Category: The African World

The so-called peace talks between Israel and the Palestine National Authority raise a number of interesting and, in some respects, provocative questions. One concerns whether the Israeli government has any interest in a just peace. The second is whether the Netanyahu group (in power) wishes to bring down President Obama. In terms of the first…

The circumstances of the Shirley Sherrod case highlighted a very dangerous contemporary problem. The racism and demagoguery represented by the circulation of the edited speech was obvious. What I want to emphasize here is that there was an immediate jumping to conclusions by the Obama administration, the NAACP and many other observers, at least for…

I was driving through a neighboring county and saw a political poster for a right-wing candidate. I had noticed his sloganeering over the past few months and knew that he was some sort of Tea Party-aligned individual. The slogan on his poster read: “Faith, Family, Freedom.” To be honest, I had a Pavlovian experience. In…

What struck me and many other people about the case of USDA official Shirley Sherrod was how easily the mainstream media, the White House, and even the NAACP got “hood-winked” by the Andrew Breibart video attack. The manner in which the Breibart video manipulation was used in order to suggest that a current Black official…

“Long constituting a vast secret economy in New York,” as described by the New York Times, domestic workers won a striking victory in righting a wrong in labor laws that has hung, like an albatross, around the necks of hundreds of thousands of workers. Signing into law the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, New York…

[Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010). 324 pps. $18.45 hardcover] I could hardly contain my excitement after reading Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. So, I got on the phone and called a long-time friend who had been…

The July 3rd game of the Washington Nationals vs. the New York Mets was nothing short of thrilling. A packed house; standing room only (and I mean standing room; my wife and I could not purchase seats so we were only able to buy standing room tickets); a beautiful day and one could not have…

It was unlike any political experience I have had. The extent of the racial/ethnic diversity; the preponderance of people under 35; the gender balance; the international guests; the broad range of progressive social and political organizations; this and much more were in evidence for all to see at the phenomenal US Social Forum (USSF). The…

“If My Family has to Balance Its Budget and Live Within Its Means…” The African World By Bill Fletcher, Jr. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board There are moments when a saying is repeated so often that it becomes common sense, irrespective of whether it is true. Most of us have heard, repeated ad nauseum, a critique of…

It has been fascinating to watch the international response to Israel’s pirate attack on the humanitarian flotilla headed to Gaza. Not only has the international response, characterized by near universal condemnation of Israeli military action been noteworthy, but also the response within Israel. The Israelis may have underestimated the willingness of most of the world…