The following is a presentation by Keehanga-Yamahtta Taylor about her book from #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. The main focus of the talk is the total abandonment of the black community by America’s first black president Barack Obama.
African Americans have double the unemployment rate of other US workers, 40% of African American children live in poverty, 55% of black workers earn under $55 and police shoot and kill an average of 900 African Americans a year.*
What Taylor finds even more galling is that Obama persistently blames African Americans for their own living conditions. When most of the world Wall Street for the economic cataclysm visited on white working class in 2008, Obama proclaimed there was “no excuse” for African Americans living in poverty.
Taylor goes on to discuss the disproportionate shut down of public services (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc) and safety net programs in black communities.
She also points out the total disconnect between policing and crime, which is declining. She gives the example of New York and other cities that use their police force to help meet budget targets, New York City, for example, generates $10 million a year from parking tickets and $1 billion from court fines (derived disproportionately from African American neighborhoods because New York police deliberately target them).
She also cites the problem of overt police racism, as evidenced by the texts cops send each other – with racist messages such as “white power”, “niggers must be killed” and “niggers must be spayed.”
*This number is an underestimate as only 1,000 out of 18,000 urban police departments report police killings to the Department of Justice.
In the following video, Jeremy Cahill discusses his book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. For the most part, the book consists of leaked documents about the CIA’s “secret” drone assassination program. This is the first time any official documents have been made public.
Cahill’s latest book includes documents setting out the criteria for putting Americans and others on the terrorist “watch list.” Other documents describe the “kill chain,” the process by which prospects are moved from the “watch list” to the “kill list.” When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she signed off on every targeted assassination carried out by the Obama White House.
According to Scahill, the watch list contains over one million entries, including 21,000 Americans. Among other data, the watch list includes bank records and confidential medical records.
Scahill begins his talk with fascinating commentary on the three main presidential candidates. Among other observations, he points out 1) that Bernie Sanders supports both the kill list and drone warfare 2) that Trump didn’t bring fascism to the US – that he merely brought existing US fascism into public view and 3) that Bill and Hillary Clinton were using her private email server to operate a parallel government structure.
In Scahill’s words, Hillary is the “empire candidate.” She has already been endorsed by William Kristol, Max Booth and other neoconservatives. He maintains most of the Republican leadership is preparing to support her presidential campaign.
Scahill is also scathingly critical of Ben Rhodes and the other 20 to 30-year-old “frat” boys who manage Obama’s foreign policy, ie make the decision who to kill next and which countries to invade.
Some Sing, Some Cry is a novel tracing seven generations of a fictional African American family from slavery to the election of Barack Obama. The authors are sisters and the first half of the book is based on family oral history.
The novel’s matriarch originates from on an island off the coast of South Carolina and takes the name of a prominent plantation owner who has fathered children by both her mother and herself. The family are forced off their land when Reconstruction ends, migrating to Charleston.
The first half of the book is the strongest, with its poignant depiction of family members being stripped of their newly won freedoms as Jim Crow laws ban them from most occupations. To a large extent, the plot revolves around complex prejudices within the African American community against family members with darker skin. In one instance, the plantation owner kidnaps an light-complected male child and raises him as his heir. In another a “bright-skinned” uncle passes as Irish to evade trade union rules that ban Negroes.
The novel’s main focus is the role newly freed slaves played in the development of modern American music. The reader gets the strong sense that many Mayfield family members turned to working in minstrel shows, music halls and clubs when Jim Crow laws banned them from other occupations.
The sections dealing with the great northern migration, Harlem renaissance and birth of ragtime and jazz are also quite riveting. I came away with a totally new insight into the African American origin of the dance crazes of the “roaring twenties,” eg the “Charleston” and the “Black Bottom.”
This was also my first exposure to the extreme discrimination African American soldiers faced during World War I. Unlike white troops, they weren’t issued gas masks. Forced to improvise, they covered their faces with urine soaked rags to protect themselves against mustard gas.
The Education Spring uprising against corporate education reform began in Seattle at Garfield High School (my daughter’s former high school) in January 2013. It started with the entire school (teachers and students) walking out rather than take the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). The latter is standardized test mandated under Obama’s Race to the Top and Common Core initiatives.
The Obama administration has used this heavy emphasis on high stakes testing (a leftover of Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy) exactly as his predecessor did. Low test scores are frequently used as an excuse to demote or fire teachers, to cut the budgets of low performing schools, and even to even close them and replace them with private charter schools.
As Garfield teachers explained in a January 2013 press conference, the MAP is neither an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress. For numerous reasons: it’s unaligned to the Seattle high school curriculum, it’s biased against English-language learners and special education students and it’s high margin of error makes it statistically invalid at the high school level. The makers of the test caution not to use it to evaluate teachers, as many school districts have been doing.
Common Core standardized tests like MAP are also racially biased. As Garfield history teacher Jesse Hagiopian, author of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing states, “they’re a better indicator of a student’s zip code than their aptitude.”
All agree the biggest problem with high stakes testing is that it forces teachers to spend so much time teaching kids to regurgitate on multiple choice bubble tests that there’s no time to teach them valuable analytic and decision-making skills.
The Opt-Out Movement Catches Fire
The boycott against standardized testing quickly spread to other Seattle schools. Over the coming months, Portland students initiated their own boycott of the OAKS tests, some 10,000 parents and students marched in Texas against the overuse of high-stakes tests, and kindergartners and their parents staged a “play-in” at the Chicago School District headquarters against the replacement of the arts with high stakes standardized tests. In Rhode Island , members of the Providence Student Union dressed as as guinea pigs and lab rats to march on the State House.
The Seattle School District initially threatened to punish teachers with a 10-day suspension without pay. They eventually backed off owing to the unanimous support of the Garfield High School PTSA and student government, and after hundreds of phone calls and emails from parents and teachers around the country. After months of rallies, teach-ins, call-ins, and opt-outs, Seattle School Superintendent Jose Banda announced Seattle high schools could legally opt out of standardized testing.
The Education Spring has continued to spread. According to the New York Times , 20% of 3rd through eighth graders (more than 200,000) opted out of New York standardized tests this year. In Washington State more than 62,000 (and approximately half of 11th graders) opted out of the SBAC in 2014-2015.
A Broad Spectrum Populist Movement
As a populist movement, the Education Spring seems to be gaining momentum across the political spectrum. Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan initially blamed growing opposition to standardized testing to “Tea Party extremists.” When he could no longer deny the phenomenal strength of the opt-out movement, he blamed it on “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
Hagiopian’s book More Than a Score is a collection of essays, poems, speeches and interviews from teachers, grassroots education activists and education researchers. He talks about his book in the following video:
There’s also a great clip of Jesse suggesting a more reasonable and reliable method of assessing students on NBC News
Yet another victory for our side. The tide seems to be turning against corporate America.
Today the Guardian reported that Tuesday’s 52-45 senate vote shut down further discussion of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement. Owing to the threat of filibuster, this procedural vote required at least 60 “ayes” in order to let the Senate host discussions on whether or not to give the president “fast track” authority.* Failure to reach that threshold puts the future of the TPP(A) in jeopardy.
The proposal was defeated by Democrats wanting to add measures to protect US workers and prevent currency manipulation.
Most analysts agree that the eleven other countries negotiating TPP(A) are unlikely to agree to the treaty unless they know the US Senate will approve it without modification.
Many also believe the setback spells an end to any chance the US will sign up to the TPP(A) before the next US presidential election in late-2016.
According to the Guardian, TPPA opponents have been emboldened by the growing influence of liberal senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and were joined by all but one Senate Democrat in voting against moving forward with TPP.
Only one Democrat, Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, backed the measure. Pro-trade Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who championed the fast track measure in committee, changed his vote to “no.” He’s insisting that fast track be bundled together with three other trade bills, including one that would impose import duties on countries that manipulate their currencies for unfair trade advantage.
TPP is a secret treaty being negotiated behind closed doors without input from the public or elected representatives. Documents released by Wikileaks in March revealed the TPP(A) has a clause known as Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). It means if local or national governments enact legislation for greater environmental protections, health regulations or rules to assist local businesses – anything that interferes with foreign corporations’ profits – the corporations can sue them in secret tribunals run by corporate lawyers.
Here in New Zealand, we are especially concerned about a clause in the leaked text that would allow pharmaceutical companies to sue us for using generic drugs (in preference to brand named drugs) in our National Health Service. We’re also concerned the TPP(A) would enable Monsanto to sue us over laws that prohibit farmers from planting GMO crops.
Besides the US and New Zealand, the other 10 countries involved in TPP(A) negotiations are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico Peru, Singapore, the and Vietnam.
Lifting the Veil: Barack Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy
Scott Noble (2013)
Film Review
Lifting the Veil is a well-crafted expose of the myth of so-called capitalist democracy Based on interviews and archival footage of Senator Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, George Carlin, Glen Ford, Harold Pinkley, John Pilger, Richard Wolfe, William I. Robinson, Bill Moyers and other prominent dissidents, it makes an ironclad case that democracy is impossible under a capitalist economic system.
Using Obama’s extensive list of broken campaign promises as a starting point, Noble convincingly demonstrates how Wall Street corporations have seized absolute control over all America’s so-called democratic institutions. In addition to highlighting the essential role team Obama played in crippling a large, highly vocal antiwar movement, he presents historical examples to reveal how this has been the traditional role of the Democratic Party in the US – to co-opt social movements that threaten the status quo.
The first half of the film focuses on Obama’s 2008 campaign and his long list of promises to reverse specific abuses of George W Bush’s government. In a series of archival clips, we see Obama promising to
• Restore habeas corpus
• Close Guantanamo
• End government secrecy
• End wireless surveillance
• Stop foreclosures instead of enriching bank CEOS
• Expose corporate backers of tax and corporate welfare legislation
• End torture
• End extraordinary rendition*
• Withdraw from Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan in 2011
• Pass banking regulation to prevent a new Wall Street collapse
Besides breaking every single one of these promises, Obama enacted new policies that were even more oppressive and pro-corporate than Bush’s. Among them were an indefinite detention provision in the NDAA, an executive order giving himself power to assassinate American citizens, the new war in Pakistan and Libya and $7 billion in loans guarantees for the moribund nuclear industry.
The film makes the point that the 2008 election was merely a PR exercise in marketing Brand Obama and had absolutely nothing to do with the candidate’s political agenda.
My favorite segments were those in which comedian George Carlin explains to audiences how powerful corporations sucker them into believing they live in a democracy.
The film ends on an optimistic note with a sampling of opinion polls indicating that more than 60% of Americans oppose the pro-corporate agenda Obama has foisted on them: 63% of Americans would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, 70% oppose nuclear power, 81% want to reduce the deficit by taxing the rich and cutting the military budget and only 3% support cutting Social Security.
The only criticism I would have of Lifting the Veil is that it fails to offer specific solutions for Americans seeking to get their democracy back. The dissidents featured are pretty much unanimous that Americans need to stop looking to electoral politics as a way to reform either government or the economic system. However they are a little vague on what activists should do other than protesting and engaging in civil disobedience. Neither is likely to accomplish significant change without serious organizing and movement building to develop alternatives to the current system of government.
Given a lot of this movement building is already occurring in Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Iceland, Mexico and South America and it would have been great to see examples of what this looks like.
*Extraordinary rendition is the kidnapping and transfer of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention, interrogation and torture.
After more than a year of secret talks, Obama announced today that he’s ending the fifty-four year Cuban embargo to re-establish diplomatic ties. According to the President, the move was conditional on Cuba’s release of USAID contractor Alan Gross. Gross was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to fifteen years for distributing banned technology and trying to set up an Internet service.In addition to releasing Gross, the Cubans also released an unnamed CIA agent imprisoned in Cuba for nearly twenty years. President Raul Castro also agreed to release fifty-three Cubans the US regards as political prisoners. In return, Obama released three Cubans in US prisons on espionage charges.
Additional Measures
Additional measures, according to the fact sheet put out by the Obama administration, include re-opening the US embassy in Havana and relaxation of trade restrictions to allow American businesses to export telecommunication equipment, agricultural commodities and construction supplies. American travelers to Cuba will be allowed to use American credit and debit cards, and US owned companies will be allowed to provide services and engage in financial transactions. This is in addition to a gradual reduction in travel restrictions Obama first introduced in 2009.
Emphasis on Internet Technology
The fact sheet heavily emphasizes the export of telecommunications and Internet technology by US companies. Prior to June 2013, Home Internet connections were illegal in Cuba. Despite this recent liberalization, Internet services remain limited, slow and expensive. Only 5% of the Cuban population has reliable Internet access.
The prospect of opening Cuba up to American Internet providers and specialized services such as Google, Facebook and Twitter offers limitless opportunities to bombard the Cuban population with American advertising and propaganda, as well as introducing them to the same NSA surveillance Americans enjoy.
Embargo Purely Symbolic
The unilateral US embargo of Cuba has been purely symbolic, as it has limited economic impact. Because the vast majority of the developed world trades with Cuba, US businesses routinely bypass the embargo with help from other countries.
There is strong international pressure for the US to end the Cuban embargo. On October 28, 2014 the UN General Assembly voted for the twenty-third time to condemn the economic boycott. As usual, the only two countries opposing the declaration were the US and Israel.
Pope Francis, another strong advocate for lifting the embargo, has been instrumental in the secret negotiations.
Waning Influence of Cuban-American Lobby
Until recently, Obama and the Democrats have bowed to pressure from a powerful Cuban-American lobby to keep the embargo in place. In the last two presidential elections Florida’s Cuban American voted Democratic, securing the key state of Florida for Obama. However, according to the New York Times, the influence of Florida’s Cuban-Americans over national politics is rapidly diminishing. The Hispanic population of Florida is increasingly Puerto Rican, and younger Cuban-American voters with no direct memory of Castro’s Cuban takeover are more willing to support Democrats.
Republican Opposition
Obama has enacted all these changes via executive order. Only Congress can fully repeal the Cuban embargo enacted in 1961. Speaker John Boehner and other Congressional Republicans have vowed to block legislation lifting the embargo.
Part 5 of Counter-intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations
The final episode of Counter-intelligence is dedicated to drone technology and Barack Obama’s virtual repeal of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allows the government to detain individuals indefinitely without charge, trial or conviction. Obama has also granted himself the authority, via executive order, to arbitrarily execute civilians (including American citizens) without due process, evidence or accountability to Congress or the courts. Both overturn hundreds of years of common law preventing the rich and powerful from using government to attack their personal enemies.
Filmmaker Scott Noble reminds us that Obama deliberately leaked details of his weekly White House “kill list” meetings. Individuals are added to the kill lists, which are maintained by the CIA and a covert unit of the U.S. military called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)*, following “determinations” that secret criteria are satisfied. Noble maintains the primary purpose of the leaks of the leak was to terrorize Americans into submission.
Death by Drone
Thus far, the only presidential assassinations we know of have been carried out by drones. “Drone Nation” highlights the cold impersonality of a technology that’s conveniently similar to video games teenager males are raised on. Thus it comes as no surprise that drone victims are dehumanized (they’re called “bug splats”) in the eyes of young drone operators who sit behind consoles thousands of miles away.
Nor that drone strikes typically target random groups of people, such as wedding parties. Drone technology has no capability of distinguishing between civilians and combatants. 98.5% of all the people killed by CIA drones are civilians – only 1.5% are so-called “high value targets.”
Insect-sized Drones
Even more frightening are the millions of dollars the Pentagon is shelling out for killer robot research, including hummingbird and insect sized drones that require no human operator.
By 2020 tens of thousands of drones will be flying in US skies.
The series ends with a moving tribute to all the whistleblowers who made the documentary Counter-intelligence possible.
*JSOC is covered in Part 1 of Counter-intelligence.
Counter-intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations
The Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a secret free trade treaty Obama is negotiating with eleven other Asian Pacific countries (US, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Japan, Chile, Peru, Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Singapore and Brunei). The President had hoped to seal the deal at the recent Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing. Instead all 21 Pacific Rim countries have agreed to develop a roadmap for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) treaty. The FTAAP would include China and Russia, whereas the TPPA excludes them.
China Deliberately Excluded
The TPPA is viewed as a centerpiece of Obama’s “strategic rebalancing” towards Asia. Also known as the “Asian pivot,” Obama’s intention is to counter China’s growing economic strength by isolating them economically and militarily.
The US has required the twelve countries participating in TPPA negotiations to sign a secrecy clause. Only corporations (i.e. the 600 corporations that helped write it) are allowed to see the text of the treaty. Not even Congress is permitted access. If Wikileaks hadn’t leaked large sections of the draft agreement, we wouldn’t even know it existed.
Is TPPA Really a Trade Treaty?
Scheduled to coincide with the APEC summit, November 8 was an International Day of Action against the TPPA, with major protests in New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia and the US. From the sections which have been leaked, it seems the TPPA isn’t a trade treaty at all. It’s really an investor protection treaty, granting corporations the right to sue countries for laws that potentially hurt their ability to make a profit. These lawsuits, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, would be heard by secret tribunals run by corporate lawyers. There would be no right of appeal.
In other words, the intent of the TPPA is to allow corporations to overturn the environmental, labor and healthy and safety laws and regulations of member countries. There’s even a special “transparency” clause inserted by the pharmaceutical industry that would allow them to challenge formularies (in the US this would include Medicaid and the VA) that promote cheaper generic medications.
If finalized, the TPPA would also allow oil and gas companies to overturn fracking bans, Monsanto to overturn GMO labeling laws, investment banks to overturn banking regulations and the telecommunications industry to overturn Net Neutrality laws.
Why the Secrecy?
It’s pretty obvious why Obama is trying to negotiate the TPPA in secret. Prior investor protection treaties (e.g. the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement) have gone down in flames thanks to massive public lashback, both in the US and in treaty partner countries.
Congress isn’t too happy, either, about being denied access to the draft TPPA treaty. In November 2013 Congress voted down Obama’s request for “fast track” authority on the TPPA. Fast track, otherwise known as Trade Promotion Authority, would require Congress to accept the final TPPA deal or reject it. No debate would be allowed on specific provisions.
There are rumors Obama plans to reintroduce TPPA fast track authority before Christmas, hoping for a better outcome with a new, pro-business Republican congress.
The POTUS also had hopes of ramming through an agreement on the TPPA treaty in Beijing, at a side meeting in the US embassy. It appears he did try and failed, as Pepe Escobar describes in a recent RT article Lame Duck Out of the Silk Trade Caravan.
The Effect on Australia and New Zealand
A trade deal that excludes China, their major trading partner, makes absolutely no sense for Australia and New Zealand. Kiwi and Aussie environmental and labor activists are also deeply concerned about signing an international agreement that allows multinational corporations to sue their governments in a secret corporate tribunal. They’ve worked damned hard to win laws and regulations guaranteeing minimal environmental, labor and health safety standards. If the TPPA goes through, these could all be wiped out with the stroke of a pen.
China Aims to Suppress US Influence in Asia
In an interview with Chinese media, Obama denies he was trying to isolate China by pressuring Asian Pacific countries to sign a secret trade deal that excludes them. Yet it’s pretty obvious to all concerned that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.
It’s also pretty clear that Chinese president Xi Jinping outmaneuvered him. In addition to getting all 21 APEC nations to sign onto an FTAAP feasibility study, China signed other trade deals geared towards reducing US dominance in the region.
On Monday the Chinese and Malaysian central banks signed a deal to establish a yuan clearing bank (to facilitate energy and other trade deals in local currencies rather than US dollars).
Russia and China signed a similar deal to conduct oil trades in rubles and yuan, rather than US dollars. According to Russian president Vladimir Putin, the new agreement will significantly reduce US influence over world energy markets.
Back in October,
Back in October, China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank a rival to the US-dominated World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
There’s an article on the Fox News site this morning entitled “Source Says Reported Letter from Obama to Ayatollah F***s Up Everything.”
It quotes a pre-election article from the Wall Street Journal that Obama secretly wrote Ayatollah Khameni in mid-October stressing that any cooperation on dealing with the Islamic State, or ISIS, was tied to Iran striking a deal over its nuclear program. The U.S., Iran and other negotiators are facing a Nov. 24 deadline for such a deal.
The congressional source told Fox News that the letter would upset the inroads they’ve tried to make with “the Sunni league,” noting that the president should have informed Congress of this back-channel if it was in fact going on.
“This f***s up everything,” the source said.
Just to clarify “the Sunni league” refers to the despotic dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Qatar that stone people for blasphemy and behead even more people than ISIS. And which have been the primary funders and arms suppliers for ISIS and the jihadist mercenaries attempting to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina issued a joint statement Thursday night saying it was “outrageous that, while the cries of moderate Syrian forces for greater U.S. assistance fall on deaf ears in the White House, President Obama is apparently urging Ayatollah Khamenei to join the fight against ISIS.”
The move will also anger AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israeli lobby group. Israel seems really keen on provoking an all-out war between the US and Iran.
It’s gratifying to see the President show some backbone. The move, in my view, is long overdue.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
