Category: The African World

You may have noticed this in the aftermath of the Christmas Day airline terrorist act. The Obama administration advanced a discussion regarding the upgrading of security. In that context various US-alleged state sponsors of terrorism were mentioned in the media. Cuba was on the list. With the exception of one commentary that I have read…

A year has passed since the Israeli aggression against the Gaza and we seem to be no closer to the blockade ending. Despite the stinging indictment contained in the Goldstone Report to the United Nations that detailed war crimes committed by Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces—with the preponderance of the crimes being those committed…

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON THE EXERCISE OF THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE Trusteeship Council Chamber United Nations New York, New York November 30, 2009 Remarks by Bill Fletcher, Jr. BlackCommentator.com & U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary-General, Mr.…

The other day I was listening to a Black radio program where there was a discussion concerning Afghanistan. The interviewer and the interviewee went back and forth discussing that it is hard to understand what could be going through the mind of a suicide bomber. So far, so good. But then the discussion took a…

I resisted writing anything about Sarah Palin in much the same way that I resisted accepting that Palin is charismatic. On the evening of her debut at the Republican National Convention I was repulsed by her arrogance and mean-spiritedness. This temporarily blinded me to the fact that Palin is, in fact, a charismatic political leader,…

The mainstream news media in the USA is very curious. They can find the opportunity to display information regarding the “Tea-Party” activists with their anti-Obama irrationality with several thousand people coming to Washington, DC. They can give major attention to an anti-healthcare rally held the day after the recent elections. Yet in October the island…

When I heard news of the Fort Hood massacre I had an instantaneous thought and concern: “I hope that the murderer is neither Black nor an Arab nor Muslim.” As I sat glued to my TV watching CNN and later NBC my fears materialized on the screen as, first, the name of the alleged murderer…

This past week, a good friend of mine died as a result of multiple brain tumors. The diagnosis was in August and she passed away in less than three months. Despite the fact that the odds were against her, she was determined to fight for her life. In the last communication I had with her,…

On Friday night I was completely engrossed in an interview conducted by Bill Moyers of Justice Richard Goldstone [Click here for the transcript of the interview] Justice Goldstone, a Jewish South African with impeccable credentials as an international human rights advocate and investigator, was charged by the United Nations with the task of conducting an…

Every on-line magazine or journal faces some of the same challenges, the most important being, how to raise sufficient funds in order to survive. Yet this question is set against a bigger one: what is the actual role of an on-line magazine? So, I am going to do something a bit different: I am going…