Table of Contents

There are 14 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: Hunger - Some Lessons Never Learned - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Women’s History Month Quote to Ponder: “Deal with yourself as an individual worthy of respect…” – Nikki Giovanni

Back At The Ranch - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Pimping the Pain of Political Prisoners in this Bastion of Hypocrisy - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Obama in Israel: A Fine Speech, an Unfortunate Change & Not Much Hope - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

Claiming the 1963 March on Washington - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Compromising with Extremists - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Deficit Hawkman Returns - Animated Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Save “Negro”: Really?? - Between The Lines - By Dr. Anthony Asadullah - Samad, PhD - BC Columnist

Change of Heart Reveals Hate - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

Education and its Meaning - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

The War Businessman - Political Cartoon By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

God Saves & Satan Invest - Art By Shepard Fairey

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

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Members of the BC Editorial Board represent African Americans and the African world. They are dedicated activists, thinkers and writers. The BC Editorial Board includes the following in alphabetical order by last name:

Lola Adesioye, Carl Bloice, Julian Bond, Rose Brewer PhD, Horace Campbell PhD, Imani Countess, Lenore Jean Daniels PhD, Bill Fletcher Jr., James Jennings PhD, Badili Jones, Martin Kilson PhD, Sharon Kyle JD, David A. Love JD, Julianne Malveaux PhD, Manning Marable PhD, Syreeta McFadden, The Reverend Irene Monroe, Leith Mullings PhD, Jacqui Patterson, Larry Pinkney, Steven Pitts PhD, Barbara Ransby PhD, Jamala Rogers, Ethel Long-Scott, Amy V. Simmons, William L. (Bill) Strickland, Chuck Turner, Nathaniel Turner, Ron Walters PhD, Emira Woods, Jeanne Woods JD.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

In the early 1970s, there were news stories for a very short time about the foreign fishing boats that were taking thousands (millions?) of tons of anchovies on a regular basis off the west coast of South America and some warned of over fishing of those stocks.

Fast forward four decades and the same warnings are being given, not only about fishing for anchovies, but for the possible depletion of fishing stocks all over the world. It apparently takes humans a long time to learn anything and, often, it’s too late when the lesson is learned.

Forty years ago, the anchovies were being fished by, among others, the U.S. fishing fleet to provide high-protein feed for the fast food chicken industry that was just starting in the country. And this was being done right off the coast of a continent full of nations that had millions of hungry people. Doing business as usual, however, required foreign fishing fleets to roam the globe to find the easiest place to fill their holds with high quality protein, so another industry, fast food, could flourish in the U.S.A.

As a result, poor people in countries like, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile struggled on, while a cheap food source was right off their coasts. Tons of fish on the dock do not translate directly into wealth and profits for the political hierarchy. Contracts for permits to fish off shore from companies that do business in the richer nations can bring their own riches.

For many years, there have been warnings of the depletion of fish stocks all over the world, especially the species that look good on a dinner plate. For example, from the late 1970s, the fishing fleet in Provincetown, Mass., slowly came to a halt over a few short years,because they could not catch enough cod to pay for the diesel to get out to the fishing banks, let alone make a profit from the run. The fleet just stopped fishing or converted their boats to whale watching.

We know now that the cod stocks in the Atlantic Ocean are dangerously low, having been overfished for generations. So it is with many other fish species around the world. There are places where it seems that the fish have recovered, but those areas are small and isolated or are in places where the destructive factory fishing fleets have a hard time reaching, usually because of the economics involved.

The fish don’t have a chance, however, because of the high-technology instruments that are used to find them. The seafarers of old had to use natural signs to determine where the fish might be going or gathering. They used experience, knowledge, instinct, andintuition. Sometimes they were successful and sometimes they cameup empty-handed. And they had equipment, nets and the like,which had not changed appreciably over hundreds of years. Now, the fish are like the airline passengers who go through the full body scanner. The factory fishing fleets live up to their name, using every kind of high technology to find and catch what their boats will hold.

No “stock” of fish or anything else can withstand that kind ofpressure. When natural cycles are pitted against technology without any limits, the stock (living creatures) in that natural cycle is bound to shrink in number or they disappear, just because they needa minimum number to maintain their populations. Recent press reports show barrels of shark fins destined for the Asian markets. They get them by catching the sharks, cutting off the fins, and returning the bodies into the water. It’s that lucrative to just take the fins, which are used for soup and other, possibly medicinal, purposes.

People who fish for the shark fins do not care that sharks take a longtime to reach maturity and breeding age and that taking any shark, of any size, is not the best way to ensure the continuation of the ecosystem in any given area. The shark in the sea, like the wolf on land, is an important, if not vital, factor in its ecosystem and its extirpation in any given range will have an effect on most of the other species far into the future. No one knows for sure, but we are sure to find out.

The human species is notoriously without thought, when it comes to its own wants. If they want to eat shark fin soup, they kill a 400-pound shark to do it. If they want to eat a swordfish steak, they will order it in a restaurant, even though some marine environmentalist organizations sounded the alarm a few years ago and a moratorium (including dozens of celebrity chefs) on fishing as usual was observed for some 30 months. Some swordfish stocks arere covering and the unique species is not endangered at this time.

A report of the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organizationin 2008 said that half the world’s fishing fleet could be eliminated with no change in the total catch and the same report showed that fishing fleets around the world were losing $50 billion (U.S. dollars) a year. There is a problem and there is little discussion about it among the people who count: Those who eat seafood. If they knew what is happening in the oceans around the world to the seafood they love to eat, they might be inclined to do something, but there is little about it in the mass press. When there is some kind of reporting, it is as shallow as the water that washes up on the coast. Governments and others should be telling people that there is danger…there is a crisis brewing.

As in so many other aspects of modern life, no government and certainly no politicians are going to tell the people that the way they live is not sustainable and that the lives we lead (at least in the so-called First World) cannot go on forever. We’re running out of so many things that we’ve taken for granted. The harvest of the sea is one of those things, and hundreds of millions depend on that food for sustenance. Which nation is going to be the first to call back its fishing fleet, until the fish stocks are replenished by the natural order of things?

Sustainability is something that Americans are not that interested in and that attitude is spurred by the Right Wing in the U.S., which considers sustainability to be a United Nations plot to take over the world with a one-world government. All they see in the concept of sustainability is the end of exploding profits. But, if we are to maintain life as we know it on the planet, sustainability is what we have to aim for in agriculture, forestry, mining, oil and gas drilling, and of course, fishing. These are all extractive industries and they all will come to an end, eventually, sooner than later, if we don’t change our ways.

Considering where much of the feed for our fast food chicken has comefrom over the past four decades and considering the negative effect fast food has had on the people who eat a steady diet of it, a direct (and seemingly endless) line of exploitation can be traced, from the west coast of South America, to U.S. feed processing plants, to the fast food outlets in New York City, where last fall, the workers in those outlets struck after the Thanksgiving holiday for higher pay. They are seeking a $15 an hour rate, rather than the $7.25most of them are paid now.

According to www.fastfoodforward.org, the workers’ website, the fast food industry grosses some $200 billion annually, while their average pay is about $11,000 a year, far from enough to live on in New York City. For comparison, they note that $25,000 is the average daily pay of a fast food company CEO, twice what the average workers makes in a year.

The $200 billion fast food industry gross would not be possible, and the $25,000 daily pay of fast food CEOs would not be possible, without the vast volumes of fish from other countries’ waters and without the minimum wage jobs of the people who hand out the chicken and burgers in their restaurants. Just as the chicken (and other fast food) industry literally takes the food off the tables of poor people in developing countries, they are doing the same to the workers who make their money in New York City.

These are not jobs that only teenagers take. In today’s economy, people with families (especially minorities and immigrants) are taking these jobs and must try to survive with two or three similar jobs. In those families, everybody works. That’s why even the New York State Legislature has recognized that the current minimum wage is inadequate and legislators and the governor are considering raising the minimum to $9 an hour, over the next few years. That’s not enough. What the fast food workers are demanding, $15 an hour, is what is required now, not sometime in the future.

But, overall, the world’s people need to learn that we can only sustain ourselves on Earth, if we extract only what we need to live (to sustain ourselves). Without political leadership that is unafraid to tell the people, especially those in the “developed world,” that life as we know it is not sustainable and that we should be preparing for a new way of viewing our lives and the lives of others, this knowledge will not be imparted.

That is not happening and the hour for such preparation is late. The obscene disparity between the rich and the corporations in the U.S.and the rest of the people should not be, but it is an indication of the lengths they will go to maintain that disparity, here at home, and in the rest of the world. It is structured that way and will not change, unless there is a concerted effort on the part of peoples around the world. The structure that allows this has to be changed.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New YorkState. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Click here for more about Nikki Giovanni

Mar 28, 2013 -Issue 510

BlackCommentator.com cartoonist/artist Eric Garcia produces "historically based, politically charged criticism, with the goal of creating dialogue about 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.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

“If you're not willing to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.”

- Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”

- Bobby Sands

In the year 1978, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, publicly stated that, “There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people [in the U.S.] whom [he] would call political prisoners.” Currently, in this year of 2013, the situation as pertains to political prisoners in the U.S. has become even more widespread and is far, far worse today. This ongoing quagmire of injustice is an integral part of the so-called U.S. legal 'justice' system which continues to be an utter farce and nightmare for the vast majority of persons confined in its clutches.

To be sure, there are political prisoners being held in various other nations throughout the world – not only in this bastion of hypocrisy known as the United States – but for the purposes of this current column, I am honing in on the U.S. and the political prisoners in its barbaric prison gulag system.

In The Black Commentator article entitled, Counterinsurgency and Political Prisoners in the United States, of September 15, 2011, I wrote in relevant part, “The notion, for example, that there are no political prisoners in the United States is inaccurate and absurd. There are numerous political prisoners and/or prisoners of conscience held in the sadistic and brutal U.S. prison gulag system. Many of them have been imprisoned for decades as a direct result of the U.S. Government's war of counterinsurgency against its own citizens.”

WHO ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS?

What defines being a political prisoner? Succinctly stated, political prisoners are those persons who have been imprisoned due to their political views and/or conscious political actions; and they consist of men and women of all colors. More often than not, especially in the U.S., these persons are charged with 'crimes,' which on the surface, do not reflect the distinctly political nature of the charges against them. This is practiced in order to confuse and manipulate the public while simultaneously discrediting and criminalizing those who are charged and imprisoned. This practice, in effect, criminalizes political dissent, under the fallacious guise of protecting society. Thus, the judicial system itself is utilized as an insidious tool of political suppression and repression.

Some few political prisoners in the U.S. are relatively well known while many more such prisoners are not. ALL of them however, are important. These persons need to be seriously supported and freed, not pimped and exploited for personal, prestige, monetary, and/or veiled systemic gain.

Moreover, in view of the fact that the entire U.S. prison gulag system is corrupt and physically and/or psychologically sadistic, there are many imprisoned persons who may not necessarily have entered prison as conscious political prisoners but have attained an active and astute political and social conscience and consciousness as a result of the undeniable systemic injustice and brutality of their imprisonment. These persons also, must not be overlooked or discounted. The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation on Mother Earth and this is by systemic design – not mere coincidence.

LINKING U.S. GOVERNMENT TERRORISM & THE PLIGHT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

The perpetual U.S. wars of hegemony abroad and the war against persons inside this nation are directly linked to the plight of political prisoners in the United States and elsewhere, as is the profit-driven, avaricious, (national and global) corporate hegemong and bloodsucking of the peoples of the world.

The U.S. so-called 'war against terrorism,' is in fact a global war of terror, against the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow peoples of Mother Earth. And this includes the everyday people inside the United States itself. The U.S. corporate/military elite, and their concomitant incestuous corporate-stream media pawns of incessant propaganda - own and operate this political system that perpetuates (national and global) economic and political exploitation - and whose insidiousness and subterfuge has today- no equal in the history of humankind.

By and large, most political prisoners in the U.S. have, in word and deed, opposed not only the despicable corporate-owned U.S. government's war of economic and political terror against the people inside the United States, but have consistently and adamantly opposed U.S. military aggression and hegemony against peoples and sovereign nations throughout the world. For this, they are doubly hated and despised by the power elite of this nation. Thus, the plight of political prisoners in the U.S. is an urgent and important international issue and concern, not only a pressing matter of national importance.

Political prisoners in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are not some kind of inexplicable anamoly that somehow simply came into being. Their existence is by deliberate, calculating, and callous systemic design.

ON POLITICAL PRISONER – LYNNE STEWART

Of the myriads of political prisoners, who are beloved by politically conscious persons of conscience, who are held in U.S. prison gulags including (but by no means limited to) Albert Woodfox (of the Angola 3), Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jamil Al-Amin, The Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Rene' Gonzalez), and so very, very many additional women and men; there is the sterling example of 73 year old political prisoner Lynne Stewart – the courageous people's lawyer.

Approximately six years ago, in The Black Commentator article of July 12, 2007 titled, Lynne Stewart and Ralph Poynter – Stalwart Cohorts in the People's Struggle, I wrote, in relevant part, “On February 10, 2005, attorney Lynne Portia Stewart, after having been targeted for many years by the U.S. government for the vigorous defense of Blacks and other people of color, found herself convicted of a despicably bogus 'conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism' charge...it was, is, and will continue to be – the love and deep respect of the people – Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White from whence her credibility and strength is derived. No court in America can boast such credentials...What motivated and continues to motivate Lynne and Ralph is a very special kind of 'revolutionary love' for the people...It is that very love that today in 2007, finds Lynne and Ralph still speaking out...on behalf of the down trodden everywhere in the human family.”

Lynne Stewart was sent to prison on the above-mentioned bogus conviction in 2009. Subsequently, in the year 2010, her already unjust sentence of 28 months was, in an egregiously outrageous action by the U.S. legal 'justice' system actually lengthened – and she was re-sentenced to 10 years. Thus, today, in 2013, Lynne still faces well over six more years of wrongful imprisonment. Moreover, as U.S. government authorities are well aware, a very serious life-threatening cancer is spreading in her body. Lynne Stewart is a 73 year old woman political prisoner fighting for her life! And the corporate-owned, war mongering Barack Obama regime which is steeped in subterfuge and deceit, along with his Democrat and Republican party cronies, want to see political prisoner Lynne Stewart DEAD! Obama's hypocritical and callous actions and inactions as they pertain to political prisoners inside the U.S. demonstrate that he and his confederates want ALL such prisoners silenced and/or dead! As the prolific writer and activist Stephen Lendman recently wrote in the VETERANS TODAY-Military & Foreign Affairs Journal article titled, 'Lynne Stewart's Struggle for Justice Continues' (pertaining to Lynne Stewart and all political prisoners), “Change more than ever is needed. Great struggles are won in small steps. Supporting right over wrong matters. Mass public outrage is needed. Activism gets results. There's no other way.”

In 2008, Lynne Stewart was a recipient of the Voice Of Justice Award for her (over 40 years) of having tirelessly and vigorously defended the human and political rights of everyday ordinary people. Yes! For over 40 years Lynne has been a thorn in the side of this hypocritical U.S. government and its unjust judicial system – which is precisely why she is imprisoned and fighting for her life today. Nevertheless, from the brutal confines of unjust imprisonment she remains a stalwart and inspiring human being and comrade, committed to the struggle of and for everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth!

We everyday people must be just as committed in word and deed to Lynne Stewart (and other political prisoners) as they have demonstratively been to us! We can ill afford inaction in this regard and there is no in-between. As the late people's historian Howard Zinn noted, “The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless 'reforms' that changed little.” Lynne Stewart and the many other political prisoners in the United States are very much a “reflection” of what the United States so-called 'democracy' really is: the bastion of hypocrisy! This must be changed, NOW! The words of the matyred South African political activist Steve Biko, should be ringing out strong, loud, and clear TODAY, in this year of 2013: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” There is a Chinese adage that says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Our individual and collective “first step” must be to free our “mind[s]” and quickly and consistently take effective actions to put an end to our economic, social, and political systemic oppression.

WHAT NEXT?

STOP waiting for the masses to respond. You and me – all of us everyday ordinary people - are a part of the masses! So step up to the plate and do your part because it is important. YOU are important.

The brutal, sadistic, and unjust imprisonment of political prisoners is a reflection of our own systemically manipulated mental internment. This must no longer be tolerated. Remember, cherish, and most of all actualize the immortal words of Joe Hill: “Don't mourn. ORGANIZE.” Let the words of the late Irish freedom fighter and martyr Bobby Sands be brought to fruition, for he was correct when he said, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” Yes, “our revenge,” be we young or old in this long and protracted struggle, will be the sweet taste of liberation for the people of this nation and the struggling peoples throughout our precious Mother Earth. So take heart and carry on! There's much work to be done.

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

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see 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.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Philip Stephens, the chief political commentator for the Financial Times, summed it up pretty well I think: “Barack Obama gives a fine speech,” he wrote. “He did it again in Jerusalem. Few can match the US president in wrapping intelligent understanding in the pentameters of poetry. That’s why the vaulting rhetoric so often begets disappointment. The words become a substitute for, instead of a prelude to, action.”

I don’t watch, or listen to, the President talk these days. I’ve been taken in – even moved – by his oratorical skills one too many times. I read the text the next day and try to figure out what is really being said.

“Leaders divide between those who respect the established parameters of power and politics and those who break out of them,” wrote Stephens March 24. “Mr. Obama has so far fitted the first category. For all his eloquence, this week’s trip has shown the limits of US ambition. The Middle East is burning. The president has concluded there is nothing much to be done.”

“His officials say this is unfair. The effort to repair relations with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and to reassure Israelis of America’s unbending commitment to their security was vital groundwork in the effort to restore peace talks with the Palestinians,” continued Stephens. “The task will now be picked up by John Kerry, a secretary of state, eager to navigate the minefield of Middle East diplomacy. That’s all very well, but Mr. Kerry’s good intentions are worthless if the president is not ready to take risks.”

“This was a memorable speech: Obama said things that Israelis need to hear from a US president,” Michael Cohen wrote in British daily Guardian last week. “But nothing that happened on Thursday in Jerusalem will do much to make a two-state solution more likely to be realized. More than ever, both Israelis and Palestinians need not words, but actions from a US president. It remains to be seen whether those will be forthcoming.”

“Obama posed the kinds of questions that are hardly asked aloud any more in the Israeli mainstream, swamped as it is in a steady stream of jingoistic, rightwing rhetoric, associated as it has become with people who are portrayed as loony liberals and self-hating leftists,” commented Chemi Shalev, a US correspondent for Haaretz and former Jerusalem correspondent for the New York-based Jewish weekly, The Forward. “He confronted the conventional wisdom that time is on our side and the status quo is working in our favor. He asked, blasphemy indeed, that Israelis try and look at the world through Palestinian eyes. He conducted, how ironic, the kind of values-based peace campaign which so-called centre-left parties were so afraid of in the recent election campaign, because they thought it was toxic.”

President Obama said a lot of the things that need to be said in his address to Israeli students last week. For that he is due credit. His description of the cause and aspirations of the Palestinian people was on target. The problem is that the overall effect of his latest trip to the Middle East represented a step backwards.

“Obama returns to the US today and to its problems, domestic and external,’ wrote Nahum Barnea in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “He leaves us with a wonderful speech and with the same impasse that existed before his arrival.”

Contrary to the impression carried by most of the major media of this country, the Israelis were hardly unanimous in their appreciation of the U.S. President’s remarks, certainly not the members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.

While, Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, of the Hatnua party called Obama’s remarks “important and inspiring,” Knesset member, Miri Regev, of Netanyahu’s Likud party called Obama’s speech “offensive to Netanyahu.” “I thought Obama arrived with a greater understanding of the diplomatic process between us and the Palestinians, but I see that he hasn’t changed his stances, not about settlement construction and not about two states for two nations, and decided that the young people must influence their leaders to put public pressure on the government so it will implement [Obama’s] agenda,” she said.

Another Likud representative in the parliament, Moshe Feiglin, said Obama’ speech contained “a lot of filth.”

Economy and Trade Minister, Naftali Bennett, objected to Obama’s criticizing the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and his advocating for Palestinian statehood. “A Palestinian state is not the right way,” he said. “The time has come for new ideas and creativity to solve the Middle East conflict.”

“Anyway, a nation does not occupy its own land,” Bennett added.

(Bennett will be in the New York next month at the rightwing Jerusalem Post’s annual conference, sharing billing with another occupation denier, Caroline Glick, the paper’s deputy managing editor and former assistant foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, and U.S. hawk of hawks, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, where they will discuss “Two states for two people?”)

Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party commented: “At the end of the day we would have to absorb the tragic and destructive results of the formation of a Palestinian state. That is why the nation chose a government that does not include support for a two-state solution in its guidelines, and the U.S. president, for whom democracy in a guiding principle, must respect that.”

Settlement building “will continue in accordance with what the government’s policy has been thus far,” Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a settler and member of the Home Party, told a television audience on the eve of Obama’s arrival. He said construction would continue in the occupied West Bank “more or less as it has done previously. I see no reason to change it.”

As those statements make abundantly clear, there is anything but a consensus for a “two-state solution” in Israeli ruling circles. Stephens observed that Netanyahu “scarcely disguises his disdain for a two-state agreement” and Israeli illegal settlement expansion “is designed to create facts on the ground that forestall the Palestinian state that Mr. Obama deems essential to an enduring peace.”

As envisioned by supporters of the “two state solution” – with the backing of most of the government of the world – a new Palestinian state would come into being in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967. Today that area has been colonized by over half a million Israelis, 60,000 of them since Obama inauguration.

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank remains the crux of the problem in historic Palestine and a U.S. policy of denying its centrality only contributes to the maintenance of the status quo.

Obama “appeared to move closer to the Israeli position on Thursday regarding resumption of long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, stopping short of insisting on a halt to Israel’s settlement expansion as he had done early in his first term,” Mark Landler wrote in the New York Times March 21 “Mr. Netanyahu could take solace that Mr. Obama drew closer to his position that the Palestinians should negotiate without first extracting a halt to all settlement activity,” Landler wrote from Amman two days later.

“The promise that his secretary of state will expend time and energy to help Israelis and Palestinians to come closer together is the minimum, practically a mere courtesy,” said the German the Center-right German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Otherwise, apart from a few unresolved doubts, Obama has completely adopted Netanyahu’s course.”

As Jonathan Tobin put it in the neo-conservative U.S. journal Commentary, Obama “said that settlements were not the core issue at the heart of the conflict and that if all the other factors dividing the two sides were resolved settlements would not prevent peace. Even more importantly, he emphasized that there ought to be no preconditions placed by either side before peace negotiations could be resumed.”

Having apparently seen the light and concluded that a continuation of the status quo can lead to nothing good, New York Times columnist, Thomas Freidman, wrote last Sunday that the Palestinians “need to drop all their preconditions and enter negotiations” and Israel needs to “halt settlements.” That’s just plain silly. If the Palestinians drop their insistence that settlement expansion stop there will be no need for it to happen. If the Israelis halt the land grabbing there’s no more precondition. As long as the Israeli colonial juggernaut rolls on there is no likelihood of a settlement, and a continuation of a “peace process,” as it has been, will only allow Tel Aviv more time to create more “facts on the ground,” which is just what the Israeli expansionists want.

“It isn’t just our perception that settlements are illegal,” said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “It is a global perspective. Everybody views settlements not only as a hurdle, but more than a hurdle to a two-state solution,” he said. “We are asking for nothing outside the international legitimacy. It is the responsibility of the Israeli government to halt settlement activities so we can at least speak. “We hope that the Israeli government understands this, he said. “We hope they listen to the many opinions inside Israel itself speaking of the illegality of settlements.”

“We should note that rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday - a reckless and provocative act - while the Israelis showed good faith by avoiding the sorts of defiant acts, like announcing new settlements, that have marred American visits in the past,” the New York Times Editorial Board said March 21.

Well, not exactly.

While Obama was still in the region and citing the rocket attack – carried out by a obscure an al-Qaida-linked group at odds with the Hamas government in Gaza - as a justification, the Israeli government cut in half the portion of the sea where it will allow Palestinians in Gaza to fish, threatening the livelihood of some 3,000 Palestinians who depend on the sea. “There is nothing to catch within three miles from shore,” 62-year-old fisherman, Talal Shweikh, told the newspaper Ahram, “All the fish that you see in the market today came from Egypt.”

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords of 1993, Palestinians were permitted to fish for up to 20 miles off the coast. However, in 2006 this limit was dropped to three. According to one report the restrictions, enforced by the Israeli navy, have resulted in the number of active fishermen shrinking from approximately 10,000 in the year 2000 to around 3,500 today.

Israeli authorities also closed Kerem Shalom, the only commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza.

“If there is quiet, the processes easing the lives of Gaza residents will continue. And if there is Katyusha (rocket) fire, then these moves will be slowed and even stopped and, if necessary, even reversed,” an official Army Radio broadcast said. “We do not intend to give up on our right to respond to what happens in Gaza because of the agreement with the Turks.”

There is a legal term for what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza. It’s called collective punishment and it is against international law.

On March 22, the day President Obama left Israel, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed five resolutions slamming Israel for settlement construction and abuses perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. The U.S. was the only member of the 47-nation council to vote against the measures. Of course, most of the U.S. mass media didn’t bother to report the UN action.

“Will Mr. Obama also take the risks that will be needed to be a credible mediator and nudge the parties forward?” the New York Times said last week. “His new secretary of state, John Kerry, is eager to begin and will be in Israel this weekend, but will he have the space to conduct real diplomacy? And is there a sense of urgency on anyone’s part? In recent years, Israel has built so many settlements that the options for finding a two-state solution are dwindling.”

“Mr. Obama spent four years tweaking his relationship with Israel. On Thursday, he said ‘peace is possible.’ The question is: How much will he, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority invest to make it happen?”

Gone were Obama’s demands,” Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, wrote as Obama was winging it back to Washington. “Suppressed were his lofty ambitions. And absent were expectations, in his audience and among the American public, that he would achieve a peace breakthrough. It was a tacit admission of failure, yet everybody seemed happier with the scaled-back aspirations.” On Sunday, the online Middle East commentary page, Mondoweiss, responded. “Does Dana seriously believe Palestinians were happier with ‘scaled-back aspirations’ that leave occupation in place?”

The Israeli daily Haaretz put the question this way March 21: “Here lies the central danger of the visit. The Israeli government and public could conclude, based on the polite tone of the president and the lack of a threat or demonstrative pressure, that Israel is now exempt from having to initiate steps toward resuming the peace process.”

“This would be a horrible conclusion,” continued Haaretz. “Obama and the United States are not a party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The president of the United States is not the one who must live in a society that is being transformed as a result of the occupation and pushed to the margins of the international community. Netanyahu is correct in saying, as Washington has made clear many times, that the United States cannot want peace more than the parties themselves. But the weakness the Americans have demonstrated until now in every way over the peace process actually proves that it is Israel that must offer new plans and proposals and advance the implementation of the agreed two-state formula.

“Obama can and must make clear to Israel how the continuation of the occupation could affect bilateral relations, harm the U.S. position in the region and erode the American public’s support for Israel. He owes this to Israel and to the citizens of his country. Netanyahu, on his part, cannot settle for “surviving” the visit or for mutual pats on the back. He is responsible for renewing negotiations with the Palestinians.”

“The USpresident, of course, has it in his power to confound the skeptics.” Stephenswrote in the Financial Times. “Hereminded the Iranian regime that he is ready to deploy America’s military might to prevent Tehran building a nuclearbomb. Every conversation I have had with those close to him tells me that he isnot bluffing. But there’s the puzzle. How could a president with sufficientresolve, if needed, to start a war against Iranfail to invest the power and prestige of his office in the cause of a Middle East peace?”

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. Other Carl Bloice writing can be found at leftmargin.wordpress.com. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

August 2013 represents the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. Publicly associated with Dr. King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech, this march brought more than 250,000 people to Washington, DC to demand freedom and jobs. Initiated by Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters President A. Philip Randolph, this became a joint project with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and went down in history as a powerful show of force against Jim Crow segregation.

It is barely remembered that the March was for freedom and jobs. The demand for jobs was not a throw away line in order to get trade union support but instead reflected the growing economic crisis affecting the Black worker. It is also barely remembered that the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee played a key role in the March and that the original speech to have been offered by SNCC’s then chairman John Lewis (now, Congressman John Lewis) was censored due to its militancy.

Over time, this great March has risen to levels of near mythology. The powerful speech by Dr. King, replayed - in part - for us every King Day has eclipsed all else, so much so that too many people believe - incorrectly - that the March was King’s march rather than that he was a major player in a project that was much larger than himself.

As August 2013 has approached it has been noticeable that there has been very limited public discussion regarding an anniversary march to commemorate the 1963 event. What has, apparently, been taking place are a series of closed door discussions regarding some sort of celebratory action. What has been particularly disturbing are the suggestions that any one person, organization, or family can claim the legacy of the March. But, should any one constituency claim that legacy it is a group that does not appear to be at the table: Black labor.

Randolph and other Black labor leaders, particularly those grouped around the Negro American Labor Council, responded to the fact that the Black worker was largely being ignored in the discussions about Civil Rights. Additionally, the economic situation, as referenced earlier, was becoming complicated terrain for Black workers. As Nancy Maclean has pointed out, the elements of what came to be known as “de-industrialization” (which was really part of a reorganization of global capitalism) were beginning to have its effect in the USA, even by 1963. As with most other disasters, it started with a particular and stark impact on Black America.

In 2013, the Black worker has been largely abandoned in most discussions about race, civil rights, etc. As National Black Worker Center Project founder Dr. Steven Pitts has repeatedly pointed out, with the economic restructuring that has destroyed key centers of the Black working class, e.g., Detroit, St. Louis, much of the economic development that has emerged has either avoided the Black worker altogether or limited the role of the Black worker to the most menial of positions. Thus, unemployment for Black workers remains more than double that of whites and hovers around Depression levels in many communities.

In that sense, August 2013 must not be a reunion tour of old civil rights leaders - with all due respect - reminiscing about a bygone era, but needs to be a militant display of mass disapproval of the manner in which both race and class are playing themselves out in today’s USA. August 2013 cannot be held hostage to discussions which focus solely on the memory of Dr. King - and who can claim that memory - but must recognize the breadth of the movement that brought about the famous 1963 March on Washington.

Yet more importantly, August 2013 must be about today and the issues that are affecting the dispossessed, including but not limited to Black America. It must be a moment to highlight the attacks and the struggles that the bottom 90% of the population are engaged in fighting. It must be a moment to reissue the call for jobs and freedom, bringing those demands into the 21st century by emphasizing issues that include voting rights plus genuine economic development; peace and planetary survival.

I participated in the 1983, 20th anniversary March on Washington. Although it attempted to raise the issues of the day, e.g., the threat of Reaganomics, what could also be seen was the canonization of Dr. King as a central feature for too many of the marchers. One of the worst ways to remember Dr. King, and for that matter the 1963 March, is by canonizing any individual. One of the best ways to remember Dr. King and the March is to use the inspiration from that great day in August 1963 as the energizing force for another round of struggle.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board memberand Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior 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.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Each new class which puts itself in the place of the ruling class before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.

- Karl Marx, Concerning the Production of Consciousness,” The German Ideology

All demands for complete or gradual disarmament, for the abolition of secret diplomacy, for the dissolution of the great powers into smaller national entities, and all other similar propositions, are absolutely Utopian so long as capitalist class rule remains in power.

- Rosa Luxemburg, “The Junius Project”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pettus Bridge and Barrack Obama is resistance. That is enough. Anything else is out of line. But who is speaking and, if Obama represents resistance, then resistance to what? What ideology does Obama oppose? What ideology does he represent? He spends a great deal of time “compromising” with the Boehners and Grahams. More importantly, he is attracted to the political and legal analysts who rationalize ways to conduct war and justify killing. I have yet to hear that Obama plans to meet with, say, members of Code Pink anytime soon or any of the countless participants of Occupy Wall Street. King would have done so.

Yet, in newsprint and in front of cameras, there are Americans still pleading with Obama to remember “his roots,” remember the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There are Americans unwilling to see what is very transparent particularly to other citizens around the world: Obama is operating in an undemocratic and increasingly deranged power that is muscling its right to determine who is killed or captured, tortured, imprisoned without due process, and indefinitely.

Obama is not resisting an ideology of dominance and death; he is facilitating it! Americans are obliging him, if not outright, by silence or deed, assisting in the violence of a capitalist/imperialist State.

When two predatory drones and Reapers positioned lasers on trucks transporting Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in Yemen that September day in 2011,[1] we did not hear about it even after the dust settled and the remains of American bodies were identified as the target in the U.S.’s war against terrorism. We did not hear anything from the charismatic leader of the “free” world because he ordered the killings to remain secret.

Kill and cover up!

This is a familiar legacy, alright, but not King’s!

Secret operations must be kept secret, particularly before a presidential election in which the U.S. president and his terrorism specialists, including two lawyers, David Barron and Martin Lederman, both of whom troubled the waters condemning Bush’s “presidential war powers to disregard Congressionally imposed limitations,” did not so much jump ship! No. They were returned to duty in friendlier waters, charismatic waters with progressive-looking waves to green light for the administration of Change murdering the enemy even if the enemy is an American. No longer stymied by an increasingly unpopular Bush II, the lawyers for Obama determined “that it is not unlawful ‘murder’ when the government kills an enemy leader in war or national defense.”

It is very simple and very transparent - Obama’s brand of Change is not a return to Dr. King’s anti-war and anti-imperialism legacy no matter how much he adopts the trembling cadence of a human right’s leader or conjures Pettus Bridge or calls on self-serving pastors, organizational leaders, and band-wagon politicians, or citizens donning corporate logos, T-shirts and caps stamped with approved images of his likeness to remind him to remember the interests of humanity.

Eighteen months passed during which those in authority worked to cover up the massacre at My Lai. Here we are again, 18 months of silence since the killings of Awlaki and Khan. The murders, according to the authors of “How a U.S. Citizen Came to be in America’s Cross Hairs,” “conducted behind a classified veil,” relied “on missile strikes rarely acknowledged by the American government and complex legal justifications drafted for only a small group of officials to read.”

The U.S. government intended to kill Awlaki but not Khan (“he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted”). And as for Awlaki’s 16-year old American-born son, killed a month later, well, that was accidental. He was not a target, but, yeah, he is dead!

Then Obama submitted his nomination of John O. Brennan to head the CIA, and in the course of Brennan’s confirmation came “the white papers.” These documents, wrote Mazzetti, Savage, and Shane, summarize “the administration’s abstract legal arguments” about how much to disclose on the preparation and the killings of Awlaki and Khan.

How could the man of Change allow this to happen under his watch, the authors of this New York Times article asks?

The question should be, how could American citizens allow this to happen in light of all we know about any government committed to capitalism and imperialist interests and goals of Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs.

The New York Times’ article offers a hollow cry of outrage, particularly when it refers to the 13-hour Senate filibuster that “delayed” the inevitable confirmation of Brennan as if this drama was anything more than drama made to appear as if some in the Senate were shocked by the executive branch’s audacity. After all, it has not been a secret that Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last year while Americans were celebrating the holidays. The Senate and Americans could have read about it in Forbes (not a Commie, Black Panther, La Raza, or Indy newspaper).

The National Defense Authorization Act greatly expands the power and scope of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, including codifying into law the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operation on US soil. (“President Obama Signed the National Defense Authorization Act - Now What?” January 2, 2012)

Obama had “serious reservations” in 2011, according to the Forbes article, but nonetheless, he signed the NDAA, he won another election, and he signed an extension of “Bush” FISA Warrant-less Wiretapping Act in December 2012.

When the intelligence community taps Obama on the shoulder and whispers that Awlaki is dead, Obama, according to Mazzetti, Savage, and Shane, signals to his team “that the operation in Yemen, although reported around the globe, would remain officially unacknowledged.” Congress members had to speak “cautiously about it,” and only “private” discussions could be held among counter terrorist officials.

See how that works? Citizens around the globe know what is happening, but in the U.S., the administration of Change does not even have to open its mouth. He’s better than the Republicans. Hail, America!

Some citizens, writes Mazzetti, Savage, and Shane, are asking what are the limits of Obama’s power?

Limitless!

Why else would Obama have won the political support and financial backing of the Daley Machine, the banking, and corporate powers? Would this coalition of power have backed Dr. King today?

Turn the question of transparency on its head and make it face the American public: Where are the citizens who imagine a compassionate United States of America, who imagine an America engaged in wars only against racism, poverty, and imperialism, an America free of the violence of capitalism?

Few - that is why Obama is the right man for this stage of capitalism! What here is so confusing for The New York Times to comprehend? The paper supports capitalism and supported the U.S. invasion in the first place!

A few years ago, a department (I forget now, maybe the “Indian Department”) at the University of Wisconsin Madison sponsored a book lecture/discussion featuring the Indigenous fiction writer, Sherman Alexie. I had my suspicions, but I attended the event held in a large auditorium on campus. When Alexis took the podium, he immediately began with what seemed to me a comedy routine. The audience, predominately white, settled back and laughed along with the author as he talked about his childhood and life in general as a member of an Indigenous population. Time passed; Alexis kept up the jokes. The audience laughed. They loved it! They loved him! He made them feel comfortable about the plight of Indigenous people. You see, all is not bad!

I cringed.

At the end, the audience bought copies of his book and left the auditorium pleased. Change had happened. All those dead bodies of Indigenous men, women, and children made invisible behind this laughter! No reality check for the white, liberal, progressive audience! No anger on display from this author!

Very transparent if you acknowledge the truth before you.

This change, brought to you by capitalism, offers the American public colorful carrots here and there, but sticks are made ready to pounce on those who refuse to consent to this lethal American legacy. So Americans accept the carrots to afford reprisals from neighbors, employers and co-workers, even from friends and family members.

Asked on a segment of Law and Disorder Radio to explain why Americans, unlike Europeans, have not taken to the streets, economist Richard D. Wolff offered this: Americans, he said, were like a deer in the headlights. Imminent danger is approaching, but the deer is unable to move (March 11, 2013). Americans were told they would have it all, and now, most can barely get by.

“Americans are in shock.”

I recognize the narrative, and the image - a “shocked American” public. But who are the Americans? Are these the Americans Dr. King had planned to march to Washington D.C. before he was targeted for assassination? Are these Americans the longtime incarcerated Red, Black, and Brown? Are they the “undocumented” workers who toil in the homes of the wealthy or sweat in the fields of those who refuse to pay living wages, but workers who have been targeted by the Obama administration for deportation often to countries where they have never lived? Are these Americans the Indigenous on reservations in a continual battle against poverty and invisibility in their struggle to survive governmental injunctions and corporate incursions?

This is the great and deep national secret no one wants to discuss - these are the people excluded so that the now “shocked Americans” can justify their own inclusion in the violent scheme that is capitalism. For these mostly “shocked” liberal Americans there is the fear that if Obama goes down, then they go down, too.

Obama’s failure reveals what was sacrificed for reform rather than fundamental change, sacrificed for fear of violence nonetheless has resulted in the carnage of millions more - including now the future of their progeny. They have put all their hopes and dreams in capitalism with a friendly face, only to realize that the dreaded nightmare of racial and class unrest might come about anyway.

All that sacrifice of human life, all that suffering, amounts to Americans compromising with extremists!

Wolff knows this without saying as much, since he follows up by offering what might happen when the proverbial deer in the headlights wakes up and begins to take action. For “Americans will not be shocked for long.”

Americans, Wolff explains, will feel betrayed and will become angry. (Difference is not permitted to express anger). They will start looking around for an alternative to the economic system of capitalism. Since what Americans know about socialism derives from capitalist propaganda, some will consider anarchy. It is quite possible others will consider fascism. If this happens, Wolff continues, if Americans lean toward fascism, who will be their target enemy?

No secret here--

Immigrants, Blacks, Jews...(the usual and historical scapegoats).

What system is on the ready to fuel this anger, this hatred, this fear? As Wolff points out - capitalism! After all, I might point out, is U.S. warfare but a galvanizing of anger, hatred, and fear?

Capitalism does capitalize on nightmares as well as dreams, particularly since an era of the nightmare or the dream represents the barometer by which to measure Anglo-America’s comfort with the exclusion of racial and class difference or its discomfort with the inclusion of that difference.

A majority of these “shocked Americans,” in their complicity with Obama’s complicity, are not all “Republicans” or “right-wingers.”

Killing Americans is not a new development, and the legal justification for killing and subsequent cover ups is as legendary domestically as it is globally.

For the U.S. Empire and the survival of capitalism, killing has long been universal. Its various Pentagon and CIA operations are more transparent: comfortable boss and the same brutal legal and political operatives.

Killing is what is to be expected, more high-tech killings, accidental killings and more so-called secretly conducted and secretly justified repression. You cannot get water from a rock. It does not have it because it does not need it. There is nothing the imperialists in power and their capitalism can do with freedom, democracy, justice, except corrupt freedom, democracy, and justice through our complicity or anger!

The world waits for the American people.

[1] See Mark Mazzetti, CharlieSavage, and Scott Shane, “How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America's Cross Hairs,” New York Times, March 9, 2013.

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.

Mar 28, 2013 -Issue 510

Click here to view the animation

PulitzerPrize-winner, Mark Fiore, who the Wall Street Journal has called “the undisputed guru of the form,” creates animated political cartoons in San Francisco, where his work has been featured on the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site, SFGate.com, for over ten years. His work also appears on Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com and NPR’s web site. Fiore’s political animation has appeared on CNN, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, Salon.com and cable and broadcast outlets across the globe.

Click here to contact Mark

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

I read a commentary recently lamenting the elimination of the designation of the term, “Negro” for American born Africans, now commonly referred to as “African Americans,” from the U.S. Census form. I just shook my head, said “Good-bye, Negro” and turned the page. I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then, one of my more intellectually provocative Twitter followers, a very high profile personality that likes to engage people, tweeted the article and queried should we save “Negro”? Okay…now I’m thinking, “Should I comment on this?” After all, I’ve recently retired from dealing with Negroes (and its more vile derivative - Nig[you know who]) and try to keep them out of my space. I really could care less. I’ve promised my friends to stay “suckafree in 2013.”

Don’t get me wrong…I like Negroes. I just don’t want them leading me. It’s like flying in a 1913 plane in 1963...or a 1963 plane in 2013. It just doesn’t go fast enough and can’t handle the turbulence of the day. I know some Negroes and have a great affinity for a few of them. I’m not ashamed to say that some of my best friends were Negroes - back in the day (they don’t call themselves that now - that’s for a reason). Negroes did some things in their day - more than African Americans have done. African Americans help elect a black President but will have less - in the collective - than the generation that preceded it (mostly Negroes). Anybody ever stopped to think why Negroes stopped calling themselves Negroes? Because it was a term of subjugation that turned into a racial designation, to mark black people for discrimination. They threw away the name for something more cultural significant to their indigenous identity. Now we want to save it, because the U.S. is 40 years late in eliminating it from the Census form?

Some black people never miss an opportunity to go out backwards…

Still, I think there’s a more enlightened discussion that could take place here. A history lesson in race reality, cultural identity and historical subjugation could be had. So, I decided to engage my Twitter friend, and we had a good time with it, but agreed there’s not much that could be debated in 140 characters, but we’d hit it later in a more comprehensive space. Well, this is it.

While black people have a lot more to worry about than defending what we used to call, cultural identity, it is something that plagues Africans born in America to this day. I find it interesting…no, horrifying, that most black Americans will reject their African roots, yet you have some who want to cling to an American designation of negative and meaningless identity.

Really!!??

The historical significance of the word, Negro, is meaningless in the overall construct of the African American experience. Black people didn’t name themselves Negroes, any more than Native Americans named themselves “Indians” or “Redskins” or any other demeaning designation in America’s racialized social construct. They were named Negro by their subjugators and oppressors. Negro is not a race, nor even a racial designation. Negro is a mindset. Negro was “the best” of the choices we were given when they didn’t want to call us American, or human. In fact, Negro - from the time the Portuguese and Spanish termed Africans “Negro” which simply means “black,” from the Latin root “Necro,” which means “death,” Negro had come to mean, “dead people of no origin” in eradicating blacks’ knowledge of their African lineage. Blacks in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries refused to adapt to the word, Negro, choosing to be called “colored” instead. When blacks were referred to, commonly, by the most extreme reference (still in circulation today, though not on the Census form), whites cleaned it up for more public discourse, and Nigra or Negro became the reference.

At the turn of the 20th Century (after the Plessy decision), it was common to put society on notice by designating someone in the newspaper, John Jones, “a Negro,” for the purpose of framing racial context and injecting bias. Sadly enough, by the mid-20th Century, blacks had ingested their subjugator’s designation for them – preferring it to the alternative (which they have never stopped calling us, and the younger generation followed the Negro by trying to take the sting out of the more vile derivative - to no avail). Just because someone gives you garbage doesn’t mean you have to ingest it. You throw garbage away. Negro was thrown away years ago.

A point was made that 36,000 black people designated themselves as “a Negro” in the last Census. Well, out of 38 million black people that’s a percentage of.000947, meaning 99.999% of black people reject that designation. It’s as close to being a monolith as black have ever been in America. In scientific or statistical measurement, .000947 would be called, “Insignificant.”

This wasn’t a conversation worth having, but we tend to do that kind of thing and mainstream press will publish anything insignificant about us. We can count on that. Black people may not know what they want to be called…but they damn sure know what they don’t want to be called.

If we want to know what black people were called in the 20th Century, we can (and should) go to the history books and get the real context and construct of the term, Negro. We don’t have to be reminded of the degradation by keeping it on the U.S. Census form.

No melancholy feelings here.

GOOD-BYE Negro!!!

BlackCommentator.com Columnist,Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad,is a national columnist, managing director of the UrbanIssues Forum and author of REAL EYEZ: Race, Reality and Politics In 21st Century Popular Culture and SavingThe Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Twitter @dranthonysamad. Click here to contact Dr. Samad.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

So I know you heard the latest tear in the fabric of the Republican Party, and even more so in the conservative movement…Senator Rob Portman became the most prominent Republican lawmaker to back gay rights when he reversed his opposition to same-sex marriage last Friday, two years after his son told him he was gay. Even though I am of the mind that Portman’s decision was the right thing to do, it reveals his disingenuous political expediency, and that opposing other people’s marriage choice is veiled hate.

For years, we’ve been immersed in arguments of immorality and lewdness regarding same-sex relationships. Those arguments descended into fear-mongering that blame gay relationships on preposterous claims, ranging from STDs to mental illness. There had even been an era of “curing” those with the desire to marry someone of the same sex. Portman’s public proclamation puts all those years of insane arguments to rest.

But strangely enough, we’ve contracted yet another case of selective amnesia. We fail to recall that other high profile “homosexual haters,” like former several-time US Senate Republican candidate, Alan Keyes, and former Vice-President Dick Cheney also came to this same conclusion: People have the right to choose the course of their own lives, even the right to marry - a position consistent with the US Constitution.

Keyes was so insane that this conservative pundit and frequent Republican candidate caused a stir during the 2009 Republican convention by labeling Vice-President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter a sinner and calling homosexuality “selfish hedonism.” This is the hate that was so accepted by this hateful wing of the Republican Party.

Although written by white men, for white men, the words embedded in the American psyche make the case: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These people have espoused positions that have long denied other people their “pursuit of happiness.” The greater question is why?

I’m a straight male who has no desire to marry someone of the same sex, but what business is it of mine to deny someone else their desire to marry ANYONE else? Number one, I’ve got other stuff to do, and two, there are societal problems to be solved and marriage ain’t one of them! I’ve never seen a problem with marriage - until time for a divorce.

Denying others - gay or straight - their right to make themselves miserable is taught. I see that type of behavior as hateful and spiteful. Why do people do it? Simply, they do it because they can. People who have acted outwardly to prevent others from pursuing their brand of happiness have been practicing deep, indwelled hate that masquerades as “morality.” We’ve accepted this anti-social behavior for years.

Isn’t it strange that it’s an abomination until it’s your child who comes out? Keyes, Cheney and Portman are emblematic of a much wider population of Conservatives who must shed their hateful ways. More and more neo-Republicans have to expose their mean-spirited history. It’s clear that more of their brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts & uncles are queer - and they’re going to have to swallow it.

Portman’s 21-year-old son, Will, told the Senator and his wife in February 2011 that he was gay and had been “since he could remember.” Most of that time, Portman didn’t know…what kind of father was he? …So much for “family values!”

This hate has smacked the Republican Party directlyin the face as they examine why they’ve lost five of the last six popular votesin Presidential elections. At their recent CPAC convention, factions within theParty kept saying the Party needs to “change their tone,” not their positions. Thisis plausible denial, something Republicans do best. Unfortunately, this time,it’s too transparent, even laughable. Their credibility is diminishing at warpspeed. Now, they cannot be taken seriously on anything, not even issues ofsubstance. Their hate stands nakedly before you…the emperor has no clothes.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, is the former ExecutiveDirector ofthe workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the on-linecommentary, “The Other Side of the Tracks.” He is the host of theinternet-basedtalk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Throughout most of our lives, African people in America have been told if you get a good education you can get a good job. African people in Africa were told something similar. If you get a good education your condition in life will improve. In the early part of the twentieth century until the late 1960s and early 1970s, the thrust was to encourage African people in America to at least get a high school diploma so that they could be eligible for a job in a significant segment of the work force.

The explosion of the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements forced colleges and universities to admit Africans in America to their predominately white colleges and universities in large numbers. Today, African people in America are encouraged to get college education so they can get a good job. The education market has been saturated to the extent that a high school diploma of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, in most instances, has the same meaning as a college degree today.

That meaning is one of a college degree, qualifying people for entry-level jobs in the U.S. labor market, except for those instances where people have been trained in specialized fields at the undergraduate level.

What we hear repeatedly today is that we must concentrate on African people in America reading, writing, and math skills at the elementary and secondary levels so they can compete for the jobs that will be available in U. S. multinational corporations in the twenty-first-century, driven by the world of technology and computers.

Many of our ancestors in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-centuries who were concerned with the issue of education, asked the question - education for what? It is quite clear that the major direction of U.S. educational policy has been to train and educate African people to work for white people, that is, to teach them to read, write, and compute, so they will be prepared to work for us.

In a paper written by our great ancestor Dr. Jacob Carruthers several years ago titled, “Black Intellectuals and The Crisis In Black Education,” he observed, “When the chattel slave system was destroyed by the Civil War, one of the first acts of the victors was to provide for Black schooling on a wide scale. The northern industrialists through their philanthropic alter egos began finding and establishing Black colleges. These colleges were intended to sit atop a Negro education system.” Further, Dr. Carruthers wrote, “By the turn of the century, even southern whites were making use of this Negro education system to facilitate the transition from the old chattel to a new, but equally effective, system of Black exploitation.”

Carruthers explains, “The new system depended upon the cultivation of a Black elite to serve as examples for the masses of Blacks and to demonstrate the rewards of obedience.”

The educated Black elite, Carruthers points out, “demonstrated time and time again their ability to do what they had been trained to do. Eventually, a few of them were invited to manage the segregated colleges that were established to train Black teachers. In this manner, a small, educated Negro elite became overseers of the educational affairs of millions of Black people.”

This model of education, that continues today, was established by so-called leading white educators in this country who met at Lake Mohonk, New York (a resort area) on June 4-6, 1890, and June 3-5, 1891 to read and discuss papers on what they officially called the “Negro Question.”

Again, Dr. Carruthers writes that at the end of the second conference “they had decided that the primary things that Blacks had to be taught were morality and the dignity of labor (i.e., working for white folks).”

African people in the United States have a rich tradition of leaders who have taken issue with the white conceptualization of the mission of education of African people in America. David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry McNeal Turner, Martin R. Delany, and Edward Wilmot Blyden were nineteenth-century advocates that the education of African people should be designed to assist us in doing for ourselves.

In the twentieth-century, leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Carter G. Woodson, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X, all spoke and wrote consistently about the need for African people to develop an education program aimed ant developing African people “to do for self.”

In other words, we are still challenged today to create an education climate that inspires African youth in America to understand that the purpose of education is to develop the skills and historical understanding of the past as it relates to the present and future in preparation for working for self and the liberation of African people. This is the challenge of the twenty-first-century - to defeat the one hundred year tradition established by white educational leaders who created curricula for Africans in America designed to prepare them to work for white folks.

Our esteemed ancestor, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, reminded us repeatedly that, “history is the clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a clock that they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. The role of history in the final analysis is to tell a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most importantly, the role of history is to tell a people where they still must go and what they still must be. To me the relationship of a people to their history is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.” The purpose of education must always be “for us to do for ourselves!”

[Please support the upcoming CCICS Open House Wednesday, April 10th 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. and Thursday, April 11th 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.]

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is theNational Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Mar 28, 2013 -Issue 510

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 Mr. Latuff

Mar 28, 2013 - Issue 510

Shepard Fairey is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic super market tabloid Weekly World News. His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama "HOPE" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Click here to contact Mr. Fairey.