Table of Contents

There are 15 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: Black Future Month - Black History Month By Larry Matthews, BC Guest Commentator

Quote to Ponder: "It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved..." - Angela Y. Davis

The State of My Union - Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Selling the Iraq War - War Criminals are Still Running Loose - A View from the Battlefield By Jamala Rogers, BC Editorial Board

Bump Up the Minimum Wage - A Moderate but Meaningful Step to Tackle Inequality - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

How Radical Are You? - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

The Usurpers of the Nation Have a Champion: the GOP - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Calling Out the Misleaders of the Phony 'Progressives' and the Fake U.S. 'Left' - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Arizona Chain Saw Massacre - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Just Ask That Elephant with Lipstick a Few Questions - Sharp n' Blunt - By Desi Cortez - BC Columnist

Black Non-Violence Only Spoiled White Americans, Most Notably Police - Point Blank - By Chris Stevenson - BC Columnist

Damage To the African Mind and Dr. Bobby Wright - Worrill's World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

Instigator - Political Cartoon By Mr. Fish, Philadelphia PA

Sedation Pill - 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

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Cover Story

Black Future Month

By Larry Matthews

So,here we are midway through Black History Month and already it seems as though the nation has fallen into the black hole of ignorance about black Americans. It reminds me about the line that someone “has a face you forget while you’re looking at him.” America is forgetting about black people while it looks at them.

February is the cruelest month, with apologies to T.S. Elliot who claimed it was April. February is a month in which the nation lies to itself about itself. We gather for lectures about black history and assure ourselves that we have made great progress from the Jim Crow days of black/white fountains and segregated busses. Nothing could be further from the truth.

True, we have a black president and a wonderful black family in the White House. We see successful, rich black faces all over our televisions and on our stages. White Americans observe all of this and say, “Gee, we sure have come a long way.” In some sense, yes we have. In other ways we are as locked in segregation as we’ve ever been.

Consider this: What if the Secretary of State stood before Congress andannounced that a foreign nation, say Iran or China, had in place policies and laws that imprisoned one in fifteen men of a certain ethnic minority? That these policies were responsible for 60 per cent of the young people of this minority from obtaining even a basic education in vast areas of the country? That a quarter million men, women, boys and girls of this minority were shot dead in a thirty-five year period? That, in fact, members of this ethnic minority were more likely to be jailed than educated?

Politicians from both sides of the aisle would line up to introduce bills to sanction such a nation. The air would be blue with condemnation. We as a nation would demand that something be done.

That nation is us. There is no call that something be done. There is only acceptance. We have a new Jim Crow era that is as heinous as the old one. Under the old, pre-Civil Rights rules, a great number of Americans assumed that the situation for African Americans was bad but, hey, what can you do? It took courage, commitment and even bloodshed to create change. Here we are in 2013 with a great many of us saying, again, hey, what can you do?

For starters, we can look around our own communities and acknowledge reality. We can demand that our schools offer pre-school programs that teach kids to read, to get along with others, to see themselves as cherished individuals. We can offer help to single mothers by teaching them that they, too, are valuable as human beings and not just dysfunctional consumers of high sugar fast food. We can address the issue of African American boys who are on the fast track to a jail cellby focusing on their potential as responsible men, responsible fathers, contributors to their own well-being, and not losers who are the leftovers of America.

It has been proved time and again that oppression of an entire people produces a trauma that lasts generations. It happened to the Irish. It happened to the Indians of South America. It happened to our own NativePeople. And it happened to the Africans who were brought here in slave ships.

Perhaps we should scrap the idea of Black History Month and replace it with Black Future Month. Looking backward gives us a glimpse of past suffering and a few rays of inspiration from Doctor King or Frederick Douglas. But it doesn’t tell us anything about where we are today.

During February, African American children attend school assemblies where they hear the same stories and they use their crayons to draw pictures of Dr. King or Maya Angelou. The nine year old who today is drawing those pictures will soon find that America has not put away the chains. This boy will soon be wearing them and leaving hope and opportunity behind on a school wall.

Each and every one of us should look into the face of that boy or that girl to witness the innocence that we are squandering.

Where is our anger? Where is our outrage? Are we so beaten down by our dysfunctional government that we no longer even try? Are we on the left so ashamed of being labeled “liberals” that we cower in resignation?

America is going through a crucial period when we are redefining ourselves as a nation. There are many who say our best days are behind us and we don’t have the money, the gumption or the vision to be better. These people are hogging the narrative. We on the left must find it in ourselves to break our own chains and look into the eyes of the children who will have to live with what we do or fail to do.

We lost three-thousand of our citizens on 9/11 and went to war, spending a trillion dollars-plus. We’ve lost a quarter million young African Americans and we tell ourselves we don’t have the money to prevent another quarter million from being killed.

Are you kidding me?

BlackCommentator.comGuest Commentator, Larry Matthews, is a veteran broadcast journalist. He is the recipient of The George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast for his reporting on Vietnam veterans. He is also the recipient of a Columbia/DuPont Citation, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press, and other awards for investigative reporting. He is the author of five books including, I Used To Be In Radio: a Memoir. Click here to reach Mr. Matthews.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Quote to Ponder

Click here for moreabout Angela Y. Davis

Feb 21, 2013 -Issue 505

The State of My Union

Animated Political Cartoon

By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Click here to view the animation

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

Click here to contact Mark

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Selling the Iraq War
War Criminals are Still Running Loose

I got angry all over again as I watched Hubris: Selling Iraq War. Just in time for the 10th anniversary next month, the documentary is a painful reminder of how the U.S. government took us into the illegal war.

The treacherous lie led to the deaths of 4,486 American troops, the wounding of 32,226 service members, over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians - at a cost of $3 trillion.

The documentary is based upon the book with the longer title of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. It aired recently on MSNBC, narrated by Rachel Maddow who challenged viewers to know the truth so that it won’t ever happen again.

It’s not that I was surprised about the revelations of the documentary. I am part of the 80% of African-Americans that the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found were opposed to the invasion. Black folks knew Bush and his cronies were up to no good from the git-go. Eventually the rest of the country caught up to us as the lies started to unravel.

Hubris had some new information as some of the documents have since been declassified. Like the November 2001 memo notes where Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plansfor the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government. This was the beginning of a full-fledged strategy of deception that went beyond the Bush administration to the highest levels of the FBI, CIA, the U.S. military and all that’s in between. Day after day, interview after interview, these war mongers looked us in the eye and fed the world a deceptive stew of uranium bought by Saddam Hussein from Niger, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), connections between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, mythical meetings of terrorists and a heap of other falsehoods.

I was not moved by the sorrowful admission of Rep.Walter Jones (R-NC) of collaboration and I totally understand why General Colin Powell has all but told the GOP to kiss his grits. There were a bunch of people who were not just deceived but who were unwittingly used in the wicked scheme.

By 2005, it was clear that there were no WMDS yet Bush continued to push forward with the war. President Obama declared an end of the Iraq War at the end of 2011. To this day, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condy Rice admit no guilt or remorse about their decision to invade Iraq under false pretense. So the question remains, why are these war criminals not being hauled before the World Criminal Court?

Over the next month, we’re sure to hear more about the fraudulent war as we move into the 10th anniversary. I can’t help but wonder how the thousands of families of the dead and wounded feel knowing their sons and daughters were sent to die based upon the ultimate betrayal by their beloved country.

BlackCommentator.com EditorialBoard member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St.Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Click here to contact Ms.Rogers.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Bump Up the Minimum Wage
A Moderate but Meaningful Step to Tackle Inequality

On February 6, the New York Times reported, “The Chinese government issued a long-awaited plan on Tuesday to narrow the gulf between rich and poor, offering broad vows to lift the incomes of workers and farmers and choke off corrupt wealth but few specific goals to rein in the nation’s wide inequality.” On the same day, the Financial Times reported on the front page of its print edition, “China has unveiled a plan to narrow the gap between the country’s rich and poor, aiming to lift 80 million people out of poverty by 2015. The government has pledged to increase minimum wages to 40 per cent of average salaries, boost spending on education and public housing, and force state - owned companies to give more of their revenues to the public.”

The New York Times story didn’t mention the minimum wage

Wonder what goes on here?

The Times’s account said by the Chinese government’s measure of income inequality, China’s is “slightly higher than levels of inequality in the United States, where income disparity now stands as one of the highest among advanced industrial nations.”

A fly on the wall near the New York paper’s editorial desk could perhaps discern why the proposed 40 percent minimum wage increase was left out of the story. It’s not that it’s unimportant. There are millions upon millions of low wage workers in China and their lives would be greatly enhanced if they were paid a little more.

The Chinese action is in keeping with steps being taken in a number of countries where despite economic advances, inequality continues to grow, and where policy makers have decided that one way (not the only way) to even things out a bit is to legislate a rise in the minimum wage.

On February 7, Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a mine industry collective bargaining conference, “You must continue to fight for decent pay. But at the same time I want to appeal to you to join the fight to beat poverty through decent pay for all workers. Low pay is not helpful to an economy. As the research on food requirements shows, workers who are paid starvation wages do not buy. And if millions of workers have no purchasing power, then production suffers. If production suffers, then jobs are not created. So we have to use our collective strength as a Federation to persuade our government that a radical shift in wage policy is needed. We have an excellent example to draw on in the form of Brazil, where radical increases in minimum wages have resulted in job creation.”

“This country is now scarred by staggering inequality,” Nation magazine editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote almost a year ago. “In 2010, the last year figures were available, the wealthiest 1 percent captured a staggering 93 percent of the income growth, while most Americans fell behind. One way to address that kind of inequality is to bring down the top - through progressive tax reform and curbing the perverse compensation schemes of CEOs and big bankers. Another is to bring up the floor, by empowering workers to gain a fair share of the rising productivity and profits they help to produce. One step in doing that is to raise the floor under the most vulnerable workers.”

In his February 13 State of the Union address, President Barak Obama said, “We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher.”

“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour.”

It would have been better had Obama stuck by his original proposal of a $9.50 minimum wage, made when he was still running for President. Or, better still, as Ralph Nader has proposed, a $10 figure that would have been just as easy to sell to the public and no more likely to draw the ire of the Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association. Furthermore, economist Jeanette Wicks-Lim makes a good case in the magazine Dollars and Sense that the minimum wage could be increased 70 percent to $12.30/hour, with no adverse effects, and benefiting millions of workers and their communities.

We will be hearing omens of dire consequences if the minimum wage is increased. There will be assertions that businesses will be jeopardized, that entrepreneurship will be hampered, that jobs will be lost. There will even be assertions by some that minority youth job prospects will be curtailed, made by people who have suddenly been gripped by passion for their welfare - this by some of the same people who once tried to sell the ridiculous notion that African Americans have no stake in Social Security. (I always said to them: if I’d tried selling that idea to my grandmother she’d have sent me into the yard to get a switch. Try telling the black and brown kids at Burger King that a rise in the minimum wage won’t improve their lives and that of their communities and you would probably get a similar reaction.)

As the New York Times noted this week, women represent more than half the estimated 18 million people receiving something at or near the minimum wage and Hispanics make up 25 percent.

“So while we’ll all the old arguments and counter arguments are being trotted out once again, I urge folks to remember: analysis of the historical record shows that increasing the minimum wage has its intended effect of raising the earnings of low-wage workers who need the raise without harming their employment prospects,” writes economist Jared Bernstein. “It won’t transform the labor market or rebuild the middle class, but it is a vital if small part of the connective tissue that used to bind even our lowest wage workers to the more broadly shared prosperity that has eluded them for decades.”

“Clearly, in an economy where for decades growth has failed to reach our lowest wage workers, it’s time to raise the wage floor to ensure that low-wage workers have a decent shot at a fair wage,” writes Bernstein. “Raising the minimum wage mostly benefits adults, and especially working women: Around 60 percent of workers benefiting from a higher minimum wage are women, and few are teenagers - less than 20 percent.”

According to data released by the White House, says Bernstein, “raising the minimum wage helps parents.” The average worker who would benefit from a rise in the minimum wage to $9 an hour brought home 46 percent of his or her household’s total wage and salary income in 2011.

And then, there is the other argument about raising the minimum wage, the question that lies at the heart of most of today’s mainstream debate about the economy: what’s good for the nation?

“Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity,” economist Robert Reich blogged February 8. “That’s because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. When most Americans are becoming poorer, they’re less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can’t get out of first gear. That’s a big reason the recovery continues to be anemic.”

“Almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four,” wrote Reich. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over the next decade, seven out of 10 growth occupations will be low-wage - like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains.”

“At this rate, who’s going to buy all the goods and services America is capable of producing? We can’t return to the kind of debt-financed consumption that caused the bubble in the first place.”

As the Economic Policy Institute’s President, Lawrence Mishel put it, “The president’s support for a higher minimum wage is a welcomed opening to the policy conversation that’s needed about getting wages growing again, after stagnating for the last ten years among both college and high school graduates. The proposed increase will benefit 21 million workers and increase wages by $22 billion by 2015. This will not only boost wages but facilitate greater job growth by increasing spending by low-wage workers.”

On February 14, the Los Angeles Times featured the comments of entrepreneur. Selwyn Yosslowitz, co-founder of the California restaurant chain Marmalade Cafe, with 600 workers in 10 locations, who said it was a bad time to raise the rate. He told the paper that “he already feels beleaguered by higher costs from Obama’s healthcare overhaul.” He went on to say that should the minimum be raised “he may have to repeat what he did in 2007 when California’s minimum wage was hiked to $8 an hour, You increase your menu prices and you reduce hours,” he said. “People who come in normally at 9 o’clock in the morning, you try to get them to clock in at 9:30 and save half an hour. We also stopped hiring people. You can’t stay in business if you don’t.”

The story also carried a comment by one of Marmalade’s employees, 32-year-old Alejandro Serbin who earns California’s $8 minimum wage, plus about $35 a day in shared tips. Serbin says a dollar raise would help. “It’s so much different for me, because I have a family I have to support. The rent is high. I have to pay bills, insurance.” Serbin and his wife, said the report, who works as a cook, have a 3-year-old and pay about $1,000 a month in rent, not unusual for Los Angeles. He said most of the minimum-wage workers he knows have two or even three jobs.

But there is still more to the Marmalade story.

As a rule, bosses have the incentive to work employees for as long as possible for as little pay as possible. This has become especially true for companies linked up with private equity firms, as businesses paying low wage increasingly are.

In 2006, Marmalade Cafe & Catering sold a large stake in its chain to a private equity firm. “It was a smart way to hook up with someone who could complement our business and provide a source of funding,” Yosslowitz told the Los Angeles Times. The paper noted at the time that, “Southern California is home to scores of fast-growing small companies, and private equity firms are taking notice. These investment firms gather money from institutions and wealthy individuals and plow it into promising companies capable of outsized returns.”

How do you deliver “outsized” returns? One way is to cut workers’ hours and write smaller paychecks.

The irony of this is that it’s not at all clear whether the people who wait tables at Marmalade will even get a wage increase as the President is proposing. The Federal minimum wage for “tipped employees” is $2.13.

Reps. Donna Edwards (D-Md) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) plan to introduce the bill into the House of Representative that would increase the minimum wage for tipped workers to $5.50 almost immediately. Edwards, a former restaurant waiter, held a press conference February 14 at which she said, “I know that when I waited tables, I didn’t just do it because I needed some extra change. I did it because I had to pay my rent, I did it because I had to make sure I had food in my refrigerator, I did it because I needed transportation to get back and forth to school.”

It was wrong, she said, “to not know from one night to the next how much I was going to make because I relied on tips.”

It will be said thatwhat the President proposes is not enough. Some scribes have all readyexpressed this brilliant conclusion. True enough. But the House ofRepresentatives is unlikely to agree to any increase in the minimum wage andthe crazy Republicans in the Senate might just filibuster any proposal about itbrought before them. “It’s time to force the issue,” vandenHeuvel wrote last May. “Let voters see where theirlegislators stand. Activists should call on every legislator to join adischarge petition once the bill is introduced. We’ve seen who supports taxcuts on the wealthy and billion dollar subsidies to big oil. Let’s see whosupports raising a minimum wage so a full-time worker can lift his or herfamily out of poverty.”

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.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

How Radical Are You?

It is possible to be too radical! A person’s and/or a group’s sign of being too radical can best be delineated by their commitment to having and stockpiling guns and other weapons. Wherever a person or a group stands on a point of “political space” - right, left, up, down, transcendent (I don’t believe in linear left/right political geography) - when guns or other weapons which are instantly lethal to humans are accepted as part of the political tools that can be used offensively, that person or that group steps beyond the bounds of Mother Nature. Almost no other living animal species in nature, at any time, voluntarily decides to kill its own! That is when radicalism crosses into insanity.

Some female insects kill their conjugal partners - after mating. Some times in alpha male battles for herd supremacy one contesting male will die but that is not the purpose of the battle. And these are not paths to species extinction. Often herds split and one part expands into new territory where they may come into conflict with other herds; almost always the pre-existing group holds a territorial advantage that is evident in a more aggressive attitude that overcomes the intrusion of the new group. Mentally healthy animals do NOT attempt to kill members of their species even for the purpose of the exploitation of territory. As members “of the animal kingdom” that evolved on this planet, humans naturally fit into the same species-preserving social psychology. Imperialists’ cultural formations are unnatural aberrations that have corrupted the human psyche by defining “the other” as less than human; such abominable insanity cannot be justified in any way.

Thirty years ago I became acquainted with the scientific understanding of animal psychology when I read The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (Robert Audrey). Subsequently the conclusions represented in this book have been further confirmed. The insanity of killing members of your own species for the sake of control of territory - however that “territory” is defined - can only be seen as a radical aberration; it occurs with humans through the ability of a powerful imagination to re-envision reality and define oneself and one’s family as all that is important to being human. This is willful ignorance. Prejudice, racism, and extreme xenophobia, both in individuals and in institutions, are the mechanisms through which such mistranslations of reality occur.

There are a number of unnatural, unhealthy circumstances that warp human thinking and that have caused lethal deviancy. Childhood abuse, trauma, and abandonment make up one set of such circumstances which can lead to sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors. Drugs, torture, and toxic chemical imbalance can also lead to aberrant behaviors that are dangerous to others. Most activists have come across these kinds of individuals who have mental sicknesses and who have been ignorantly and innocently accepted as legitimate political radicals. These folks need help rather than a following. However, what is too often overlooked or too often included in the sane behavior category by too many people are those who follow twisted cultures and beliefs that instigate or support the offensive killing of other human beings.

Most of the world has recognized that the implementation of the death penalty is a barbarous and insane individual and societal act. Yet death dealing weapons that are specifically designed for humans run rampant all over the world and are most concentrated in the U.S. For some, it is acceptable to kill poor people for stealing a piece of bread. However equally twisted and unacceptable are the systems and structures that deal death through starvation, malnutrition, isolation, and family disruption. These means of killing are slower but are just as lethal.

To believe that an individual or a small group of individuals holds the singular power and responsibility to best turn these circumstances around through the use of violence is itself a form of social disease: megalomania. This megalomania is a companion to the larger social disease of imperialism that is bringing about our extinction. One form of social disease feeds and stimulates the other; agents of one justify what is being done by pointing to the other’s acts.

The first step to healing is the recognition that we are all part of the human species and deserving of caring and inclusion. By acting together with the recognition that each of us is a precious part of the whole of us we can “side step” the harm of the few without killing them and work to correct the misdirection and misreading of reality that is in those few heads. We can avoid and break thorough those cultural cul-de-sacs that drive us toward species extinction. We can move more aggressively to eliminate imperialism and all of the circumstances that produce warped human beings. We can stop using and inventing weapons designed to kill humans. It is always better when it is the power “of the people” and the actions of the people that bring about the change because it is than all of us who will implement the change and maintain it. As John Donne said so long ago: no human being “is an island;” we are all “part of the maine.” No person becomes aberrant or insane alone; as inherent social animals social circumstances parallel our movements into craziness. It is these circumstances that are in the most need for change, for our species sake! It is time to start the ripples through our social networks that will sweep around the world, building the intellectual and moral strength that is unstoppable and powerful enough to change us all. That cannot be done with a gun.

Sparked by the existentialshock of 20 human babies being blown away,most people in the U.S.now want to control weapons of war on our streets. Yes, let’s do this as best wecan. However, although some may find this too much to imagine, it’snot just the elimination of combat weapons on our streets that should be ourgoal. That is not enough. If that were all we did, the warped minds that are pushing us to extinction would just come up with another device to dothe same thing. We have so many: grenades, poison gas, weaponized drones, bombs, and super bombs. In fact the new devices are probably already “on the drawing boards.” It is the frame of mind that exists all over thepolitical landscape that says guns can be an instrument of offensive political action and that there are humans whom it is OK to kill. It is that which we must eliminate. That is the radicalism that is too far.

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

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

The Usurpers of the Nation Have a Champion: the GOP

One of the most ridiculous appellations in the language today is “good corporate citizen.”

There is no such thing. Corporations exist to take care of the stockholders and themselves (corporate hierarchy) first. If there is some “trickle down” from their activity, someone else might benefit. You can be sure, though, that the benefit will be small.

It’s in the incorporation papers: the sole purpose of a corporation is to make a profit for the principals. Since so much of the life of the nation is controlled by corporations, it’s easy to see why there is a disparity between rich (the 1 percent) and the rest of us that is comparable to many small and developing countries, which are often run by a “strong man” or an out-and-out dictator.

An example of good citizenship would be the old New England town meeting, in which everyone has an opportunity to speak publicly before the rest of the community on any given subject and might even introduce a matter for a vote by the entire community. Such direct democracy is frowned upon by most politicians and it most certainly is frowned upon by the bosses of Corporate America, who only want citizens discussing issues after the decisions have been made for them.

This is the state of our nation. And, it’s one that President Obama did not mention in his first State of the Union speech of his second term. He is not likely to mention it in the remainder of his second term, since he has surrounded himself with leftovers from the Bush Administrations and the Clinton Administration. As has been pointed out so many times in recent years, by so many people, they are the very ones who have put us in the mess we are in, so how can we expect different outcomes?

Take the disparity in wealth as an example. It is not so hard to understand that, if a large portion of the populace is pushed to the bottom, the society as a whole will not prosper. The Right Wing likes to compare the nation to a family, so let’s just make a quick comparison: If a couple has four children and decide that they can afford to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate just one of them, what do you suppose will happen to the other three? The life of street children, in whatever country they are found, is not a pretty one.

We know that the national economy and society, in general, cannot be directly compared to a family, but the principle is the same. The three children who are left out are in despair, are cold and hungry, and they will be uneducated and have a bleak future. The family has broken down; in fact, it is no longer a family, just the vestiges of one.

In the U.S., the disparity in wealth and income is a scandal, but the GOP believes that it is possible to look at it in a positive way. As vice president, Dick Cheney hailed the moving of factories and shops to low-wage countries as a plus. He intimated that the removal of manufacturing and heavy industry should make the U.S. more competitive and, besides, he added, the nation should be concentrating on the technology sector and all of the jobs that are created there. He was not speaking for all Republicans, but apparently he was speaking for most.

Consider the minimum wage and the disparity between rich and poor that it displays. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. If the wage had kept up with the cost of living, the growth of the economy, with the rise of personal incomes, and with the overall increase in the productivity of the nation, today it would be $21.16 per hour, according to some calculations. Instead, we have a federal minimum wage of $7.25, and President Obama has proposed a raise of the minimum to $9 an hour, over a few years. It is an important factor in maintaining the wealth disparity as deep as it is.

A decades-old question has been asked of presidential candidates: “Do you favor or support a raise in the minimum wage?” The Republicans, fearing their far right wing (the Tea Party wing), seemed afraid to address the issue. If they are like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., all are strongly opposed to raising the minimum wage. Remember, he is the senator who gave us the Tea Party political figure (and all that that implies), Sarah Palin, who has muddied the waters of what passes for national political debate. At the time of his 2008 presidential primary campaign, he had voted against raising the minimum wage some 19 times. Like most other opponents of raising the minimum wage, he cited the effect on jobs (it will kill jobs) and, besides, he has said, the minimum wage should be left to the states, not the federal government.

Health care, or lack of it, is one of the primary elements of personal bankruptcy and the U.S. remains the lone holdout among “developed nations,” in denying its citizens a national health service as a right, not a privilege for the few. It is an important cause of the disparity in wealth, and a case in point is the ongoing protests of Peabody Energy, one of the big coal companies.

Earlier this month, Shirley Inman was arrested, along with nine of her brother members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), at the Peabody headquarters in St. Louis, Mo. Peabody and Arch Coal, in an attempt to rid itself of its pesky health care responsibilities to the workers and the union, is in the process of shuttling that responsibility to another company, which was conveniently created (Patriot Coal) as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Inman, who spent 18 years driving a coal truck, said, “If I can’t get my medication for my heart disease, I won’t be around much longer,” said Inman. “I’m a breast cancer survivor and I have coronary artery disease. Health care isn’t an option for me; it’s what I need to survive. I’ll do whatever it takes to make these corporate executives keep the promises they made, and if that means going to jail, so be it.”

Kay Tillow, head of All Unions for Single Payer Health Care, noted that “the UMWA is taking on a big fight that will impact all workers and our ability to stop crooked bankruptcies from destroying health coverage.” Daryl Dewberry, UMWA vice president from Alabama, pointed out that the UMWA was founded in 1890, “when it was not popular to have all creeds and colors together, but we did it and we’ve been doing it for over 100 years.” He said that miners are “used to adversity and we are all our brothers’ keepers. Peabody left scars in Alabama. Arch left scars in Alabama. They left black lung. Miners took less benefits to assure health care.”

The UMWA and its members know that this fight is not over. Arrests will not stop the workers from attempting to get the word out to the American people. The miners know that their fight is the fight of all workers, no matter what they do for a living. They will keep coming back to Peabody, because they cannot trust the bankruptcy laws to protect their interests before other billion-dollar corporations. The union and its members won a similar fight in 1989, after a 14-month struggle against Pittston, another coal company sought to discontinue medical benefits to miners, retirees and the disabled. Tillow noted, “Pittston was met with massive resistance when miners and their families by the thousands engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to bring the company to its knees and to a contract.”

Workers around the country are fighting to gain what is rightfully theirs: fair and equal pay, safe and healthy working conditions, benefits (including health care) that actually provide medical care, and employers who obey the law. Low-wage workers are fighting to stop wage theft, which has been in the news recently, but has been going on for as long as employers have been trying to short their workers’ pay envelopes and paychecks.

And, workers are told by virtually anyone in power that education is the key to their success. And what do graduates have to show for it? Many who have multiple degrees and owe tens of thousands of dollars in student loans are working as baristas or in retail sales, or other similar low-paying jobs, with little prospect of productive, lifelong work in their fields…and little hope of paying off their loans in a timely way.

Corporate America blithely moves in the direction it wants to go, oblivious to the suffering that is left in its wake. They need never fear that politicians, in general, will interfere with them, because: They are the ones who largely finance their election campaigns and the revolving door between high office and the corporations ensures that they will see friends on the way through the door or on either side.

That leaves the workers on the street where, if they are lucky, they will be arrested and someone will hear of their plight in a two-paragraph story in the local newspaper. So much for change that will benefit the people.

The usurpers are, indeed, in charge. A definition of usurp is “to seize and hold (the power or rights of another, for example) by force or without legal authority.” We used to call it Big Business, but now the usurpers can be identified as part of Corporate America and it has honed its control of the masses to a fine science and, for the most part, has the law behind it. Whether its involves forcing an immigrant worker to put in 11 hours for eight hours pay, or creating a dummy company for the purpose of avoiding providing miners with their just health care, it is stealing from the workers. It’s all part of the fine science.

Usurpers in America have an ally in the Republican Party, because virtually every law proposed to improve the lives of the 99 percent, and especially the working class, is thwarted by the GOP and some of its allies in the Democratic Party. They accomplish it by filibuster, propaganda, and the produce of their Right Wing think tanks. The only thing that workers have is that they are a large percentage of the 99 percent. That leaves 1 percent in the controlling class and, in a democracy, one would think that this kind of situation would not last long, but it has. Unless the 99 percent see that their fortunes and their futures are tied together, whatever their occupation or preoccupation, this condition of continual theft will continue.

As Dan Kane, UMWA Secretary Treasurer explained at the site of the arrests last week, “They (Peabody) intentionally put Patriot in the position for bankruptcy. They want this in the bankruptcy court - they don’t want it in the court of public opinion. This is about every man and woman who works for a living. Health care and pension are not gifts. You paid for it. But these companies are using bankruptcy more and more. Lawyers will get paid. Million dollar bonuses will go to executives. The heads of Patriot won’t suffer. Those who did the work walk out with nothing. That has to stop. We don’t want their sympathy. What we want is justice.”

He added, “We want what we’ve earned. They want to go to their palatial homes - but they deserve a cell next to Bernie Madoff. I’m tired of an economy that walks all over the workers…”

One way for workers to avoid being the doormats of society is for them to join with all the other workers and join the union.

[Anyone interested insigning the petition to support the miners at Peabody-Patriot can do it here: http://www.fairnessatpatriot.org/take-action/sign-the-petition/

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

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Calling Out the Misleaders of the Phony

'Progressives' and the Fake U.S. 'Left'

“It is both sad and simultaneously horribly fascinating to observe so many euphorically pinning their hopes and dreams on Barack Obama, a chameleon who speaks liberally of 'change' but who is, himself, beholden to the very same blood-sucking corporate vampires (including Lockheed and others) who are ravaging the people of America, and the entire planet...Many Black Americans and our Brown and Red sisters and brothers will, I fear, come to be deeply disappointed in Barack Obama, once he demonstrates who he really is. There will be no peace or justice under an Obama presidency. Even the majority of White Americans, with the exception of the corporate liberals and conservatives, may yet come to realize that Obama's interests are corporate interests; they are not the needs and interests of everyday people, who represent the overwhelming majority of this nation and theworld.”

- Article titled, Barack Obama and the Euphoria of Madness, by Larry Pinkney, The Black Commentator – February 7, 2008 - Issue 263

It is now February 2013, and Common Dreams reports that Barack Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he is the draconian 'Kill List,' dronemissile, “war criminal” president of the United States. For these past years there has been, and continues to be, “no peace or justice under [the] Obama presidency.” The misleaders of the everyday people knew full well, or should have known, back in the years 2007 and 2008 that Barack Obama represented the systemic interests of the U.S.corporate/military power elite – not those of everyday Black, White,Brown, Red, and Yellow people. There was a wealth of information available (even in 2007 and 2008) that showed that Barack Obama was substantively no different from his predecessors in the White House – but the partisan 'progressive' and 'leftist' misleaders of the people chose to ignore it. Indeed, Barack Obama on his third day in office as U.S. president (in his first term), began slamming down predator dronemissiles upon the people of Pakistan. Now, in 2013, Obama's blood-bathsand systemic terror have only grown and intensified.

Moreover, these misleaders chose to ignore common sense, which indicated in 2007 and 2008 that (then aspiring U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama) would never have received the overwhelming support that he did from the U.S. corporate-stream media if he was notalready a well-honed, Trojan Horse tool on behalf of the corporate/military elite of this political system. Furthermore, a significant portion of the so-called 'alternative' media also played an insidious role in bringing the U.S. Constitution-destroying, drone missile loving, war mongering, Barack Obama to political power in this nation.

Today, without bothering to acknowledge and fully explain their previous support for Barack Obama, and in a crass attempt to re-invent themselves and thereby maintain their perceived positions as 'progressive' spokespersons (who are in fact veiled misleaders); there are those who now (in 2013) act as if they were never supporters of Obama - this war mongering, NDAA signing, 'Kill List,' dronemissile U. S. president. In so doing, these fake leftists and phony 'progressives' should not be accorded the trust of the everyday people whom they have so opportunistically misled. They have been egregiously complicit in causing enormous harm and untold misery upon ordinary people of all colors in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. They must be exposed and held accountable.

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people today remain the victims of corporate hegemony, deepening economic austerity,social injustice, and perpetual U.S. wars. Just as importantly however, knee-jerk 'liberals,' many so-called 'progressives,' and much of the'Left' in this nation brazenly continue to show their hypocrisy an dutter lack of principles as they support the unjust, amoral, and indefensible policies of Barack Obama at home and abroad. In a twist of morbid irony, some of these very same persons justifiably demand, and still demand, the prosecution of the war mongering Bush/Cheney regime of approximately five years ago. Yet, they virtually ignore the fact that there is a current war criminal in the White House in the person of Barack Obama, who has extended and expanded the reprehensible, despicable, and bloody policies of the previous Bush/Cheney regime.These persons are demonstrating that they are partisan political hypocrites and covert systemic gatekeepers, and they must be exposedand held accountable.

In a detailed February 11, 2013, article titled, DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks, by columnist and former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald. Mr.Greenwald writes, in relevant part, “That many Democratic partisans andfervent Obama admirers are vapid unprincipled hacks willing to justify anything and everything when embraced by Obama – including exactly that which they pretended to oppose under George W. Bush – has also been clear for many years...In May, 2009, a once fervent Obama supporter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, wrote a column warning that Obama was embracing many of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses and felt compelled – in the very first sentence – to explain what should beself-evident: “Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong [my emphasis] because Barack Obama is in the White House.” The same month, former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith – who provided the legal authorization for the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program – went to the New Republic to celebrate that Obama was not only continuing the core Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, but even better (from his perspective), was strengthening those policies far beyond what Bush could achieve by transforming Democrats from opponents of these policies into supporters...A whole slew of policies that would have triggered the shrillest of progressive condemnations under Bush – waging war after Congress votes against authorizing it, the unprecedented persecution and even torturing of whistle blowers, literally re-writing FOIA to conceal evidence of torture, codifying indefinite detention on U.S.soil – are justified or, at best, ignored...In other words Obama has embraced and expanded the core premises of theBush/Cheney global war on terror that Democrats so vehemently claimed to find offensive, radical, a “shredding of the Constitution.” And they are now supportive for one reason and one reason only: It's a Democratic president whom they trust – Barack Obama specifically doing it – rather than a Republican president whom they distrust. That is the very definition of vapid, unprincipled partisan hackdom, and it matters for several reasons...”

Be not misled. Neither the Democrat or Republican party's leadership have the interests and needs of the struggling everyday people of this nation and world at heart. Moreover, many of those who claim to be so-called progressives and/or leftists are, in fact, the stealthy fifth column of the Democratic party. Furthermore, the term 'liberal' has become substantively, both hollow and meaningless, in the context of U.S. politics.

It is time to recognize, expose, and call out the misleaders of the socalled 'progressives' and much of the 'Left' for the de facto systemic gatekeepers that they actually are. It is time to create a new model:One of systemic change, that genuinely serves the needs, human rights,and aspirations of everyday ordinary people! Nothing less will do. Don't get fooled again!

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.

Feb 21, 2013 -Issue 505

Arizona Chain Saw Massacre
Political Cartoon
By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

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

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Just Ask That Elephant with Lipstick a Few Questions

There are those few combustible topics within society which, in all actuality are Litmus tests, inquiries which determine “who and what” we are. So when I say “Republican,” most people envision a somewhat racist, sexist and elitist White guy, no?

The everyday, run-of-the-mill, rank n’ file Republican despises President Obama, believes his “little lady” is far too emotional to have sole, absolute control over her internal baby-making machine, and as a Republican he touts the cutthroat “survival-of-the-fittest” economic mentality of Laissez Faire Capitalism - Trickle Down Economics, “I got mine... you get yours.”

That rugged individualism mindset of “Everyman for himself, I am not my brother’s keeper.” flies-in the face of and contradicts the very word “civilization.”

When I say “Republican,” we all understand “their” god is a Nordic Viking guy, whose penis is bigger than your god’s. And if he’s a Thurston Howell III Republican, than God is money, and Money is God. This is what the “Right” is today in America, a Herman Cain’s ‘If you ain’t Rich, blame yourself!” USA.

Yes, it’s the obvious which makes this current attempt by the Republican TEA Party to redefine itself hysterical, screw laughable. This struggle to figure out a clever way to mask and camouflage their fear, paranoia and basic hatred of Blacks, Latinos, Asians and all the flavors in between, in order to attract Americans Of Color to the GOP. is a waste of their time.

There’s not much these boys can do to change their tarnished image and reputation, and my thought is, all you’ve got to do is ask a Republican a few questions to ascertain who and what you’re dealing with. That’s right, just ask that elephant with lipstick on a few questions...

Who’s the hero here; Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party or the infamous FBI head J. Edgar Hoover; If you see Huey as a urban terrorist and Hoover as a “guardian of America” then you must be a Republican.

What organization do you respect more, the United Nations or the Alabama Republican TEA Party? It seems “conservatives” both dislike and fear the world’s population, i.e., the UN. A realistic Republican recognizes that European Colonialism left a bad taste in the mouths of its former colonial subjects, whereas Republicans cheer Re-Segregationists like the TEA Party for organizing secessionist movements.

White folks have pimped n’ exploited...well just about everybody. So today they sit justifiably paranoid that the “chickens may come home to roost.” If you can’t see the commonalities between the TEA Party and the White Citizens Councils of the 1950’s and 60’s, then you must be a Republican.

In the battle to influence and brand US pop culture, who are the legit kings n’ Queens of American Music; Elvis: Pat Boone, the Beatles and the Osmonds or James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, Al Green and The Jackson Five. Now, despite this one being a no-brainer, most republicans would argue for the cats like Boone and the Osmonds who were clear, indisputable pale facsimiles of the real thing. That speaks to the Great White Hope syndrome and the shoving of pretenders upon the people.

Everyone doesn’t like their coffee weak, watered down with too much cream... Some like it Black and strong.

Should Blacks, Native Americans and Latinos “Celebrate” Independence Day, Flag Day or Columbus Day? If you do, I’d tend to regard you as a Republican. Ol’ Glory flew over plantations, segregated public schools and buildings that had signs out-front stating “No Dogs/No Mexicans.” The Stars n’ Bars justified Indian Reservations and Japanese-American Prison Camps. The flag, like Mount Rushmore and the Star Spangled banner represents a collection of contradictions. If you’re a “Blind Patriot” then you must be a Republican.

If, as an American, you can minimize the ruthless creation of the American Empire, the land forcibly taken from Red and Brown people and then Blacks forced to lay the foundation, the cornerstones of what is touted as the most-advanced form of human civilization today, you must be a Republican.

If you can dare demand some twisted form of blind absolute “patriotism” by Americans of color - the folks who were pimped, exploited and brutalized - then you must be a Republican.

And speaking of Great White Hopes, if I ask you why they are so few Black Quarterbacks and Head Coaches in the NFL, and you tell me it’s anything but the tactical discriminatory exclusion of Blacks then I’d argue you must be a Republican.

Bird’s Boston Celtics rivalry with Magic’s LA Lakers: if you can’t confess this era of basketball exemplified and personified the racism which is embedded in US popular culture, then you must be a Republican. Furthermore, if you can’t admit this black team/White team rivalry saved the NBA because it gave White guys a player, a team and a town to cheer for, you must be on the “Right.”

If you think Beyonce is fat... I’d subjectively submit you’re a Republican, a White guy who only has one standard for beauty - one who questions his sexual abilities to satisfy a curvaceous creature and prefers a lover who resembles Peter Pan. OK, that’s kinda’ locker-room hard, but if you’re instincts reject this bronzed Goddess I’d say you’ve been brainwashed by the White establishment Rush Limbaugh speaks for.

Was Rodney King a victim of LAPD police brutality? If this is a debatable debacle to you, you must be a Republican. And let’s take this one step-further: if you dismiss the charges of racism revenge-seeking Chris Donner leveled, and you believe brutality is not a staple of the LAPD, nor departments across the land from Fargo to Key Largo... then you must be a Republican.

Do you have the right to own a Bazooka? Only those on the Right want one.

Is there something wrong with a nation where dogs and cats have health insurance and little boys n’ girls don’t? If you don’t believe this is an atrocity, you must be a Conservative. That’s right, Republicans believe health care should be a profit driven industry - as is clean air, water, heat for your home all the needs.

Your perspectives and opinions determine who and what you are. It’s that simple.

This is but a sampling of the obvious questions, which when answered by Americans illustrate, in vivid stark Black n’ white, that we’re a split, divided house, Republicans on one side - everybody else on the other side. The GOP can attempt to put crimson-colored lipstick on a Confederate-grey elephant and dress themselves up as being compassionate neanderthals, but it won’t work.

Their convenient enlightenment and token inclusionary gestures are merely about divide n’ conquer.

Last year, the GOP advocated erecting an electrified 30 ft. fence with a shark infested moat and gun turrets along the Southern border; now, after the ass-kicking Republicans took at the polls, and the obvious browning of America, these weasels are all speaking Spanish, telling you how much they love sopapilla’s and Menudo.

Ain’t that a Puta?

However, Conservatives still hate the savage Negroes, White women who won’t remain barefoot, and pregnant, all Muslims, and they don’t trust Asians because they don’t know their place... but the Mexicans can stay, they just can’t vote or join a labor union... Who buys this?

I don’t care what these good ol’ boys do, but a Redneck is a Conservative is a Republican is a TEA Partier is a racist, sexist and elitist ass.

But let’s wrap this up on a higher note - here’s the best question to decipher who exactly it is you’re talking to: Sioux War Chief Crazy Horse and General George Armstrong Custer, 7th Cavalry, US Army - Who’s the terrorist, who’s the freedom fighter...?

This weekend, for cocktail conversation ask a couple ofthese questions. Anyone’s answer speaks World Book Encyclopedia Volumes aboutthat individual. Ask a few before you marry someone,their answers might matter in the long run.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Desi Cortez, was hatched in the heart of Dixie, circa 1961, at the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the by-product of four dynamic individuals, Raised in South-Central LA, the 213, at age 14 transplanted to the base of the Rockies, Denver. Still a Mile-Hi. Sat at the feet of scholars formany, many moons, emerging with a desire and direction… if not a sheep-skin. “Meandered thru life; gone a-lot places, done a-lot of things, raised a man-cub into a good, strong man, produced a beautiful baby-girl with my lover/woman/soul-mate…aired my mind on the airwaves and wrote some stuff along the way.” Click here to contact Mr. Cortez.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Black Non-Violence

Only Spoiled White Americans,

Most Notably Police

Do any of you recall some kid named Malcolm-something trying to take a plane to Iran last week, and getting arrested? And Mary J. Blige was playing his grandmother in a TV movie of some kind, and all this was upstaged by a brother going on a shooting spree. Seriously, LAPD Officers can’t stop being dumb cops even while in the midst of trying to find someone who is targeting them. That in itself is a testament to how deeply corrupt they are. Sadly, it took two women getting shot, two women delivering some newspapers. Black, white and red all over.

Before the siege on Dorner, many of you probably missed that the LAPD Chief of Police immediately admitted publicly that the shooting of the newspapers ladies was probably a case of mistaken identity. No sign of cover-up or overly-officious speeches about “waiting for all the facts to come in.”

Of course “waiting for all the facts to come in” actually means “waiting for us to get all our lies together.” Several questions arise in the aftermath of the hunt for former-LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner; does this on any level mean there will be changes for the better regarding the racist policies of the LAPD and ultimately police agencies around the country? Do we need 500 more Officer Dorners? Did most of Dorner’s targets have it coming? Dorner is really the black man that white grandfathers warned their children about, who rarely ever existed, but whites know deep-down-inside should have. There used to be an old saying, “Blondes have more fun.” White American police officers have always had more fun than blondes; they just can’t put that in an ad.

Consider that most white police officers don’t like sensitivity or cultural training, no fun. Consent Decrees, no fun. Videotaped footage of them manifesting their bad attitudes, no fun. Town hall meetings regarding them, no fun. Having to arrest white criminals, no fun. In fact some white officers will openly admit this to you once you buy them a couple rounds after happy hour. Other than drinking, what else do a large segment of white cops like? The 3 Bs; bullets, brass knuckles, and batons. One more thing they do NOT like, considering black officers their fellow officers. This dark frat-like brotherhood has little or no tolerance for the darkest people wearing their dark para-military uniforms. This of course brings us back to Christopher Dorner. Not a “Django” as some journalists and social network bloggers have tagged him. Django was a former slave, but never ever a fellow slave-owner. Compare him to “Skyfall.” Like the crazed villain of the last James Bond movie; Raoul Silva, Dorner was once one of them, returned to attack his own agency.

White Americans in general live in a world created by their ancestors for them, by laws written by them. Not to mention policies written and unwritten. White law enforcement officers and officials have been the biggest beneficiaries of those laws and policies. In this world they created, the law that states their job description; “To Protect and Serve,” has been trumped by their policy of “whoever naturally reacts to our treachery will be construed as evil and therefore scorned.” That’s an awful lot of power.

Dorner served in one of the nation’s most infamous precincts, even after having undergone reform, bad seeds were manifesting themselves among left-over and new officers on his beat. Dorner wouldn’t even allow them to say the N-word in general conversation between each other if within his earshot. Police and their reporters are having a hard time trying to lump Dorner in with Colin Ferguson or John Muhammad, much more so someone along the lines of an Adam Lana. Too many fingers black and white pointing back at them. Dorner served in a department far more racist than the US Military, he dared to intervene when a white female officer - Teresa Evans (now a Sgt.) - repeatedly kicked a mentally-ill suspect. White female officers piggybacked off the same affirmative-action laws that black civil rights leaders pushed into being. In spite of her record of bad behavior it was Dorner who was fired.

There are a lot of whites around the country who simply can’t figure out, or pretend they can’t figure out why a lot of blacks aren’t pulling out their crying towels over Dorner’s victims. That’s how far gone they are from ever understanding us. Today Christopher Dorner is a murderer; yesterday he was a real cop, an honest cop. We shouldn’t have to live in a world where the words “honest cop” go together as if it’s a term that’s the exception to the rule. This is a man who once turned in $8,000 of church money into the police. That’s free shakedown money, free bribe money from the standpoint of the LAPD. For a church pastor, it’s a down-payment on a new Cadillac. As of now, how they wish he had turned in his bullets.

Dorner gave us the unthinkable - a first time glimpse of a black man profiling some bad police officers and even their families. Lives will be forever changed by his action. Do not fall for those reports of the LAPD re-opening the case of his firing. Consider it desperation, a prayer from Copland that he turn himself in based on false promises. This may have worked were Dorner insane. His manifesto and hunting down his former fellow officers like “niggers” was planned from way back. Call this the Hate that Hate Produced pt.2, charging him with murder and attempted murder before he is arrested is more in line with their natural thought-process. Captain Phil Tingirides did not leave his home after hearing what Dorner had skillfully done to the daughter of former LAPD Captain Randall (Randy) Quan, and having him named in his manifesto (I’m not sure if he has come out even after the fire-bombing). In fact reportedly several officers and their families have been sequestered in their homes since then. Odd behavior for a bunch of guys normally flocking to crime-scenes and over-zealous suspect pursuits. Just think about that for a minute. Members of the big bad former Ramparts Precinct imposing a sentence of home-confinement... on themselves... over a fear of one black man. 50 more Christopher Dorners among the nation’s police forces could change policy, 500 more could outright turn it upside down.

During and after the Dorner ordeal, several more black LA-area law enforcement officers have stepped forward to acknowledge that they know completely well what Dorner went through. Hindsight is 187/187. All big city black police officers need to form a coalition in their respective cities so they can collectively combat racism, and welcome-in, brief and support newly-hired young black officers. There is a history of this being done, and quite effectively. It’s desperately needed just as much today as it was yesterday. Why? Another former police officer calls it reciprocity. Theodore (Ted) Kirkland had a book published last year that details much of the things that Dorner outlines in his manifesto. The precincts Kirkland worked were some 3,000 miles away from Los Angeles, in Buffalo NY, but his book, Spirit and Soul: Odyssey of a Black Man in America should be not just required reading for police academies nationwide, it should be mandated as a study-guide for aspiring officers white and black. Spirit and Soul was on my mind throughout this whole Dorner affair, Kirkland feels Buffalo Police is more racist than the military, and he served in both. Two weeks before his academy training was over he heard rumors that he would be assigned to undercover and what would be expected of him: “We (Blacks) are supposed to arrest Blacks, while the Italians who bring drugs into the Black community are ignored” said Hughes (a black narcotics detective).”

This was just the tip of the iceberg in the early ’60s Buffalo Police Academy training: “But racism was also taught at the academy. It was built into the training material, lectures, and the manner in which material was presented to the trainees. On the pistol range, black silhouette targets were used... Taggert (the only other black in his academy training) and I were often talked down to or not spoken to at all, as if invisible. Racism was blatantly shown in the training films, slides, old criminal case materials, and newspaper clippings that was used to resource material. This material disproportionately portrayed blacks as the more likely to commit the more horrific crimes. Through visuals and the other materials, the trainees were brainwashed into seeing Blacks as the enemy, the pariahs of the criminal element, and the most perilous people they would confront as police officers.” Through this training many in the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) became possibly that town’s biggest liability. Kirkland joined a precinct located in the Polish section of town dubbed “The Bloody Eight” and according to him not one officer had extended his hand to welcome him. Of course the existence of internal racism in many police departments can’t be denied, all whites aren’t racists, but white people know white people. Dorner’s statements however are receiving confirmation from an unexpected source that’s been all-too-silent over the decades.

Over the course of the past week several African American officers have come forward (One even went so far as to say it’s not the criminals causing them stress, it’s the department) and disclosed to the media that they understand what Dorner has gone through because they themselves went through it. Initially you, as I, may have been tempted to ask what took them so damn long, but look at it from the standpoint of the white officers who were being portrayed as risking their lives to save the people of Los Angeles and Big Bear Lake (while needlessly shooting at motorists and incinerating property) and you’ll realize what they did was downright radical. Each of these black officers went through Dorner-like ordeals, each situation could have been much better for them if the black officers would have just closed ranks and organized. Unfortunately Spirit and Soul shows this is nothing new: “Black officers had no camaraderie or unity; they were as separate as the fingers on my hand. In the plants where I worked, there was a sense of identity among blacks; they were conscious of the racism around them and of white supremacy... whereas black police officers seemed aloof, afraid of being identified with their own and with Black causes particularly.” You make up your own mind as to how far or little blacks have come. It is inescapable that white officers take all the blame when black law enforcement opt for such racially-evasive stances while constantly surrounded by racist, organized white lions.

The blue line can no longer be used as an excuse for white cops bent on violating the black line. People who say “there were other ways of dealing with this” are forgetting he had been there and done that. Dorner took his grievance to what is strangely called the Board of Rights from within the department including two of Evans close friends. This is really an issue of manhood to disregard such obvious complaints and expect blacks to just take it, put up with it, while whites go skipping along happily-ever-after.

As usual, to the whiteright, and many on the left and their pundits in the main stream media, allthey want is detachment, your forgetting or forgivingthe LAPD corruption and just focusing on Dorner’s reactions. To adhere to theirwishes would be unfair and unbalanced.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Chris Stevenson, is a syndicated columnist, his articles also appear in Political Affairs Magazine. Follow him on Twitter (@pointblank009) and Facebook (pointblank009). Follow his on-air broadcasts' Policy & Prejudice for clbTV, and his Blogtalkradio show 3600seconds. Click here to contact Mr. Stevenson.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Damage To the African Mind and Dr. Bobby Wright

So many of the problems that African people face in the world today are due to the assault on our minds by those who captured us and removed significant numbers of us to the western hemisphere. This also included the mind damage caused by the tampering of African lands and culture on the continent of Africa.

Most African people in America are aware that our minds were tampered with as a result of our forced capture and enslavement in America. The impact of this process is central to the international component of the Reparations Movement that we must focus on, and that is the “Repair of Ourselves” at the same time we demand reparations from the government and private corporations who benefited from our enslavement and still benefit today. Examining and reexamining the contributions of the late Dr. Bobby Wright provides a significant source we can utilize in addressing our “internal reparations” challenges.

The contributions of the late Dr. Bobby E. Wright in helping us assess this problem should be a continuous part of our study, and reflection, as we struggle to break the psychological chains of white supremacy.

Four years before Dr. Wright’s untimely death, he wrote a profound article titled, “Mentacide: The Ultimate Threat To The Black Race.” In defining “Mentacide,” Dr. Wright explains that it is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a person’s or group’s mind [which] may give a clue to why the Black race, after developing such an advanced civilization, has for the last 400 years been assisting in it own destruction and the nearly total subjugation of Africa by foreign invaders.”

In an earlier work, written in 1975 by Dr. Wright, titled, The Psychopathic Racial Personality, he stated that in the relationships of whites with Blacks “whites exhibit the behavior of psychopaths and their behavior reflects and underlying biologically transmitted proclivity that is rooted deep in their evolutionary history.” Dr. Wright says, “Mentacide is the ultimate goal of the behavior.”

Any cursory examination of history will bear out, and support, the following “incomparable traits” of the white race (Europeans) that Dr. Wright reveals in terms of:

1. Predatory behavior toward people and their land,

2. A predilection for senseless destruction of nature and people, and

3. The ability to persuade Blacks to support and protect them against their own interest.

These key points described by Dr. Wright concerning the continued oppressive psychological condition of African people in the world indicates to me that our biggest challenge as a people is that of Getting Our Minds Straight and Stopping Mentacide!

Getting Our Minds Straight requires that African people begin to relearn the African principle that renowned historian Dr. Anderson Thompson has been discussing for the last twenty plus years. According to Dr. Thompson, the “African Principle represents those standards, rules, laws, and customs which guide our behavior and which serve as the foundation for all of our action.”

Dr. Thompson continues by explaining that the African Principle “is the quality underlying the source of the African value system. The gift from our Creator passes on to us through our ancestors.”

At this juncture in history, we as African people have the capacity to, Straighten Our Own Minds Out, without the help of anyone outside the African Community.

It must be understood that Africa and African people have been under siege for more that 2,000 years by Europeans, Asians, and Arabs. The invasions, intrusions, thefts, murders, pillaging, and the decimation and destruction of African lands, bodies, minds, and spirits over these 2,000 years is the basis for our on-going struggle for African Liberation worldwide.

In our efforts to Straighten Out Our Minds, the following revelation by Dr. Wright should be understood, and internalized, by all African people. Dr. Wright reveals that, “It is very clear that the Europeans have developed a method whose basic purpose is to replace all indigenous cultures with their own… Therefore, the Europeans, without any historical precedent, went forth into the civilized world and began to impose their cultures on others, mainly through religion, literacy modalities and military force.”

All roads lead to our unity. We must work together in organizing and mobilizing African people in America. All of our organizing strategies must lead to Getting Our Minds Straight and Stopping Mentacide. Without this occurring, we will continue in our present state of mental stagnation and servitude to other people.

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

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.

Feb 21, 2013 -Issue 505

Instigator

Political Cartoon

By Mr. Fish, Philadelphia PA

Mr.Fish is a cartoonist and writer who lives in Philadelphia, PA. He saysnever asked to be born. Occasionally, he laughs his head off. Hismother has no idea what he's up to. She cries easily. His Website is clowncrack.com.Click hereto contact Mr. Fish.

Feb 21, 2013 - Issue 505

Sedation Pill

Art

By Shepard Fairey, Los Angeles CA

SOLD OUT

18 x 24 inch screen print.

The “Sedation Pill” print isinspired by the title of my favorite Public Enemy album “It Takes ANation Of Millions To Hold Us Back”. I think the biggest problem inAmerica is the indifference and complacency about important issues thatresults from much of the population being perpetually hypnotized byconspicuous consumption, social media, entertainment, andself-medication. Using sedation and escapism for relief from the ratrace might make us less aware (blissfully ignorant) but also lessempowered to improve our role within the rat race… a vicious cycle ofcause and effect.

-Shepard Fairey

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