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Home Issue: 769

Issue: 769

December 20, 2018

Cover Story

‘The Ugliest Chapter Since Slavery’: How Illicit Financial Flows Thwart Human Rights in Africa

By Imani Countess, Foreign Policy in Focus Editorial Board

for most nations in Africa, where illicit financial flows (IFFs) rob countries of $60-100 billion dollars each year — losses in many countries that exceed foreign direct investments and development assistance. Funds that could be used to secure basic economic and social rights — for example the rights to social security, decent work, and human dignity — are instead held in secret tax havens for the benefit of corporate elites.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights turned 70 on December 10. Governments and civil society organizations around the world commemorated the day with a range of…

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Commentary

To Be Young, Gifted and Dead

By Dr. Julianne Malveaux, PhD Editorial Board

Researchers say they don't know why young Black children are killing themselves, but if we speculate we can factor in mental illness, family dysfunction, unstable socioeconomic conditions and, in my opinion, hostility to African American people that many Black children cannot help but internalize.

McKenzie Adams wanted to be a scientist. The gregarious 9-year-old Alabama girl was just that, a girl, a little girl, a brown-skinned baby girl with braids…

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Color of Law

Cyntoia Brown Shows Us Justice is Not Blind

By David A. Love, JD Executive Editor

The education and justice systems view children of color as culpable adults and deny them the presumption of innocence. Black girls as young as five are perceived as more grown up, less in need of protection and less innocent than white girls. Black boys as young as 10 are regarded as older and guilty, with dehumanizing racial stereotypes placing them at risk of police violence if they are accused of a crime.

Cyntoia Brown was a victim of child sex trafficking who killed her abuser. Jeffrey Epstein was a billionaire serial child sex abuser. Both were convicted and…

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Commentary

At Year’s End, There are More Powerful Threats Against the First Amendment

By John Funiciello Columnist

In the U.S., it has not been so much outright censorship of news, but the powers that be have been involved in a broad range of policies that tamp down dissent. It has happened in the suppression of the union movement, Black Lives Matter, and any other entity that makes the rulers uncomfortable.

Today, there is a speech pathologist in Texas who doesn't have a job because she is a supporter of the Israel boycott and would not sign,…

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Commentary

Can a Fair School Choice Model Work for Public Education?

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

To get a true picture of school choice, one only has to follow the money. Despite the phony positive findings of non-scientific studies perpetrated by the conservative right which they have used their public relations staff to market in their own academic journals and in the popular print and broadcast media, charter schools and vouchers have not worked for the masses of poor minority students for whom they were allegedly designed to serve.

In the early 1970s, the conservative University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and the left-leaning Harvard researcher Christopher Jencks (who had earlier coauthored The American Negro…

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Sharp n’ Blunt

Impeach King Trump and “The American People Would Revolt”

By Desi Cortez Columnist

I know you accommodationist, moderate negroes doubt me, believe me to be an alarmist running around with my hair on fire, but I suggest anyone just Google 'Trump, impeachment and the people will revolt' - take a long-ass gander at the 'inconvenient truth' . . . it will set you free, and allow you to realize and hopefully accept the mindset we face.

President Trump commented on the incendiary topic of “impeachment” last week, claiming he’s “unconcerned’ by the possibility and positing that “the people would revolt if that…

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Bread and Circuses

Cartoon

Bread and Circuses

By Mr. Fish Cartoonist and writer

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Commentary

Kwanzaa: The Challenges of a New Season and The Kwanzaa Season and Economics

By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD Columnist

It must be clear, at this point in history that African people need to determine for ourselves solutions to the many serious problems we face. We should realize going into this New Kwanzaa Season that no one will do for us what we really need to do for ourselves.

The Challenges of a New Season As we enter a New Kwanzaa Season, we must remind ourselves of the continued challenges that we face. The fundamental…

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