Table of Contents

There are 14 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: State of American Workers: Headed for a Lower Standard - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

So, Why Do We Need a Minimum Wage? - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Jose Can't You See - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Susan Rice at the UN - Déjà Vu All Over Again? - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

Quote to Ponder: "We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever." - Gus Hunt, the chief technology officer at the CIA

Edward Snowden: Martin Luther King Would Be Proud! - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Watch Who You Call Qualified - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

United States of Surveillance - Animated Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

You-Know-How-to-Whistle - Political Cartoon By Mr. Fish, Philadelphia PA

Remembering Patrice Lumumba - Worrill’s World By Dr. Conrad Worrill, PhD, BC Columnist

Barack Obama: The Dream Deferred - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

The World at Mandela's Bedside - Political Cartoon By Zapiro, South Africa

Earth Inspired Ear & Neck Set Jewelry - Art By Margaret Warfield, Atlanta GA

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.

This is Issue 521 which was published Jun 20, 2013.

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

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Members of the BCEditorial 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, BadiliJones, Martin Kilson PhD, Sharon Kyle JD, David A. Love JD, JulianneMalveaux PhD, Manning Marable PhD, Syreeta McFadden, The Reverend IreneMonroe, Leith Mullings PhD, Jacqui Patterson, Larry Pinkney, StevenPitts 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.

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

Pity the poor American worker.

Union and other labor leaders in the country are desperately trying to find a way to resurrect the power of the people in the workplace and trying to rescue it from the sharp decline that started about 40 years ago.

At that time in the U.S.,the position of the middle class started its downward slide. It was slow enough, though, that many of them didn’t see what was happening, at least not right away.

A recent union publication pointed out “89 out of 100 workers don’t have collective bargaining.” That means 89 percent of workers are not represented by a union and it means they don’t have much power in the workplace.

For those who are concerned about the health of the U.S. economy, that statistic alone should reveal that there is no hyperbole in “gloom and doom” economic forecasting. That’s because there actually is gloom and doom and it’s a pall that has settled over American workers. The numbers say that only 11 percent of American workers are union members and, in the private sector, there are predictions that the percentage of unionized workers, now at about 7 percent, is heading toward 5 percent.

Why should anyone care? Well, there are people who care about this on a theoretical level (economists and some politicians), but there are some 155 million workers (including the unemployed) who are very concerned at a very personal level. They care very much about their families and their communities and, although they might not think of it in terms of having a union to represent them and support them and ensure them a decent standard of living, what they do know is that they are dropping inexorably to the lower rungs of the economic ladder and all that that implies.

They know that they, along with other workers, have not only been standing still in wages, but they have slipped backward and there is no sign that this condition will improve anytime soon. In numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that everyone can understand, it is clear that wages, despite productivity gains, have been reduced over the past four decades.

According to BLS numbers, as reported in the Spring 2013 issue of CSW news (Communications Workers of America), the "real average weekly" (today's dollars) wage in 1947 was $462, and that number rose steadily over the next 20 years, until it was $731 (today's dollars) a week in 1971. Ever since, however, the real wage has dropped, until, in 2010, it stood at $637, nearly $100 less than the average workers was earning in 1971. During all those years, productivity has increased steadily and, if wages had increased along with productivity, the average American worker would be making $1,183 a week.

This has happened to workers across the board in the U.S. and the main reason is that most workers have not had a union to represent them in the workplace and demand a share in the much-increased productivity. That’s what unions do: provide a voice in the workplace, demanding a just share of what they produce, provide a measure of justice in discipline and promotion, provide for equity in treatment regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. They do more, but that is at the core of the function of a union.

Not surprisingly, the decline in real wages over the past 40 years has occurred at about the same rate as the growth of the disparity in wealth. In 2007, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 34.6 percent of the country’s total wealth, according to Senior Scholar Edward N. Wolff, professor of economics at New York University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In that same year, the top 20 percent of Americans owned 85 percent of the wealth and the bottom 80 percent owned just 15 percent of the nation’s wealth. The distinction between income disparity and wealth disparity is significant, but wealth disparity measures the amount of holdings (homes, vacation properties, large investment portfolios, airplanes, real estate, for example), and the disparity in wealth remains severe, more than most other developed countries.

Unions mitigated that disparity for the first few decades after World War II, but the forces of capital already had launched a virtual war against workers and their unions, even against the very idea of unions. At the same time, Corporate America and their CEOs (in the old days, they were called “Robber Barons”) were busily funding right wing think tanks and buying up news outlets, to blanket the country with anti-union propaganda. Especially, they were busy influencing the children and young students by placing their pamphlets and other propaganda widely in schools, colleges, and universities. They heavily influenced the writing of textbooks and funded “chairs” or entire departments in universities, again with the intention of having a say in how subjects are taught and monitoring the outcomes in subtle, but effective ways. They still do and it’s not always subtle.

The AFL-CIO, one of two labor federations in the country, is attempting to turn this behemoth around, but it is fighting the incredible power of combined capital, manifested by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, to name a few. It plans to address it at the annual convention later this year. In preparation, it appointed earlier this year committees of workers and union leaders to formulate ways to increase both membership in unions and the power of workers at the bargaining table.

Any plan that organized labor comes up with will have to be a much broader effort than has been traditional for the past 50 years or so. Time and again, both local and national union leaders have said, in effect, “we’re going to stick to wages, benefits, and working conditions…we want our dues money to be spent on our members only.” That has been and will continue to be the dirge of the unions and the movement.

In the old days, before collective bargaining laws and the dues checkoff, unions were more of a social movement than they have been since World War II. They tended to address the needs of workers and their families where they lived and were concerned about life in their communities. So, while they demanded living wages and better working conditions, they also took care of the sick and buried the dead. It has been a long time since leaders of unions have thought in those terms.

Today’s unions must broaden their scope to include issues of war and peace, economic justice for all (union or not), saving what is left of the natural environment, the creation of a just and holistic food system, and, perhaps most important of all, a full frontal defense against the power of Corporate America, which has assumed control over the years of greater and greater portions of our lives.

In all of these things just mentioned, organized labor has been divided for a long time. Take for example the Vietnam War…it was a classic division between the “hard hats” and those unions that had a broader political view of the world. Today, issues like the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, separate one group of unions from another. Even when there is some rational debate, afterwards there remains disunity and that is the face shown to the people.

The power of Corporate America is that, although they repeat the mantra “competition,” there is no competition among them when it comes to the job of keeping workers in their place and driving down wages and living standards. They are of one mind about this and they have succeeded and they believe that they will continue to win this war they have declared against a seemingly defenseless populace. Their concern is not to “promote the general welfare,” as called for in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, but to promote their own welfare and to ensure that they have as little competition from the people as possible toward that end. In this, they have succeeded beyond their own dreams.

To recover, survive, and bring the benefits of national unity to the people, organized labor has a monumental job ahead. It needs to counter the colossal amount of money and power that is arrayed in front of them. The union movement needs to teach the people that they are the 99 percent and that the 1 percent is what is standing in the way of bringing change to a country that is in desperate need of reinventing itself, to achieve what has eluded us so far: equality, justice, fairness, a decent standard of living for all, and a conserved and protected environment in which to work and live.

Anything short of this will see the American founders’ goal of a fair and just society fade away.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. 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.

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

When I received a call from BlackCommentator.com publisher, Peter Gamble, the other day, I assumed that it was BC business. To my surprise he wanted to discuss a problem/challenge he had encountered. He found himself involved in a discussion with Tea Party supporters who were attacking the whole idea of a minimum wage, suggesting that the so-called free market should set the wage rate and that a formal minimum wage was harmful. As backward an ideas as this is, it is actually quite common, particularly among a set of small businesspeople and right-wing ideologues. Thus, it is worth addressing head on.

It is important to begin with a recognition that there is no such a thing as a “free market.” When capitalists get into trouble they go scurrying to the government in search of assistance (remember the collapse of 2008???). When the economy is hot, the business class screams to the heavens about the so-called “free market,” insisting that government needs to get out of the way and that anything that inhibits profits should be removed. Of course, when the economy is not going so well, the business class also screams, but this time a different tune, insisting that they must be saved because, after all, they are too big and/or important to fail. I am sure that you have heard that tune.

So, the assumption that the so-called “free market” can set the wage rate is nothing more or less than a mean-spirited myth. The market, and specifically, the demand for labor power is something that will certainly influence the wages that are available, but there are other factors that must be considered.

This leads us to the second point. The assumption that the so-called free market will establish an acceptable wage or salary rate begs an important question: acceptable for who? Consider for a moment an exercise that I have used many times in trainings (and which I reference in my book “They’re Bankrupting Us” – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions). Get a group of people together. Now, think about a job. Come up with what you believe to be a very good wage/salary and benefit package. Ask how many of these individuals - assuming that they were qualified - would be interested in the job. Get a showing of hands. Now reduce the wage/salary and/or benefit package slightly. Ask how many people would still be interested. Finally, keep reducing the wage/salary and/or benefit package and ask for a showing of hands each time that you reduce the amount. Notice what happens.

You will find something that occurs every day in the labor market. There is almost always someone who, for whatever reason, is prepared to take a job for less than others. This does not reflect a moral judgment but instead reflects the personal circumstances of different individuals. Without a floor, brought about either through a minimum wage statute or a collective bargaining agreement won by workers through a labor union, the business class is free to keep reducing the wage/salary and benefit package. It can do this until it reaches the point where no one will accept what is offered.

Let us consider one other aspect to this. What people are prepared to accept depends on a range of circumstances, not the least being the overall state of the economy. Thus, in times of increased unemployment or if one lives in a very depressed region, one might take a job that, all things being equal, one would never have considered. Think about the old “company towns” that were controlled by a large company and where everyone and everything in that town was dependent on the whims of that corporation. In periods of great economic insecurity, people might be prepared to put themself into virtual bondage. If there are no laws to protect them and/or no labor unions, someone can find their living standard suppressed.

There is a third factor that must be considered when speaking about a minimum wage. If people have no money they cannot buy the products that are made. This is something that Henry Ford, despite being an extreme right-winger, realized in the early part of the 20th century. Workers needed a wage such that they could ultimately buy the cars that he produced. If workers are all in poverty, there are many warehouses that will go full with unsold commodities.

In other words, if you want to keep the economy moving, workers need income. Minimum wage, or at least the theory behind it, is supposed to give workers enough to do a little bit more than get by. The problem is that conservative forces in US society have, for several decades, restricted the growth of the minimum wage. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren, if the federal minimum wage had kept up with the increases in productivity, it would stand today at roughly $22/hour rather than $7.25. So, instead of the statutory minimum wage, being a respectable component of a social safety net, it represents an insult to the working poor.

By looking at the actual history of capitalism, rather than the myths associated with it, one thing that is clear is that lacking government or union protections, the business class will squeeze all that they can from working people. The so-called free market will not equalize anything, nor will it guarantee that workers receive the sort of compensation necessary in order to live rather than simply exist.

The next time that one of these Tea Party fanatics, or for that matter even your cranky “Uncle Albert” at a family dinner, suggests that a minimum wage is not necessary, please don’t forget to ask them how far $7.25 or even $8.00/will take them these days. While the Tea Party and “Uncle Albert” have a right to their own opinions, they have no right - morally or otherwise - to create their own facts.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and 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’re Bankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of Solidarity Divided: 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.

Jun 20, 2013 -Issue 521

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.

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

Susan Rice and Colin Powell have more than one thing in common, but if things continue to move as they are now, the most historically significant one may be that they both went to the United Nations with “evidence” that got our country involved in a military conflict in a volatile part of the world, resulting in massive death and destruction – all for no good reason.

On February 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State General Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons of mass destruction and the country’s then ruler, Saddam Hussein, was hoodwinking U.N. inspectors by hiding them. It was, as Democracy Now! said last week, “a defining moment “in the Bush administration’s push to invade Iraq.

On February 6, 2003, Rice, then a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told NPR Powell “has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don’t think many informed people doubted that.”

What we know now is that what the then highest-ranking African American official in the Bush Administration said was not true. I recall the day NBA great Charles Barkley was asked what was the question of the day and answered “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?”

Turned out there were none.

It was what the New York Times last week termed, “the fiasco of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”

In the end it didn’t matter much. It was the U.S. public and much of the international community that had been hoodwinked. The U.S. invaded Iraq, overthrew Hussein and set in motion a decade-long war that resulted on 0ver 4,440 U.S. troops deaths, over 32,000 seriously. Over 235 are reported to have taken their own lives while deployed. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives and 1.6. million were displaced from their homes. All at the cost of over $I trillion.

Last week, Powell’s former aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who prepared the U.N. speech, told Democracy Now!, “I don’t believe the hype about that presentation having been the ultimate presentation... that led us to war with Iraq…George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others had decided to go to war with Iraq long before Colin Powell gave that presentation.”

“Frankly, we were all wrong,” said Wilkerson. “Was the intelligence politicized in addition to being wrong at its roots? Absolutely.”

When Powell gave his UN presentation there were already serious questions raised, even in the mainstream mass media, about the sources of the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, including shadowy figures in the world of international intrigue, like Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka “Curveball,” who later admitted he lied.

In March 2003, Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and then leader of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said “No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found” in Iraq, but that the investigation would continue and could be concluded in a matter of months. However, the Bush Administration called for a halt in the diplomatic track, put together a “coalition of the willing” outside the UN, told UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq and preceded with invasion.

Interestingly, in light of today’s front page news, on April 7, 2008, CNN quoted Blix as saying he suspected his home and office were bugged by the United States.

On February 25, 2004, CNN reported from London that “Charges have been dropped against a British government translator accused of leaking a memo on an alleged U.S. ‘dirty tricks’ campaign in the run-up to the Iraq War.”

Katherine Gun, 29, reportedly had been fired from her job as a Chinese language expert at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters listening station (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, charged under the Official Secrets Act 1889 of disclosing security and intelligence information. This related to a request, allegedly from an American National Security Agency official to British counterparts, to tap the telephones of U.N. Security Council delegates.

“The request was allegedly made as Washington and London were attempting to obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the Iraq war. Targets of the eavesdropping efforts were reported to be Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan,” said CNN.

Gun admitted she had leaked the memo. She said “any disclosures were justified because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government, who attempted to subvert our own security services.”

On June 14, Rice, President Obama’s new chief national security adviser and outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined with “high confidence” from “multiple streams of information” that the Assad regime has used the chemical weapon sarin in small amounts a number of times over the last year. She also denied that there is any evidence Syrian opposition has, or has used, chemical weapons.

Rice said also she had written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon concerning evidence Rice declared that President Obama’s “clear red lines” had been crossed. She added that the U.S. will “increase in scope and scale” the support provided not only to civilian authorities in the opposition, but also to the Supreme Military Council.

The timing of Rice’s announcement is eerily reminiscent of what occurred a decade ago when Powell was at the Bush Administration’s foreign policy helm. Then, as now, the decision to escalate the conflict came amid feverish international effort to prevent war. UN weapons inspectors were calling for more time to probe the weapons of mass destruction allegations when Powell went before the Security Council with his fraudulent charges and already suspect evidence. Likewise, efforts were underway to attempt a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict with U.S. and Russia having agreed to an international conference in August in Geneva, when Rice announced the Obama Administration’s escalation.

“All countries involved must uphold their responsibilities to seek a resolution of this tragedy,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week. “There is not military solution to this conflict even if both the Government and the opposition, and their supporters think there can be. The military path points directly towards the further disintegration of the country, destabilization of the region and inflammation of religious and communal tensions.”

The UN would not sanction the invasion and occupation of Iraq so it was carried out by an ad hoc “coalition of the willing.” Likewise, an armed intervention in Syria would never be sanctioned by the world body.

Is it possible that Rice will end up before the UN waving a vial of something said to be a weapon of mass destruction and swearing to its authenticity?

Meanwhile, the London Daily Mail reported May 15 that “A senior United Nations official has claimed that Syrian rebels may have used chemical weapons against government forces.” The paper said UN investigator Carla del Ponte “says there are indications that chemical weapons attacks were carried out by Syrian rebels.” Del Ponte said evidence from casualties and medical staff indicated that rebel forces in the civil war had used the deadly nerve agent, sarin. “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals, and there are strong, concrete suspicions, but not yet incontrovertible proof, of the use of sarin gas,” said Del Ponte in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

Last Friday, the Russian government warned US against repeating the Iraq war mistake. According to Middle East Online, President Putin’s top foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov called Washington’s claim on Syrian regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons “unconvincing.” He said the Obama administration’s decision to provide military aid to Syrian rebels would damage international efforts to end a conflict that has left tens of thousands dead.

Ushakov said US officials had recently presented Russia with new information about Assad’s alleged chemical weapons use. “What was presented by the Americans does not look convincing to us,” he told reporters. “I would not want to make any parallels; I would not want to believe that this data can be similar to the situation with the vial that (US) Secretary of State Colin Powell brandished at the famous Security Council meeting.”

“The responsible role of a lone superpower is not to pick sides in a civil war; it’s to help enable conflict resolution while maintaining a policy of neutrality,” former State Department official Ramzy Mardini wrote in the New York Times June 14. “Instead, the United States came down on one side of a regional sectarian conflict, inadvertently fomenting Sunni hubris and Shiite fear - the same effects (but in reverse) caused by America’s involvement in the Iraq war.”

There may be one area where Powell and Rice differ. The general is generally described as a voice of moderation in elite circles, warning that the duration and consequences of the Iraq takeover would be far greater than the rosy in-and-out scenarios being fed to the public by the neocon hawks and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Rice is what is known of as a “liberal interventionist” and is said to be one of those in an Administration known to be divided on how to proceed, pressing for greater involvement in the Syrian civil war.

That position turned into a virtual campaign for escalation last week when former President Bill Clinton crudely and arrogantly got into the act in what the New York Times called a “cheap shot.” (I’d call it a stab in the back). “It is irresponsible for critics like Mr. (Sen. John) McCain and Mr. Clinton to fault Mr. Obama without explaining how the United States can change the course of that brutal civil war without being dragged too far into it,” the paper’s editors said.

President Obama has said there will be no “boots on the ground,” meaning no U.S. troops. Perhaps. But another Clintonite neocon sees things unfolding on a much bigger scale. “If the objective is to affect the balance of power, but to use minimal means, that doesn’t make any sense,” says former Ambassador Dennis Ross, who spent more than a decade helping to shape U.S. policy in the Middle East and served Secretary of State Clinton as a special advisor on Iran. Ross argues that the United States should “be prepared” to consider deploying Patriot missiles along the Turkey-Syria border as part of a “limited no-fly” zone and says the same thing may have to be considered for Jordan.

Ross is quoted by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a fellow and deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, as asserting “it is only likely to be effective if it is done in a very significant way,” with training, funding, and equipment part of the package. "If you are going to go down this route, then you ought to go down this route in a really serious way. That means being prepared to shape the whole operation and with a very senior person, maybe a four-star [general] in charge of it.”

Ross notes that lack of U.S. military action to date could mean that any greater intervention could speak even louder than it otherwise would. “The worst thing is to do something in a very limited way that engages you a bit more, but has a very limited effect,” says Ross.

“Interventionists tend to detach their actions from longer-term consequences,” Mardini wrote. “This myopia is often coupled with a prevalent misunderstanding of the political and cultural context of where they want to intervene. Both problems are present in the current American approach to Syria.”

As it was in Iraq.

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. Bloice is one of the moderators of Portside. Other Carl Bloice writing can be found at leftmargin.wordpress.com. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

More about Gus Hunt

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ To the conformist and the shapers of the conformist mentality, this must surely sound like a most dangerous and radical doctrine. Have we permitted the lamp of independent thought and individualism to become so dim that were Jefferson to write and live by these words today we would find cause to harass and investigate him? If Americans permit thought-control, business-control and freedom c-control to continue, we shall surely move within the shadows of fascism.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

I hope we are not witnessing the further development of that infamous line between whites and Blacks, between long-time dissenters and recently awakened ones and Black America. Last week, the trial of George Zimmerman seemed to be competing against the trial of Pvt. Bradley Manning, if you listened to the Pacifica stations or read daily reports from the two trials. Black radio hosts focused exclusively on the Zimmerman trial and the murder of Trayvon Martin. On the other hand, white hosts featured those who are following Manning’s trial.

Both trials say much about the domestic and foreign policies of this United States Empire. Both are linked to each other as extensions from one and the same state of tyranny. It does not matter that Zimmerman acted as a “private” citizen. Hatred and fear surely killed Martin, and as the video Manning released, showing the indifferent if not brutal manner in which military personnel gunned down journalists and further pursued others attempting to assist the journalists, hatred and fear was there too.

We should recognize the pattern of tyranny in the attempt by those supposedly representing justice to vilify (and thus justify) the murder of a 14-year-old Black boy and the prosecution of 22-year-old white whistleblower.

Trayvon Martin was marginalized. Manning is marginalized. There is a connection easy to see if hatred and fear are not allowed to control what we see and hear from the Empire and all its minions, as Dr. King would say, of “shapers of conformist mentality.”

What would Jefferson do today if he remained steadfast to his principles? What would happen to Frederick Douglass, who escaped the plantation where he had been enslaved, and managed to speak out against slavery, and even wrote an “incriminating” autobiography, a first-hand document revealing not only the brutality of his particular masters, but also further exposing the moral bankruptcy of a nation, on the one hand, proclaiming its allegiance to “freedom,” while upholding an ideology of tyranny?

Sojourner Truth, too, escaped the embrace of slavery to travel throughout northern cities denouncing the US practice of terrorism within its freedom-loving borders. In fact, you could argue that Malcolm, King, Cesear Chavez, and any number of dissenters who freed themselves from the “shapers of conformist mentality,” risked everything, including their lives, to expose the wrong doings of the US Empire.

They were courageous whistleblowers.

Edward Snowden, the former technical assistant for the CIA, former analyst for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, follows in this tradition.

At the outset, it should be made clear that Booz Allen is a private contractor, which means, Booz Allen, is a corporation, hired by the US government, specifically, the National Security Agency (NSA), which has as its director a 4-star general, Keith Alexander.

Booz Allen has long and deep ties with the government-

the kinds of ties that contractors pursue and covet. Contractors stand to gain an edge on competitors by hiring people with the most closely held knowledge of the thinking inside agencies they want to serve and the best access to officials inside. That typically means former government officials (“Leaks Highlights Key Role of Private Contractors,” Salon.com, June 10, 2013).

One example to consider is that the current head of national intelligence, James Clapper, was once a former executive for Booz Allen. Mike McConnell, Booz Allen’s former vice chairman, “held Clapper’s position under George W. Bush,” according to Salon.

In the meantime, many of the “representatives of the people,” those in Congress, receive big checks from corporations such as General Atomic Aeronautical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Gumman, and Aero Vironment. Drone companies donated to the campaigns of Buck McKeon, R-CA, (124,500), Silvestre Reyes, D-TX, (97,000), Darrell Issa, D-CA, (45,000), Loretta Sanchez, D-CA, (43,000), Gene Green, D-TX, (8,000), Steve Pearce, R-NM, (1,000), and others (“The Drone Makers and Their Friends in Washington,” KPBS.org., April 11, 2013).

Congress is in the service of the corporations.

To make matters worse, members of the Congressional intelligence committee are privy to less and less of the “intelligence” operations conducted by these private contractors. While these representatives for the people in Washington, claiming to be protecting the Constitution of this nation, the civil liberties and well being of its people, and not those of warmongering corporations, are also responsible for ensuring the executive branch does not over reach its powers, creating a dictatorial regime catering to the interests of corporate/military.

We have the progression from the idea of democracy, the goal of freedom from tyranny to tyranny itself. From one presidential administration to the next, we have the consolidation of alliances between the corporations and military under the leadership of a Democrat or Republican. It makes no difference. Tyranny has progressed. We have the progression of tyranny, which always welcomes collaborators to contribute to a representation of “democracy,” chuckling along in the most brutal manner.

The proliferation of government-hired intelligence contracts, of military intelligence units, of the CIA drone campaign, of building construction to surround more secretive spying activity, and of executive signings, should be enough for anyone in fear of tyranny. The US Constitution does not support a dictatorship! That most of this activity is conducted in secret should dispel the mantra of “Change” created a few years ago by corporate PR firms and then echoed by the corporate media. Executive kill lists and an “overseas target list for cyber-attacks” (Greenwald and MacAskill, The Guardian, June 7, 2013) is not an exhibit of the kind of courage displayed by Sojourner Truth or Frederick Douglass.

This is tyranny!

We have a crisis! We have terrorism! While the real crisis is capitalism’s use and infliction of terrorism itself to impose austerity programs globally, two successive presidents, one Republican and the current Democrat, have told us that the crisis is out there. “Terrorists” are out to destroy us and everything we stand for!

There is “an enemy” to combat, “an evil” to suppress which has historically meant - a peoples’ hearts and minds to win - by hook or crook.

The “shapers of conformity” come in all colors these days. Equal opportunity! The “shapers” - leaders in the proliferation of tyranny-- need to believe they are right and then they are capable of anything, as S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher argue in “Questioning The Banality of Evil,” www.thepychologist.org, (Vol. 21-Part 1, January 2008).

Haslam and Reicher: “Tyrannical leaders only thrive by convincing us that we are in crisis, that we face threat and that we need their strong decisive action to surmount it.” The crisis, the threat comes from an enemy, an “outgroup.” The role of such leaders, as Reicher’s study revealed,

becomes even more dangerous when they tell us that ’we’ are the sum of all virtues so that the defense of virtue requires the destruction of the outgroup that threatens us. These are the condition which allows groups to make genocide normative and to represent mass murder as something honourable.”

The followers in the honourable right to destroy and kill do not so much “suspend their capacity to make informed moral judgments and relinquish responsibility for what they do to those in authority,” as was previously believed. On the contrary, as Haslam and Reicher’s study of the Nazi fascist regime reveals. Participants of that regime “identified strongly with anti-semitism and Nazi ideology.” Their active identification with the regime’s ideology allowed them to justify and condone “the oppression and destruction of others.”

In 2003, when Edward Snowden joined the Special Forces to “help free people from oppression” in Iraq (“Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations,” The Guardian, June 8, 2013), he had no idea that he would be surrounded by those identifying with an ideology of hate and violence. The war was not about freeing Iraqis from tyranny. “Most of the people training us,” Snowden recalls, “seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.”

Out of Iraq, Snowden joined the CIA and worked, wrote investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, on “IT security.” Eventually, he was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland “responsible for maintaining computer network security.”

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world...I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

The secret operations and disclosures about individuals made him “feel uncomfortable.”

Snowden left the CIA and found employment with Booz Allen Hamilton.

When leaders cry “crisis” and engage the nation in combat, surveillance must thrive. Booz Allen’s business is surveillance. When leaders cry “crisis, crisis,” they need money from bankers, foot soldiers and generals, and they need surveillance. The most dangerous people with the potential to effect the gravest disruption of capitalism is the American people.

Booz Allen makes money by spying on the “enemy,” and given this is a capitalist venture, in the business of making the world safe, it supports and encourages leaders to see the enemy everywhere and anywhere. Military commanders agree with this progressive thinking about war, the enemy, national security.

Corporations such as a Lockheed Martin or a Booz Allen, attentive to the leaders’ call to war, pro-actively and creatively design and develop technology and collect the best (read: believe in the might of the US) computer-savvy “storm troopers” from among the willing, and push to gather “intelligence” from everywhere and from anywhere. Good business is the expansion of business!

Booz Allen’s contribution to the war on terrorism, then, has served its stockholders quite well. The corporation earned $5.9 million from US government contracts.

The 29-year-old Edward Snowden received over $200,000 a year to collect “intelligence” on American citizens (“Leaks Highlights,” Salon). But it turns out that Snowden was not one of the willing, not one of the content-with-status-quo, enslaved on the plantation - for most should be aware, the linguistic expansion of the plantation has made it possible for the US Empire to make people, at home and aboard, accept the concrete presence of tyranny as freedom.

The impressive title and job and income at Booz Allen was not freedom, as Snowden came to realize. He sat at his computer among the ideologues of anti-freedom such as he had in the military and in the CIA. Snowden took a courageous step, removing himself from the chains of the “national security” apparatus, and speaking out to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

When asked by Greenwald if he had given any thought to how the US government would respond to his actions, Snowden had this to say:

...You have to make a determination about what it is that’s important to you. And if living - living unfreely but comfortably is something you’re willing to accept...you can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck for relatively little work against the public interest and go to sleep at night after watching your shows. But if you realize that that’s the world that you helped create and it’s going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation, who extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risk, and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is, so long as the public gets to make their own decisions about how that’s applied. (“‘Your Being Watched,’ Edward Snowden Emerges as Source Behind Explosive Revelations of NSA Spying,” -Democracy Now!, June 10, 2013).

Snowden had looked for a leader better than Bush II and, in 2008, supported the election of Barack Obama. He told Greenwald, Obama’s election “gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.” But, then, like many Americans, he “watched as Obama advanced the very policies” that he thought would be reined in. And then he knew: “You can’t wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.”

Dr. King would be proud of Edward Snowden. He is a runaway on the loose and no tyrannical order can stand to have such an individual outside the confines of a prison or coffin. But it is up to us who believe in freedom from the tyrannical arms of a corporate/capitalist/military state to protect him by standing with him.

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

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

Since the current news cycle is going bonkers over the NSA leak scandal, I have to put it in an Other-Side-of-the-Tracks perspective. I’ll justly focus on our chief spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), and their hiring of Edward Snowden, the professed leaker of sensitive secrets about America’s denial of phone tapping and internet spying on its own people.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and just-fired employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the NSA for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen, and Dell.

Though I could now focus on the substance of the leaks or something as mundane as where he attended middle school, I want to zero in on an issue that you won’t hear touched by your trusted media: Mr. Snowden’s qualifications. I have to contextualize it in terms of America’s sordid legacy of white privilege and roadblocks to opportunities.

The NSA arguably has among them the smartest people, not only in the room, but in the country. These smart people decided to contract with companies that also hire the smartest people in the country. These same smart people decided to hire a wiry, young renegade - who dropped out of high school. Now, I have nothing against hiring high school dropouts. Some have proven to change the course of American history and commerce, yet America’s standard for achieving success has been, at the least, a high school diploma. All of a sudden, I see the rules have changed.

Only 7 of 10 ninth graders today will get high school diplomas. A decade after the No Child Left Behind law mandated efforts to reduce the racial gap, about 80 percent of white and Asian students graduate from high school, compared with only 55 percent of Blacks and Hispanics. With those facts in mind, how do high school dropouts get super-sensitive, high-paying spy agency jobs?

We’ve been taught that standardized testing, like SATs and ACTs set the bar - and are the bar - to getting a good job later down the road. Now I see a white male with no high-achieving skill sets - besides being a computer geek - get a $122,000-a-year job. This only got exposed because a government contractor (that is, welfare recipient) hired someone with a conscience.

More to my point, how many Black high school dropouts do you think will land a $122,000-a-year job with Northrup-Grumman, SAIC, Boeing, or Booz Allen Hamilton? Before you answer, remember we are indoctrinated with the “facts” that, absent a high school diploma, one cannot expect to land a job at Home Depot! What’s wrong with this picture?

This is what happens when you privatize government. Thanks to the political takeover by Neo-Conservatives, our country has made “smaller government” by giving the work of responsible government - with all its bars of the GS system - over to private corporations who don’t give a damn who they hire to do someone else’s work…as long as they get paid. Republican Conservatives have not only perpetrated insecurity in our spy agencies, but betrayed the very doctrine of “success after a diploma” that we’ve been taught.

I was floored when I read that Ed Snowden was making that kind of money! A 2004 study on income done by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Picketty, meshed with the latest 2013 median income data, showed:

INCOME GROUPS IN THE U.S.

Median - $26,695

Top 10% - $87,33

Top 5% - $120,21

Top 1% - $277,983

Top 0.5% - $397,949

Top 0.1% - $1,134,849

Top 0.01% - $5,349,795

“College is the surest way to the middle class,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on this week’s Republican response to the President’s Weekly Address, while he - Alexander - talked also about raising student loan interest rates. Well Ed Snowden bypassed that hurdle to jump straight into the top 5% of American income earners. This path is the main reason (we’re told) that Blacks are doing so poorly in earned income in America. Make it make sense to me, how this guy, Snowden, landed a high-security level job with bare credentials?

This brings me to my point: While municipalities are cutting education funding, robbing urban school districts through privatization, we’re being sold the bogus bill of goods - Blacks earn less because they do worse in school. That IS garbage. Though Ed Snowden serves as anecdotal evidence, he is illustrative of my greater point: White people are still the beneficiaries of an unequal and unjust socio-economic system.

There are plenty of competent computer geeks among Blacks in America; I dare say you’ll find many cases like Ed Snowden’s, but I know you’ll find many white folks who enjoy Snowden-like privileges. So while the NSA is watching us, I guess they’ll be watching who they call qualified.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, longtime activist & organizer, is the Executive Director of the workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the soon-to-be-released on-line book, “As A Condition of Your Freedom”. He is also the host of the internet-based talk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.

Jun 20, 2013 -Issue 521

Watch Animation

Pulitzer Prize-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

Jun 20, 2013 -Issue 521

Mr. Fish is a cartoonist and writer who lives in Philadelphia, PA. He says never asked to be born. Occasionally, he laughs his head off. His mother has no idea what he's up to. She cries easily. His Website is clowncrack.com. Click here to contact Mr. Fish.

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

We should remember to lift the spirit of some of our great ancestors who made significant contributions to the African Liberation Movement. July 2nd is the 88th birthday of one of these great heroes, Patrice Lumumba.

The meaning of the life and work of our beloved brother, Patrice Lumumba was rooted in his determination to fight against the forces of the European world in the most turbulent period of the history of the Congo. We should commemorate the birthday of this late, great African leader, who stood against all the forces in the European world and the African world who were steadfast in their efforts to stop the real Independence Movement of the people of the Congo. It is important for us to understand, today, that those who stand and fight against the evil of the European world take on a serious task and challenge. Herein lies the legacy of Patrice Lumumba.

Patrice Lumumba was born July 2, 1925 in Katako Kombe, a small village in a remote area of the African continent, then referred to as the Congo. Born to a family of five and educated by missionaries, he was able to caste off the domination of European influences on his life and relate to the interests of the masses of Congolese people. At an early age, he recognized the need to develop the kind of skills necessary to become an active participant in the African Liberation struggle. In his efforts to develop his skills, Patrice had a variety of work experiences that included his being employed in a hospital and a post office, which gave him greater insights into the overall oppression of the Congolese people. The more contact Patrice had with the European world, the more he developed the kind of political consciousness that made him one of the most important leaders in the African Independence Movement.

As a result of his participation as the secretary in the Liberal Party of the Congo and his efforts to talk with the Belgian officials, Lumumba was able to see that independence and freedom for his people would not come through the efforts of the Liberal Party or negotiations with the Europeans. His outspokenness and determination to find a vehicle to free the Congolese people led to his being sentenced to two years in prison. Although his prison sentence was cut short, upon his release, the Belgian colonialists, along with their African servants, attempted to isolate Patrice from the growing independence movement of the masses of the people.

In October 1958, Patrice helped form the National Congolese Movement, which was to become the forerunner in the liberation struggle. In December of 1958, Patrice was invited to a conference of African nations hosted by Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana. It was through this conference that Patrice began to establish contact with the leaders of the Liberation Movements in other African countries. From this point forward, the Liberation Movement in the Congo escalated to the point that the Belgian government decided to grant the Congolese people their so-called freedom on June 30, 1960.

At the Independence Day Ceremony on June 30th, while his African movement friends were thanking the Belgians for granting them their independence, it is said the Lumumba became enraged. He grabbed the microphone and told his people that the colonization of the Congo was nothing other than the domination of the European world over the African world. He went on to point out that the humiliating system of slavery, which was imposed upon the African people of the Congo by European forces was done because they were African. This statement by Patrice Lumumba caused the white world and their African servants to conspire in the next year to find a way to get rid of this most courageous spokesman for the interest of the Congolese people.

Patrice Lumumba was assassinated on January 17, 1961 at the hands of African mercenaries working in the interests of the Europeans through the United States and the CIA. This fact was recently revealed in Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s International Relations Hearings. Before his death, Lumumba wrote a letter to his wife that signified the essence of his involvement in the struggle to free his people. Patrice wrote, in part:

“I want my children, who I leave behind and perhaps will never see again, to be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful and that their country expects them, as it expects every Congolese, to fulfill the sacred task of rebuilding on our independence, our sovereignty, for without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men… Do not weep for me, my companion, I know that my country, now suffering so much, will be able to defend its independence and freedom.”

In conclusion, we can say that the external enemies, (or the enemies from without), and internal enemies (or the enemies from within), led to the demise and death of Patrice Lumumba. But, fortunately, his legacy lives on.

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

Jun 20, 2013 - Issue 521

A Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

“To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.”

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

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout the world have legitimate needs and aspirations.

Many ordinary people in the U.S., in the year 2008, had been led to believe that they had at last found, in the person of the then 'hope and change' U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, a true champion on behalf of struggling everyday people. Sadly, they had been callously duped and deceived by a corrupt corporate-owned political system intent upon continuing its agenda of economic exploitation, corporate hegemony, and perpetual war.

It is now the year 2013, and the articulate corporate-owned Barack Obama has proven to be the bane of everyday ordinary people. He is this nation's first president to officially have his very own secret extrajudicial 'kill list.' He has, in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and international law, facilitated the military bombing of Libya, north Africa even as he militarizes other parts of the African continent under the auspices of what is known as AFRICOM. He has used, and continues to use, monstrous and incessant drone missile strikes to bomb the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, etc. He has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all of his White House predecessors combined. He has ushered in a de facto U.S. police state by signing and codifying into law – the indefinite detention (without charge, trial, jury, or due process) of U.S. citizens - as it relates specifically to provision 1021 of the so-called National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). However, not satisfied with these outrages, he oversees the most massive spying police-state surveillance program against U.S. citizens in the history of this nation.

Barack Obama, who began as the wrongly perceived hope of the people - has proven himself to be the war mongering rope of the people.

Virtually NOTHING that Mr. 'hope and change' Barack Obama states or has stated can be believed – NOTHING! He has betrayed, and is betraying, the everyday ordinary people of this nation and planet. For example, while calling for 'gun control' at home he commits mass murder of children, women, and men abroad. His hypocrisy is surpassed only by his arrogance towards, and contempt for, the ordinary people of this nation and world.

Of course, the corporate-stream media continues to play a most insidious role in the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation - that plays into the hands of the corporate-owned systemic Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama and his Democrat and Republican party cohorts are about the business of betrayal and deferring the “dream” [i.e. the legitimate needs and aspirations] of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people.

In this year of 2013, it is clear that Barack Obama is, for everyday people, the dream deferred. He is the very antithesis of 'hope and change' and is, in reality, the nightmare of the people.

The dreams of the ordinary people will only be brought to fruition collectively by the consciousness, hard work, and perseverance of we the people - ourselves.

Let us remember: 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.

Jun 21, 2013 - Issue 521

Jonathan Shapiro is a South African cartoonist, famous as Zapiro, whose work appears in numerous South African publications and has been exhibited internationally on many occasions.

Licensing & Syndication Rights

Zapiro is always keen that his cartoons are published as widely as possible. There are many circumstances where the use of Zapiro cartoons can help you get your message across or increase the sales of your publication. For example:

- syndication for regular use in a newspaper or magazine

- on websites and other promotional materials

- in fan websites dedicated to Zapiro or cartooning in general

- in reports and books to emphasise or illustrate issues

- in printed and online collections of cartoons either by Zapiro or by cartoonists in general.

Whatever your use please only use Zapiro's cartoons for your own website, publication or presentation once you've got his prior consent — they are both his livelihood and his copyright.

Normally permission will be granted quite readily provided that your use doesn't conflict with or misrepresent the message in the cartoon. Sometimes there will be a fee for using the cartoon(s) — particularly for commercial or quasi-commercial purposes.

For further information about licensing Zapiro's cartoons please click here to make a Licensing Enquiry.

Jun 21, 2013 - Issue 521

Margaret Warfield ~ Artist

www.margaretwarfield.com

$78.00

This Earth Inspired Ear & Neck Set has colors that are reminiscent of nature’s rich browns and tans
Made from polymer clay

Wear them anytime and anywhere…

Click here to purchase Earth Inspired Ear & Neck Set

Click here to contact Ms. Warfield

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