.

7. Teach the history of genocide, slavery, land theft, discrimination and racism.

8. Teach students to appreciate the contributions of all people to this land and to this nation.

9. Work toward a cultural shift in general that is exemplified by people working for the greater good of all people, instead of to the detriment of others.

10. Work toward a shift in the media, which profits by making movies and games that exploit and promote violence, to become a media that promotes positive civic and ethical values.

We often hear that we mustlearn from the past to prevent future errors (I’m paraphrasing). This is truetoday for us, a society of people who are concerned about the overabundance ofviolence. Change is necessary, but policies without a cultural shift inattitudes about violence and about each other as human beings will be verylimited in its effect.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Joe Navarro, is a creative writer, poet, educator, husband, parent, grandparent, and activist forsocial change. Click here to contact Mr. Navarro.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Zero Dark Nigger

During the annual Golden Globe awards, film director Quentin Tarantino responded backstage to the issue of his use of the N-word in his latest controversial movie “Django Unchained:”

“If somebody is out there actually saying when it comes to the word nigger, the fact that I was using it in the movie more than it was being used in the antebellum south in Mississippi, then feel free to make that case. But no one’s actually making the case. They are saying I should lie, that I should whitewash, that I should massage, and I never do that when it comes to my characters.”

Django (the D be silent) did win in the category of writing and acting, but not director. Perhaps Tarantino would have won if they finally made a category called “Blaxploitation Film.” The key to understanding Tarantino’s Django isn’t the N-word, as many people are venting much emotion over around the country. It’s the individualism of his principle character. Jamie Foxx’s Django paid scant attention to the plight of other slaves, he didn’t organize. Many blacks really don’t understand how offensive onscreen black unity is to whites today. It goes way back. White producers throughout the ages of motion pictures and television have watched blacks in all aspects of real-life occupations and professions while traveling to and from work, whether they be in Los Angeles CA, or New York City and the Buroughs, and most overwhelmingly made up their minds they weren’t going to show the full range of blacks in their stories. Once you understand that during those early years of Hollywood, production company owners, producers, screenwriters, and directors must have seen the black doctor, black lawyer, black police officer, black newspaper publisher, black-owned trucking company, black soldier, black pilot, black fighter-pilot with their own eyes, but agreed among themselves they were only going to show the black shoeshine “boy” or black house servant, then you’ll understand that was the main part of the Liars Club they agreed to form. Otherwise, this would be a different article you’re reading and I would be reviewing Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Resurrection of Nat Turner.’

There are times I surprise myself; watching “Django” was one of those times. I thought that even though the N-word-spraying was a valid concern, it was still a good movie and acted well by all parties involved. It’s not unusual for Hollywood to use an actor or director to keep the N-word in circulation for a fresh new batch of young viewers every 10 or 15 years for fear that white suburban kids might grow up without ever hearing it (these Jewish, Italian and white executives do a lot of over-thinking). But given the situation the plot had this former slave, recruited to be bounty-hunter, back then it would be safe to assume it would inspire a plethora of “nigger” responses and remarks, given the period.

Though parts of the movie were grisly, such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s skull scene, and the extreme misogamy toward the slave women, particularly in the case of Django’s wife the bilingual Broomhilda von Shaft (Hildy), I wonder if there was too much negativity to hide one important aspect of the “Django?” - the fact that Tarantino actually captured the essence of what has been missing in most black roles. No, all black roles in films by white as well as black directors, not just in having a black guy kill the bad white guys, but having the black hero actually get the black girl and show them both riding off together in the moonlight. Taratino actually made you feel for the sisters. In his own bizarre way he was trying to portray Hildy as a classic damsel in distress we are trained to see only white women as. In an era of extreme violence, had DiCaprio just tied her to a railroad track, most of you would have been bored to sleep. Yes she was mysogamized (new word alert), but in the end she got the last laugh.

By contrast, “Red Tails” showed brothers in rarely seen great combat footage to match their real accomplishments, but the object of the chief character’s love was a white female. The same story goes for perpetual Hollywood gadfly, Spike Lee, his latest hater-aid is accusing Tarantino for doing something he himself has done for years: use a generous spray of N-words in his movies. A few years ago Lee complained about Clint Eastwood directing war movies about the Japanese. Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” had WWII soldiers literally fighting over a white female in Italy. Way to go Spike, you’re really showing them what for. Who else but the “Nigger”-loving Tarantino dares to write a save-the-world-and-get the-BLACK-girl story? Am I the only one seeing this?

This type of scenario wasn’t common in motion pictures since the 1970’s era of Black exploitation movies that were popular with mostly black audiences. It bears mentioning that most of those flicks were directed by white directors. Of course, Tarantino’s idea for this epic adventure-minus-history is based on a 1966 production of the same name starring Franco Nero. Quentin even uses the same theme music. What hurt this film the most is that he couldn’t post “Based on a True Story” before the opening credits. It’s every bit as Sci-Fi as “Kill Bill” except he could have named it “Kill Billy-Bob.”

For black history we once again turn to Steven Spielberg. Sorry “Django,” “Lincoln” is the big HNIC around these parts - another epic slave movie concurrently playing in theaters about the 16th President’s struggle to pass the 13th Amendment while some blacks were actually killing some white southerners. This story was based on a real live book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, not more obscure B-movies with titles like “A Fistful of Dagos,” or “A Few Niggers More.”

Tarantinocould have done a story on one of quite a few “real life Djangos”that black journalists have been mentioning. Given the hundreds of slave revoltsand slave ship mutinies that history documented, finding a character wouldn’tbe too difficult. There is no shortage of blacks who killed whites back then,just a shortage of exposure to them. If for instance you need a blacksharpshooter to fill your bill there is black US Deputy Marshall BassReeves. He was born a slave, served as a Union soldier, appointed US Marshallat the age of 38 in 1875, ten years after the passing of the 13th Amendment.Reeves arrested a whopping 3,000 felons black and white, and shot 14 withoutgetting shot himself. Hell, he was the real “Gunsmoke.”Don’t blame Tarantino; as I said before, Hollywoodknew these people existed and still knows, it’s abusiness run by extremely sensitive racist white egos. Tarantino probably hadno other choice but to mold it as a “spaghetti western.” Remember the GeorgeLucas difficulty in getting “Red Tails” produced. Black people started actingfunny because they reasoned in their infinite wisdom that it was produced by awhite guy, who had the nerve to have the trailer broadcast all over television.Tarantino knows how we would be if he based this on a true black character -shot down by today’s blacks.

BlackCommentator.comColumnist, Chris Stevenson, is a syndicated columnist, his articlesalso appearon his blog; the Buffalo Bullet. Followhim on Twitter @pointblank009)and Facebook (pointblank009). Support his petition to permanentlyAbolish theDeath Penalty in the US the TroyDavis Bill, HR92111. Click here to contactMr. Stevenson.

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Stay True to the Struggle

“Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better, and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children...”

- Amilcar Cabral

In the fallacious name of supposedly moving forward, the people of this nation and world have been thrust backwards by a tiny avaricious national and global elite intent upon thwarting human progress and fundamental freedoms, to serve their own callous interests.

This nation's political misleaders are essentially warmongering murderers and economic bloodsuckers who are attempting to recolonize the minds and hearts of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. The struggle today is not only a physical one pertaining to the well-being of the ordinary people – it is also an intense psychological struggle wherein the will and human rights of the people is under vicious and sustained assault by the systemic power elite and their gatekeepers.

Politicians are fundamentally nothing more than professional liars and political pimps on behalf of their corporate masters. The so-called 'news' media [i.e.the corporate-stream media] is a pathetic caricature of anything even resembling journalistic integrity. The 'justice' / judicial system is a disgusting ongoing joke which unjustly incarcerates more people in this country than any other nation on the planet. And last but not least, the 'educational' institutions are essentially rubber stamps for a warped, distorted, and mediocre corporate narrative of national and world events – both past and present.

Peace has come to mean waging perpetual wars in the name of peace. Human rights has come to mean corporate 'person hood.' Truth has come to mean an endless stream of lies, obfuscation, and propaganda. 'Hope and change' has come to mean 'bait and switch' and having our aspirations and needs endlessly pimped and thwarted. And moving 'forward' has come to mean walking briskly backwards while meticulously ignoring reality.

All of the foregoing are part and parcel of the sustained assault [by the systemic corporate power elite, their political puppets (from the White House on down), their talking-head 'news' & opinion makers, and their other assorted systemic gatekeepers] upon the psychological and physical well-being of everyday ordinary people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. This sustained assault is quite deliberate and is meant to psychologically and physically distract and break the will of the people to seriously struggle for systemic change.

Frederick Douglass correctly said that “if there is no struggle there is no progress,” and the systemic power brokers [i. e. power elite] know full well just how accurate these words are. Thus, their constant and consuming objective is to do whatever it takes to break the will and consciousness of everyday people and keep them/us people from struggling for genuine systemic change.

Sadly, some of the so-called icons of past civil and human rights struggles in this nation have now betrayed and/or otherwise sold-out the everyday people. They tell the people that they should believe in a particularly systemic political misleader or in certain political misleaders of this system. In so doing, they repudiate and betray their own past struggles, in addition to their present pungent betrayal of the struggling masses of ordinary people. These betrayers, while attempting today to live on the laurels of their past, are among the deadliest of this system's gatekeepers. These betrayers must and will be exposed for the sake of the ordinary people. The need to struggle for systemic change and against this system's misleaders is greater today than at any time thus far in this 21st century.

People will not “live better” or “in peace” for as long as this corrupt, filthy, hypocritical, bloody system of the corporate U.S. Empire remains intact. It must be dismantled. This means STRUGGLE! It also means exposing these betrayers for who and what they really are. The everyday people's struggle is by necessity a long, protracted, and collective one, and does not submit to icons or gurus – past or present.

The late great revolutionary Amilcar Cabral said, “Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.” He was correct. Successful struggles are long, hard, tedious, and protracted. They are not easy nor do they lend themselves to believing in or following systemic politicians and/or misleaders. They call for collective creativity and longevity.

So stay true to the struggle! Do not give in or give up. And do not be misled by those who would further pimp the pain of the people – by urging them to believe in a systemic politician / misleader. We must believe in ourselves and one another. In the undying words of the martyred Joe Hill, “Don't Mourn. ORGANIZE!”

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

BlackCommentator.comEditorial Board member and Columnist, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran ofthe Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of theRepublic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the onlyAmerican to have successfully self-authored his civil / politicalrights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant onCivil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizingactivities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney wasinterviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerlyknown as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkneysee the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn].(Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to view Larry’s interview of October 26, 2012. Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Jan 24, 2013 -Issue 501

Does Obama’s Linking
of Selma to Stonewall
Divide the Black Community?

President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was the most inclusive speech a president has ever given. It was delivered on the 27th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the President honored King’s legacy when he eloquently spoke of how the many U.S. liberation movements, both current and historic, are interconnected.

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

As an African American lesbian, whose identity is linked to all three movements, I felt affirmed. I applaud the president’s courageous pronouncement.

Some African Americans, however, felt “dissed” by the President’s speech.

The linkage of their civil rights struggle to that of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) Americans did nothing to quell their dislike of the comparison. The fact that it was spoken by this president made it sting more.

New York Times reporter, Richard Stevenson, picks up the tension where he wrote in his recent article, “Speech Reveals an Evolved and Unapologetic President” that Obama, “After spending much of his first term ‘evolving’ on the question of same-sex and doing too little in the eyes of many African-Americans to address poverty and civil rights, he invoked “Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.”

For many African Americans, especially those male ministers who “profess” to have marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., the reason they scoff at comparing the black civil right struggle to today’s LGBTQ civil rights struggle is because of the persistent nature of racism in the lives of black people and the little gains accomplished supposedly on behalf of racial and economic equality. They expected more gains under the first African American president.

Also, many African Americans contest that civil rights gains have come faster for LGBTQ Americans, from the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

The gains in the LGBGT movement, many African Americans both straight and LGBTQ will contend, is largely because of the structural and cultural exclusion of people of color.

The LGBTQ movement has no doubt made some tremendous gains into mainstream society, a reality that has not been afforded to African Americans as a disenfranchised group, leaving many of them asking, especially after hearing President Obama’s now second inaugural address the question, “What’s really in this American Dream for us?”

Many African Americans ministers try to answer that question by either coming out for or against Obama’s stance on marriage equality.

Civil rights struggles in this country have primarily been understood, reported on and advocated within the context of African American struggles - past and present - against both individual and systematic racism. Consequently, civil rights struggles of women, LGBTQ Americans, Native Americans, and other minorities in this country have been eclipsed, ignored and even trivialized while educating the American public of other forms of existing oppressions.

While it is true that employing a narrow understanding that all oppressions are interconnected ignores the salient points about differences within oppressed groups, it is also true that ignoring how oppressed groups can work together truncates the possibility for full and equal rights for all Americans.

LGBTQ activists of African descent, like me, have long pondered what would be the catalyst to rally those African American Christian ministers to support same-sex marriage and engage the black community in a nationwide discussion. Such a discussion would certainly assist them in seeing the link between Selma and Stonewall, the very link that President Obama so eloquently pointed out.

There were hopes that Obama’s expression in May 2012 of his support of marriage equality would begin talks allowing those black ministers, who quietly professed to be an ally to LGBTQ community, to come out to their congregations in favor of LGBT rights. And, no doubt, for these African-American ministers, they saw the liability of Obama losing his 2012 re-election bid was far greater than being publicly outed for not being in lockstep with their homophobic brethren.

With the second and final term before him, Obama can be both unapologetically and unabashedly for marriage equality. I thank God with an enormous sigh of relief that Obama no longer has to do a delicate dance with a deeply divided black populace on the issue. He has momentum on his side, whether or not black ministers and community activists side with him.

The momentum in support of same-sex marriage in the African American community is seen nowadays along generational lines. It is ironically divided between the black civil rights era of MLK and the “post black civil rights era” of Obama.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Jan 24, 2013 -Issue 501

Pope Benedict XVI’s Homophobic Rhetoric

Political Cartoon

By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

Carlos Latuff, a cartoonist, artist and activist based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Latuff has spent the last 15 plus years crafting a style that can best be described as “populist cartooning.” He has touched on issues like Apartheid in South Africa, the plight of Native Americans in the US and the oppression of Tibetans in China.

But perhaps his most controversial series to date is “We are all Palestinians,” in which he compares the actions taken by the Israeli government towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip directly to the Nazi’s treatment of Jews.

Click here to contact brother Carlos

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Consider

Art/Sculpture

By Margaret Warfield, Atlanta GA

Margaret Warfield ~ Artist

www.margaretwarfield.com

$425.00

Consider, is an original hand built sculpture that is a member
of the "Body Of Clay" series.

The Size: 9” x 8”

Click here to purchase Consider

Click here to view the first fifteen pages of "Changing"

Click here to contact Ms. Warfield

Artist Statement: Consider the possibilities...

Represented by BlackCommentator.com

Jan 24, 2013 - Issue 501

Quote to Ponder

Click here for moreabout Jimmy Carter