Table of Contents

There are 14 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Can the Boston Bombings Increase our Sympathy for Iraq and Syria, for all such Victims? By Juan Cole, BC Guest Commentator

In NYC, strains of solidarity with rival Boston

Social Security Cuts - BC Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler

“Joy to the World”: The Liberal’s Proposed Social Security and Medicare Cuts - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Watching Oliver Stone’s “The Untold History of the United States” - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Reagan, Thatcher are Gone, but Their Onerous Legacy Continues To Oppress Working People - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Pyongyang Style - Political Cartoon By Zapiro, South Africa

Angry White Folks Need Guns to Protect Themselves from Americans of Color - Sharp n’ Blunt - By Desi Cortez - BC Columnist

Tomb Raiders - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Why Jackie Robinson Still Matters - Between The Lines - By Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, PhD - BC Columnist

Obama as the Cover For U.S. Perpetual War, Austerity, and Racism - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Quote to Ponder: "It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today…” - Barack Obama

Sleeping Giant - Art By Kadir Nelson, San Diego CA

This is an eBook version of BlackCommentator.com - An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace.

BC Provides commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world.

BC was established April 5, 2002 and is published weekly on Thursday.

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

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Members of the BCEditorial Board represent African Americans and the African world. Theyare 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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

The horrific bombings of the Boston Marathon produced inspiring images of a spirited, brave Boston refusing to be cowed. Some spectators surged forward toward the danger to apply tourniquets, offer first aid, share blankets, and later to give blood, for the victims.

President Obama followed the crisis from its first moments and came out promptly to caution against fruitless speculation as to the perpetrators as well as solemnly to vow that they will be held accountable. (He has a certain track record in that regard.)

The idea of three dead, several more critically wounded, and over a 100 injured, merely for running in a marathon (often running for charities or victims of other tragedies) is terrible to contemplate. Our hearts are broken for the victims and their family and friends, for the runners who will not run again.

There is negative energy implicit in such a violent event, and there is potential positive energy to be had from the way that we respond to it. To fight our contemporary pathologies, the tragedy has to be turned to empathy and universal compassion rather than to anger and racial profiling. Whatever sick mind dreamed up this act did not manifest the essence of any large group of people. Terrorists and supremacists represent only themselves, and always harm their own ethnic or religious group along with everyone else.

The negative energies were palpable. Fox News contributor Erik Rush tweeted, “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them! C’mon!” When asked if he was already scapegoating Muslims, he replied, ““Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.” Challenged on that, he replied, “Sarcasm, idiot!” What would happen, I wonder, if someone sarcastically asked on Twitter why, whenever there is a bombing in the US, one of the suspects everyone has to consider is white people? I did, mischievously and with Mr. Rush in mind, and was told repeatedly that it wasn’t right to tar all members of a group with the brush of a few. They were so unselfconscious that they didn’t seem to realize that this was what was being done to Muslims!

It was easy for jingoists to find Chinese or Arabs on twitter gloating. But I saw much more of this kind of message:

or there was this:

But there were positive energies as well. The Egyptian woman activist Asma’ Mahfouz, who was important in calling for the Tahrir demonstrations that kicked off the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, said that she admired the American sense of deep concern for the welfare of citizens, and the way authorities came out promptly to speak to the incident. She contrasted this situation to that in Egypt, where, she alleged, the authorities have less respect for the value of citizens’ lives. For a young Egyptian revolutionary, America is still an exemplary nation in some regards, and many in the world admire it even in the way it deals with adversity.

Similar sentiments were voiced by the journalist Fatima Naout, who said that when dozens of Egyptians died in a train accident, it took President Morsi 12 hours to come on television, and then he made only a brief statement of less than a minute. She also complained of innocents being arrested for sabotage and ultimately released, while what she called Muslim Brotherhood gangs attacked demonstrators with impunity. She said that the US is a nation of laws and upright judicial procedure, and Egypt still is not.

On the other side of the aisle in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood members of the Senate (Majlis al-Shura) unhesitatingly condemned the bombings. MP Izz al-Din al-Kumi condemned all violence that harmed individuals of any nationality. He discounted a return to the ‘war on terror’ atmosphere of 9/11, saying that al-Qaeda had suffered too many blows any longer to be a viable organization. Dr. Farid al-Bayyad, another parliamentarian said, “Regardless of our differences with American policy, we roundly condemn these attacks.”

Some Syrians and Iraqis pointed out that many more people died from bombings and other violence in their countries on Monday than did Americans, and that they felt slighted because the major news networks in the West (which are actually global media) more or less ignored their carnage but gave wall to wall coverage of Boston.

Aljazeera English reported on the Iraq bombings, which killed some 46 in several cities, and were likely intended to disrupt next week’s provincial election.

Over the weekend, Syrian regime fighter jets bombed Syrian cities, killing two dozen people, including non-combatants.

What happened in Boston is undeniably important and newsworthy. But so is what happened in Iraq and Syria. It is not the American people’s fault that they have a capitalist news model, where news is often carried on television to sell advertising. The corporations have decided that for the most part, Iraq and Syria aren’t what will attract Nielsen viewers and therefore advertising dollars. Given the global dominance by US news corporations, this decision has an impact on coverage in much of the world.

Here is a video by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) on the dilemma of the over one million displaced Syrians, half of them children.

So I’d like to turn the complaint on its head. Having experienced the shock and grief of the Boston bombings, cannot we in the US empathize more with Iraqi victims and Syrian victims? Compassion for all is the only way to turn such tragedies toward positive energy.

Perhaps some Americans, in this moment of distress, will be willing to be also distressed over the dreadful conditions in which Syrian refugees are living, and will be willing to go to the aid of Oxfam’s Syria appeal. Some of those Syrians living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey were also hit by shrapnel or lost limbs. Perhaps some of us will donate to them in the name of our own Boston Marathon victims of senseless violence.

Terrorism has no nation or religion. But likewise its victims are human beings, precious human beings, who must be the objects of compassion for us all.

Note: This essay was originally published on Juan Cole's website Informed Comment where he provides an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, JuanRicardo Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist,and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at theUniversity of Michigan. Contact Mr. Cole.

Apr 18, 2013 -Issue 513

Apr 18, 2013 -Issue 513

BlackCommentator.com artist/cartoonist Charles E. "Chuck" Siler's works feature a variety of themes ranging from New Orleans' lively and unique jazz scene to its lively and equally unique political scene. He uses his art and political cartoons to comment on life's complexities, warts and beauty marks.

His creations include fine watercolors and acrylics and pen and ink cartoons. His cartoons are featured on a regular basis in The Louisiana Weekly.

A Katrina evacuee, Siler has spoken on New Orleans history across the USA at universities and culural events.

Click here to contact Mr. Siler

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

Thus, the gravest omission from the ‘general picture’ was that of a witness to testify to the cooperation between the Nazi rulers and the Jewish authorities, and hence of an opportunity to raise the question: ‘Why did you cooperate in the destruction of your own people and, eventually, in your own ruin?’

-Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

In England, on the “Day of Praise” for Margaret Thatcher, who died on April 8, 2013, Labour Party MP Glenda Jackson was the sole voice of memory: With Thatcherism, virtues transformed into vices: “‘the vices of greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees’” (The Guardian, April 10, 2013).

In the U.S., the liberal press beat the Liberal drums ahead of her funeral procession.

The Iron Lady is gone. Gone!

Many in the Liberal press rushed to resurrect images of the Reagan-Thatcher partnership, reminding readers and viewers of the horrors of a world ruled by the Right. Their union privatized and deregulated everything in sight, and drastically crushed the effectiveness of worker unions.

What these Liberal reports failed to admit, what could have been more educational for generations under 40, and more truthful in understanding the nightmare we find ourselves in is to confess that the sea change initiated by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership depended on the Liberal’s “big chill” in the 1980s.

The Liberals “chilled out.” In the 1960s and early 1970s, they burned draft cards, after Reagan’s inaugural, they built bonfires in the yards of their newly purchased suburban homes and set ablaze their anti-war signs, Huey Newton posters, Soul on Ice, Wretched of the Earth, Communist Manifesto. They donned suits and occupied offices of business for profit and so-called “non-profit.” They became the face of federal and state institutions, including the press.

The face of domestic and foreign oppression.

Liberals had been among the masses of student movements throughout the world during the 1960s and 1970s. Along with students in Germany, they had asked crucial questions: “how, after all, could the automatons of mass society do anything as willful as work with elites in the Nazi Party?” (Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea). Liberals in the U.S. asked questions too, as Robin notes, not just about “the ethics of collaboration, but the mindset - racist and careerist - that had given rise to it, and the hierarchical institutions - the party, the firm, the academy - that housed it.”

[H]ow a concern for private careers and class comfort had encouraged many to support, and blinded others to, the racism of American society; how a veneer of affluence hid pervasive inequality and hierarchy; how the anti-communism of the Cold War was plunging the United States into another war that, to its victims, looked like nothing so much as the racist imperialism of old Europe. (Fear)

Oh, yes, these questions debated with the Left had been on the Liberal’s table for discussion - until Reagan rhetoric conjured “‘super predators’ - drug-addled youth [Reds, Blacks, Browns] who were poised to plunder and kill” (Family Relations, April 2003, Vol. 52, No. 2). And the wars came - the war on poverty and the war on drugs. And if you were not Black or Brown or poor, you had nothing to worry about. Work hard, raise a family, and enjoy the success and the affluence of the American Dream, at last!

It was a partnership made in heaven - or rather, made in fear of hell - the Right and the Liberal class. Greed was good! Family first! History is the history of class struggle - And did the Liberal class not struggle in pursuit of their interests? Even documenting for all the world their own about-face and lock-step celebrations of the “good life,” with classic Motown hits playing in the background (The Big Chill).

Only in recent years did Michelle Alexander, a member of the Liberal class, inform the true gatekeepers of over 2 million mostly Black and Brown U.S. prisoners of the consequences of their “support” and “blind” allegiance to the Right.

And yet they persisted, offering the “articulate,” worldly, multicultural, anti-Black, millionaire, Liberal Barack Obama to the masses of poor, low-waged workers, Red, Black, Brown, masses they have helped maintain on the bottom rungs of the capitalist food chain through fear and hatred and only encounter on “Praise Days” when artificial representations of Pow Wows and Civil Rights commemorations of “fallen” as in “dead,” murdered, heroes and at fundraisers and charity missions to South America or Africa to help starving children. The Liberals persisted: partnering with the Right, with “Brand Obama,” Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and “just war” corporations supplying more shiny new Communication Management Units for troublesome dissenters at home as well as the technology for the advancement of drone warfare, now an effective method for targeting and eliminating “terrorists” abroad.

Lying with faces turned from history - he is the legacy of Crazy Horse, of Dr. King, of Caesar Chavez, of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements - Liberals, white and Black, jumped for joy when the Savior took his seat in the White House. Joy to the world!

Dissenters beware! Beware!

How does the Right do it? Usher in fascist and totalitarian states and make it seem as if everyone had a hand in the idea?

Try, try, try as they might to distance themselves from Reagan-Thatcher, Bush I and Bush II, domestic and foreign policies, the Liberals cannot distance themselves from the consequences of their relationship with the Right and its growth in the last 30-plus years.

The Liberals played at being betrayed and shocked when they discovered the Right had gambled with their investments and had deflated the “American Dream” balloon so that only a group as silly and outdated as the NAACP could continue campaigning for the deception.

“To cave in” is the definition of a Liberal. It is the Liberal’s history to serve as facilitators of the Right. Remember history, European and U.S.? But then, the Liberals “chilled out,” burned those books, and made sure the box bookstores where shelved with self-help, dieting, and parenting books while classrooms in higher education purged any thought that did not enhance an acceptance of careerism and collaboration.

So that Obama is a master at caving in to the Right and Righteous Capitalists comes as no surprise to anyone who has endured the Right’s determination to efface this planet and the life on it. (Just ask, for example, the Lakota people who have been fighting courageously to defend their right to exist and to save their lands from corporate tyranny). To that goal, the Right draws everything and everyone who become little Eichmanns, in their own way, “registered” to a “base set of values hitched to a genocidal project” (Fear).

The Fiscal Year 2014 budget proposed by the Liberal White House will cut some $100 billion from Social Security. Three hundred and seventy billion dollars in cuts to pharmaceutical companies and care providers will mean seniors will pay more in Medicare premiums. The first “Democratic” president ever to propose cuts to Social Security, but then this is the “genocidal project” of the Right necessitating collaboration from the Liberal class, particularly from those in very, very high positions.

Richard (RJ) Eskow writes in the Huffington Post that Obama has an “‘ideal plan’” (“Why Obama’s Social Security Cuts Are Our Wake Up Call,” April 7, 2013). “But he doesn’t say what his ideal plan would look like - and he certainly isn’t fighting for a better one. He also claims his budget offers ‘tough’ reforms, which rings of self-satisfaction rather than sorrow.”

Why would a devoted, ambitious social climber feel anything but “self-satisfaction rather than sorrow”? Family values, after all! The security of the future for his wife’s mother, his wife, and his children is not in question. Eskow continues: “He’s decided on his next move. What’s yours? This budget represents a moral challenge for everyone...” (But that moral challenge did not arise just last week)... “especially those of us who voted for him.” Well, I will not hold my breath waiting on that “ideal plan” or for Liberals to overcome deep-rooted, pathological fears. We do not have that long nor will the Right wait to see how the Liberals will respond to their own audacity.

Besides the Righteous capitalists have already figured out a way to put a value on your breathing. It is called the Obama Health Care Plan!

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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

Showtime is re-running Oliver Stone’s ten part documentary, The Untold History of the United States. Truth be told, I stumbled across this when it was originally aired a few months ago. I am not exaggerating in saying that I sat there at times with my mouth open, turning to my wife and asking rhetorically: “Am I hallucinating? Is this actually on mainstream television?”

Oliver Stone and American University Professor, Peter Kuznick, put together a magnificent re-examination of US history from the years of Franklin Roosevelt to the present. Focusing largely on US foreign policy, this documentary calls into question everything from the myths associated with World War II, e.g., that the USA and Britain, rather than the USSR, were responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany; to who actually started the Cold War; and moving all the way to the present and the challenges under Obama.

Not only does Stone raise significant questions, thereby challenging both the distortions and misrepresentations that have been passed down to us as “history”, but he encourages the viewer to ask whether events might have played out differently, and under what conditions. An early example of this approach can be found in his discussion of the evolution of Henry Wallace, FDR’s Vice President, who was forced off the ticket in 1944, replaced by the not-very-popular Harry S. Truman. Wallace had a very different view of foreign policy, including an anti-colonial orientation and a desire for peace with the USSR rather than military confrontation. Yet the right-wing within the Democratic Party frustrated the mass, pro-Wallace sentiment and ensured the advance of a less-than-competent and non-descript, yet compliant, person in the form of Truman.

Stone’s documentary is, in many respects, like a film version of Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present. In that sense it is actually quite shocking. The information provided by Stone is certainly available, though not always accessible, to the larger public. Instead in the United States we are subject to the “propaganda of history,” to borrow from the title of the final chapter of W. E. B. Dubois’s Black Reconstruction in America. For that reason it is surprising to see anything like this on mainstream television.

The Untold History of the United States has an accompanying book. Seven hundred fifty pages in length, I thought that it might be a quick read, particularly after watching the documentary. It is not a quick read; it is a fascinating read. It explores, in depth, the issues that are raised in the series and provides documentation for the assertions that are advanced.

A series such as this cannot unfold without challenges from those who still cling to the “American Century” and Cold War mythologies of days gone by. And, indeed, such challenges have appeared. Yet the scholarship involved in this documentary stands in the face of such skeptics.

As with all history, events are a matter of interpretation. Yet, without sufficient facts, one cannot credibly interpret the reasons for or implications of events. Stone and Kuznick have, therefore, done a great service by encouraging the viewer (and reader) to question myths, assertions and traditional arguments. Instead, they introduce the viewer and reader to a combination of information - new to many people - and questions, in order to provoke the interest and curiosity of the reader/viewer. One does not have to agree with each and every bit of analysis offered by Stone and Kuznick to appreciate the importance of the appearance of The Untold History of the United States.

Take a peek.

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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

Although both U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are dead, the legacy they left their countries is evident to this day, as the House of Commons in England debates the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB), which sets minimum wages and conditions for farm and agricultural workers in both England and Wales.

The move by the Parliament has been in the works for some time, the House of Lords having voted for abolition already. Those on the left and unions have declared that the move to eliminate the board is a “dismantling of agricultural workers’ rights.” Thatcher, who died recently, and Reagan, ideological soul mates that they were, would be pleased that the move against the board is even being considered, let alone on the brink of being accomplished.

During her tenure as prime minister, Thatcher saved her special vitriol for the unions and their members, terming them “the enemy within,” probably one of the more vicious slurs ever against British citizens, who did some of the toughest and dirtiest work of the society and who just wanted the right to be represented by unions of their choice and to live life at a decent standard. She not only destroyed their unions, but, in the case of the coal pits, she wiped out the very means of community survival by closing the mines. Environmentally, the closing of the mines ultimately might have been a step closer to improving the air quality of parts of England, but it is certain that Thatcher was not thinking of the environment or society when she closed the pits.

Reagan opened his two terms as U.S. president by firing the striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), which was one of only two unions that endorsed him for president (the other was the Teamsters), because as a candidate, he promised them he would look into the dangerous conditions in the towers of airports across that country. He didn’t. They struck out of desperation, and he fired them and blacklisted them from any future federal jobs.

The animus against unions was mostly complete in the U.S. and Great Britain, and they dragged along the prime minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, who was all too willing to go along with the right wing “leaders of the western world” in their attacks on unions, government, and social programs of every description. With Thatcher’s death, the hagiography by right wing pundits and government officials got a boost, as if they needed it, to proclaim that the two of them did everything to save the world’s “free markets” and political freedom. Some, however, actually do believe that their ideology and their philosophy did save the world.

Anyone who thinks otherwise just needs to recall last year’s Republican primary campaign, in which right wing candidates for the presidential nomination tried to outdo each other in their attacks on workers, their unions, social programs, and on government, itself. Not one of them made a move in the direction of reining in the flagrant violation of U.S. tax laws by Corporate America and the rich in their squirreling away their wealth in offshore accounts in small countries that have favorable tax policies for rich customers. This was especially true of the eventual Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, a super-rich guy who never seemed to get what his philosophy did to the entire working class of Americans. In fact, he did not seem to be able to see them as part of humanity, despite his wife’s and his children’s assertions that he was “generous” to a fault.

Thatcher and Reagan also had difficulty relating to workers and that attitude, over a period of years, eventually encompassed much, if not most, of the middle class, however much of that class remains. Charts drawn up by any number of economists and economic think tanks show the alarming disparity between the rich 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of Americans. This is what both Thatcher and Reagan strove for, as did Mulroney, as a kind of acolyte of their “lay low the working class and their unions” method of operation.

Even though a close examination of the philosophy of the U.K. and the U.S. at that time clearly lent itself to the demise of the middle class and the elimination of the working class, no matter what the effect has been on the nations, themselves, the iconographers have constructed their own reality about the legacy of Reagan and Thatcher. The constructed Reagan legacy was front and center in the 2012 GOP presidential primary campaign, and Thatcherism also was a primary mover of the politics in Great Britain.

The Labour Party, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, followed America’s right wing leadership of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, into a war of choice in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was seen widely by the world’s nations as illegal under international agreements and a war crime, as well. That did not deter them. The expression of power would be visited on the people of Iraq (remember that Bush, Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld termed its opening salvo of the invasion “Shock and Awe”), as civilian populations were targeted, as well as military targets. They felt they had precedent in actions like Reagan’s invasion of Granada and Thatcher’s challenge to Argentina, when the military power of England was visited on the Falkland Islands (the Malvinas, as they are called by Argentina). The death toll of both sides in that war was nearly 1,000, about one-third of the population of the Falklands. The death toll in Granada was unnecessary.

But the “victory” in the Falklands was credited with guaranteeing her another term as prime minister, and she was free to rid her land of social programs, privatizing her way to smaller government in all things, including public transportation and other services for the less-well-to-do in the country. Things were going along as planned by those who hate government services.

Thatcher was the woman who famously said, “there is no society,” but only individuals, meaning that the nation need not worry about taking care of the least among us, but watch out only for oneself. In that, both she and Reagan were opting for much less government, a government that would be so small that it would not be able to manage any programs for the poor, even as they showered the corporations and the rich with low tax rates, subsidies, grants, and extremely weak laws to hold the elites responsible for the loss of tax revenues when they sheltered their riches in tax havens around the world. So much for evenhandedness in tax policies and distribution of a nation’s largesse.

In some of her utterances, she virtually predicted the onslaught against government in both countries by the 1 percent and their minions in Congress and the state legislatures, in keeping with (mostly) GOP candidates who expressed their beliefs in the philosophy of selfishness of Ayn Rand, a darling of the right and mentor of such luminaries as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The era of greed, which both Thatcher and Reagan incorporated into their governance, wittingly or unwittingly, sails on to this day, much to the detriment of all of the citizens of their countries, right into an economic crisis that may not be able to be turned from disaster.

The abolishment of the AWB in England and Wales is just a small part of the grand plan, but it shows the strong impulse to continue the anti-democratic policies of Thatcher-Reagan, as well as being part of the relentless attack on the rights of workers in the workplace in both countries. The AWB set a standard for farm and related rural workers, back in the era of World War I, that allowed those workers to move continually toward a livable wage.

Unite, the union, stated: “The AWB not only helps ensure rural wages progress towards a living wage, it also benefits employers. The vast majority of farmers - some 75 percent Unite talked to - do not want to be charged with undertaking wage bargaining. They are heavily dependent on their employees and do not want the tension that comes with imposing wage deals. The workers can often be tenants of their employers too, and so will become incredibly vulnerable if the AWB is removed. For the workers and farmers alike, the AWB provides ‘neutral ground’ which both parties value.”

What the right wing in the U.K. is doing is eliminating a protection for rural workers and farmers that predates the U.S.’s National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in the mid-1930s under the Roosevelt Administration. Even then, the NLRA left out of the labor standards law farm workers, domestic workers, waitresses and waiters, and some other workers and, to this day, they have lesser standards than other workers. And those workers have been trying to achieve justice in the workplace ever since.

Even if the House of Commons rejects elimination of the AWB, it is just part of the everyday campaign against the rights of workers and the Brits have a long way to go to equal the assault on workers and their unions in the U.S. Union membership numbers tell that story in a nutshell. Billions of dollars have been spent over a few decades by Corporate America to eradicate the very idea of unions in America and the campaign has been largely successful, since a very small percentage of workers are union members.

The followers of Reagan (even though much of his “legacy” is myth and illusion) and Thatcher largely see the world as “not a society,” but a world of individuals who should only be concerned with their own welfare. The GOP candidates at state and federal levels have expressed no less than that Randian philosophy in campaigns across the country. It is more than mere ideology, however. Rather, it is simply because a nation, filled with individuals looking out for their own interests, is easily controlled by the powerful elite.

They want the people to forget that in solidarity and unity there is great strength.

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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 509

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

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- 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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

The gun argument is based on a few simple premises... let’s put these “gun nuts” in a nutshell, shall we?

The “Patriot” wing of the GOP - from the TEA Party to the Libertarians, the Constitutionalists, the White Supremacists to the Baby Jesus-loving fundamentalists - wholeheartedly believe every other non-White sector of society is out to get them, so they need high powered weaponry to defend themselves from virtually everyone.

I beg you to compare n’ contrast America today with South Africa - except that in the US, the White population is the declining slight majority.

Historically, the rank n’ file Republican TEA Party “Patriots” have maintained a healthy fear of the US government turning on them so that they will need their weapons to protect themselves from their own government, specifically Federal Troops. The civil war entrenched that mindset in the South, and the 20th century world wars that reshaped the European Motherland only intensified Euro-Americans’ distrust and fear of the government taking their guns and then oppressing the citizenry. Add to that the Northern Yankees using federal troops to enforce civil rights for Black citizens leaving these good ol’ boys clinging to their guns.

Now what has made this scenario a tad more horrific is that the face of the US Government is that of a Black man. Toss in his name, his alleged socialist, communist, Black militant, Muslim ties...

Conservative (racist/sexist/elitist) America sees a cold, vengeful-minded, preoccupation with the “big payback.” A Liberal/Progressive coalition, comprised of the folks the White male establishment long ago conquered and has since oppressed, pimped n’ exploited, i.e., Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Women... with a mind of their own, Native Americans, gay folks, unwelcome and unwanted immigrants...

The Neo-Cons see a united 21st century front - the 2nd tier misfits, and outcasts organized and focused on forbidding good, decent, innocent White men from defending themselves. To them, forbidding the purchasing of assault guns and clips is, in essence, disarming White America - the law-abiding, tax-paying White citizen, the “real American.” And then allowing the Colored criminals - the rank n’ file gangbangers and thugs to keep their illegally gotten guns - which they’re going to use to rob White folks, or in the race war which is coming to a community near you.

They see it as sending Johnny Reb to a back alley gang gunfight armed only with a Boy Scout knife.

The “Right” believes if there is any disruption in the normalcy of US society, be it man made, war or economic collapse or Mother-Nature - whatever it may be... chaos will ensue and quickly we’ll be knee-deep in a nationwide race war... and the Commander of it all is Black.

Listen to the drumbeat on the Right; White folks are the “producers,” people-of-color are the non-producing “takers.” Some cartel between Washington and Wall Street is keeping the crap game afloat with smoke n’ mirrors, nonetheless, sooner or later, the jig’s up, it will all come tumblin’ down, and when it does, White folks will see themselves as “targets.”

Recall Hurricane Katrina and its ugly aftermath; the Army regarded Blacks as “looters” and the Whites as “survivors”... which is “tradition,” and the “good folks” in neighboring parishes actually set up barricades to halt the “wrong kind” of folks from coming through. Perfect Redneck blueprint for law n’ order.

It was akin to Sundown Laws.

Now, once this “red-lining” became obvious, and a part of the PR nightmare Little George W. n’ Big Dick Cheney created, they had the Army send in a Black general, Lt. General Russel Honoré, to run the operation. CNN showed him ordering White soldiers to put their guns down while dealing with Black refugees - Black folks... The world cheered, everyday Angry White folks snickered and grumbled. White men in authority being told to “stand down,” and back-off Blacks by a Black general.

That moment stated, in non-debatable terms, it’s a new day for the out-of-control- angry White man.

That episode was like “time in a bottle” for many - it left a bad taste in the mouth of Ricky Bobby. Those on the political Right see themselves as the “good guys”... how dare the US government deem them the “bad guys.”

Timothy McVeigh - the OK City terrorist and David Karesh from the “Showdown at Waco” are Heartland heroes, Redneck rebels - to be applauded for trying to uphold the founding father’s vision for a lily-White Land of freedom liberty n’ equality... standing up to the Feds/Yankees.

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding going on in the US. Few understand the outrage on the Right. I’m sorry I do.

I could pen pieces about education, healthcare and global warming - but I’d see myself as wasting time and visibility if I did that, say like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The arsenal being assembled by “real Americans” to protect themselves from fake, phoney 2nd class Americans like me n’ you is by far the most pressing issue confronting Blacks and other Americans-of-Color... because those guns are being bought to use against you n’ me... We, our family members and children are the enemy they’ll be preparing for.

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 for many, 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.

Apr 18, 2013 -Issue 513

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

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

There are some things in our society that matter and need not be explained. We live in a society where we have forgotten about the things that matter. We find ourselves explaining things that shouldn’t have to be explained and paying attention to things that we should give absolutely no attention. Nonsense now makes the most sense in today’s world and we give priority to things that are more irrelevant than relevant. Simply put, we - as a society - have lost sight of what matters. The things that truly matter most in our society, that allow us to co-exist, are the very things we’ve forgotten about it. And I’m not just talking about fundamental things like God and family (though both find themselves being challenged in a society that has become more irreverent), I’m talking those thing that keep the Democracy stable and the society from collapsing under weight of its own decadence and/or its own ignorance.

Education matters. We need not explain why quality education matters. We’re witnessing the effects of a “dumbed-down” society. Our society’s plunge into anti-intellectualism explains why government can’t do simple things any more - much less move society forward. Communities are unable to respond because anti-intellectualism leaves them short on what to ask and how to proceed. Primary, secondary and higher education are all in crisis, at the same time - and we’ve become a society that doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. We just know there are no jobs, no money for education and no desire to fix what’s broken - because to some, it doesn’t matter.

Joint sacrifice matters. All of society should contribute to balance the federal budget - that shouldn’t have to be explained. When we no longer put the common good ahead of the individual gain, then individuals pursue self-interest before they pursue the common good. The result is a massive wealth divide and a nation that has leveraged its future with debt. The rich are able to explain away their lack of contributions, as job creators, etc., when the same system they rob affords them to build wealth without limit - which they couldn’t do creating the jobs. Exemption of the rich is nonsense but nobody criticizes it because they think it doesn’t matter… plus, they want to be rich one day and keep all their money, too.

Homes matter. The loss of the “American Dream” is only eclipsed by the laissez faire attitudes in society that deregulated home lending. “Letting the markets decide” and opposing government regulation created this crisis that threatens the American dream. Allowing people to keep their homes and recasting their loans is the right thing to do. This shouldn’t have to be explained. But it is a problem that is not only explained - but rationalized beyond belief. If the market created the problem, the market should fix the problem - and not by victimizing people.

Race relations matter. The master race mentality that created a race caste system in America is in regression in many segments of American society, but it holds firm in other parts of the society. A society that has made a history of telling people who to love, and conversely - who to hate, finds itself in a time where love is in need of love - but is now complicated by sexuality (even hypersexuality) and stratification of caste (immigration). We don’t need to explain that cultural understanding is the best way to societal peace. But we find ourselves stuck in another century from time to time - trying to escape our own phobias.

Sport (and music) matter. Sport is the dominant societal escape that allows us all to forget about the injustices of the world, where we expect the competition will be fair, the rules will be public and the understanding that everyone will play with the same set of rules. This was not always the case. In the first part of the 20th Century, sports took on societal norms, excluding blacks from the games that society revered. This all changed in 1947, when the Brooklyn Dodgers put Jackie Robinson on the field to integrate the national past-time. Jackie Robinson wasn’t the best black baseball player of his time. Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige were. He wasn’t the most experienced. He only played only one year in the Negro Leagues (1945).

But he may have been the most prepared for the social experiment of integrating society around sport, on the field and off. His UCLA experience as both a student athlete and an all-around sportsman, his upbringing in all-white Pasadena, his military (and court marshalling) experience in Texas, all pointed to the intelligence of a man who had survived and thrived in inter-racial environments. The Jackie Robinson experience very easily could have failed, which may have prolonged segregation in sports another 40 years - not really knowing that there was a civil right movement on the horizon. However, Jackie Robinson showed us that blacks and whites could co-exist on the same intellectual, emotional and physical planes. America had to see it before they could “see it.” It shouldn’t have had to have been explained; some things are just unexplainable. Sometimes, you can show people better than you can tell ‘em. That’s what Jackie Robinson did for America - showed them better than he could tell them. Jackie Robinson didn’t show America that blacks could play ball. He showed them that blacks could be their equal, despite hostility and rejection. He showed blacks humanity to an America that didn’t believe it and didn’t want to see it.

That’s why Jackie Robinson still matters, and will always matter. Support the film, “42”.

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

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”

- Amilcar Cabral

The narrative [i.e. the stories] of struggling everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth, must be told and retold, by we ourselves, in perpetuity. If we do not consistently present our collective narrative, our past and current struggles for social, economic, and political justice will be twisted, disfigured, distorted, and/or omitted by systemic usurpers.

In this year of 2013, it is obvious that the struggle for human and political rights in the U.S. has been thwarted by usurpers and systemic gatekeepers and misleaders from the so-called left and the so-called right who are owned by their corporate masters. The end game remains: Keep everyday people distracted, divided, and manipulated. But it doesn't have to be this way.

The horrors of COINTELPRO [the infamous U.S. Counter Intelligence Program to 'discredit, frame, imprison, and/or murder' politically active people of conscience] have never ceased continue unabated, and have in fact, been intensified. These horrors, under drone man Barack Obama, have now been legally codified via the Patriot Act, the NDAA (provision 1021), the 'Kill List,' and the ongoing U.S. prison gulag at Guantanamo, etc. The internal and external subterfuge of 'false flag' operations (which are designed by the U.S. corporate / military elite – and so-called 'intelligence' gathering organizations - with the deep complicity of the U.S. corporate-stream 'news' media) to keep everyday people in fear, divided and submissive are at an all time high. The perpetual wars and/or U.S. military incursions throughout the world perpetuates 'terrorism' and is, in itself, state-sponsored terror. The shredding of the U.S. Constitution (at home) and the demonstrated contempt for international law (abroad) by the Obama/Biden regime in concert with his Democrat and Republican cohorts is self-evident to conscious persons. The active militarization by the Obama regime of local and state police departments throughout the U.S. and the enormous arms build-up by the so-called Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is further indication that the United States is not becoming a police state – it already is a de facto police state.

Moreover, the ongoing imprisonment and the physical and/or psychological torture of the vast amount of U.S. political prisoners of all colors, languishing in this nation's prison gulag system, is an obscene and continuing outrage beyond description. And the U.S. 'justice' system is an integral part and parcel of this obscene outrage. Human and political rights in the U.S. is an utter farce. And it will continue to be such until everyday people collectively say, “NO MORE!” and systemically CHANGE IT!

The Silence of Our 'Friends'

So where are the so-called 'liberals' and 'progressives' as all of the above outrages are being carried out by the Obama/Biden regime? Where is the mass outrage from these segments that was so prevalent during the Bush/Cheney regime?

Much (if not most) of the leadership of so-called 'liberals' and 'progressives' in this nation are deafeningly “silent,” and therefore deeply complicit, in the perpetuation of these outrages at home and abroad. This leadership, or more appropriately described – this misleadership, are the fifth-column systemic gatekeepers for the continued political, economic, and social emaciation of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and abroad. They are, in reality, worse than hypocrites. Hiding under the fallacious cover of Barack Obama and so-called 'political correctness,' they are in fact perpetuating austerity and racism at home, and perpetual war, torture, and terror abroad. They are the willing color and/or gender token-puppets for this deranged, blood sucking corporate-owned U.S. political system. These privileged so-called 'liberals' and 'progressives' know full well that human rights inside the U.S. itself is a well perpetuated fraud from which they benefit by pretending to be the guardians of, in real terms, virtually non-existent human and political rights in this nation. They obfuscate and distort the narrative of everyday people's struggles. They too, are usurpers of the people's struggles. There are no words to adequately describe the pernicious and insidious role that they play and the enormous harm that they perpetrate upon millions of everyday ordinary people.

The very last thing that the misleadership of the so-called left and right want to occur, is for the ordinary everyday people of this nation (and world) to directly communicate with one another, identify our common interests, and collectively throw off our political and economic yokes.

Claim No Easy Victories

The long and protracted struggle of people in this nation and throughout the world for human rights and justice is not an easy one. And there is the ever-present reality of discredited attempts, frame-ups and/or the risk of imprisonment against those of us engaged in this most necessary and serious struggle. Yet, this is to be expected and must not deter us. In the words of Amilcar Cabral, we must, “Claim no easy victories.”

Barack Obama, and his ilk, are simply the latest in a long line of enemies of the everyday people everywhere. To be sure, the U.S. and global power elite are, even now, grooming others to carry on their insipid hegemonic plans. But as the old adage says, “Forewarned is forearmed.”

We, the everyday ordinary people of Mother Earth, already know that we should expect systemic pawns to use every dastardly tactic at their disposal to thwart and 'neutralize' us. But we should also know and remember that we are the overwhelming majority, and by staying focused, vigilant, persistent, and determined – we the people – shall succeed. So, “claim no easy victories,” but do claim the right and necessity to struggle for victories!

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.

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

Apr 18, 2013 - Issue 513

oil on canvas

Kadir Nelson is an award-winning American artist whose works have been exhibited in major national and international publications, institutions, art galleries, and museums. Many of Nelson’s paintings are in the collections of notable institutions and public collections, including the U.S. House of Representatives and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as in the private collections of actors, professional athletes, and musicians.

Click here for information about the artist Kadir Nelson or to make a purchase

Click here to contact Mr. Nelson