The Black Commentator is on hiatus until August 31st. We are proud of the work that we have done in the last year, to advance the struggle of all the world’s people. We at BC are internationalists, and have been blessed by the participation in our project by BC Editor Bruce Dixon, a Chicago native now living in Atlanta. Bruce wrote our most popular story of the year, on July 20, 2006, titled “Israeli Apartheid.” It tells the truth, that is seldom broached, because of the overwhelming extremist Zionist influence in media and our own movement. We suggest that you re-read Bruce’s piece during the long, hot summer.

A great aggression was launched against the Black community, successfully, in May of this year. The giant telecom companies combined to suborn two-thirds of the Congressional Black Caucus and a huge majority of the House of Representatives, to pull the plug on the Internet democracy and local cable access. This is a Black issue, because we don’t have the money to communicate through hard copy, and we also have the right to control the infrastructure that lies beneath our own communities – or has not been put in place, in favor of other folks. Bruce Dixon’s piece, “The Black Stake in the Internet: Net Neutrality is an African American Issue,” May 11, 2006, informs us of what we need to do, to protect our means of communication.

The root cause of the problem is the “Failure of the Black Leadership Class,” as Mr. Dixon detailed on February 9, 2006. If we do not chastise our people, who will? Atlanta, a city as poor as Newark at it’s core, but a center of Black wealth at its fringes, is celebrated as a wonderful success story among popular media, Black and white. Yet Atlanta has one of the highest Black infant mortality rates of any city in the nation. Who is thriving? Who is dying? Bruce Dixon asks us to examine the issue from the ground up: Who is actually benefiting? If the masses are poor, and dying in extraordinary numbers, then how can we pronounce Atlanta a success? Dixon’s piece, “Black Mecca: The Death of an Illusion,” October 13, 2005.addresses directly the situation of Black people as it actually exists – not as it is hyped.

Only BC Tells the Truth

The Congressional Black Caucus has deteriorated beyond imagination in the last half decade. Only The Black Commentator has told the story of the disintegration of the premier organization in our body politic – the wholesale sell-out of our congressional politicians. We have witnessed one-third of the Caucus betraying its constituency in 2005, and two-thirds bowing to the telecommunications companies in 2006. Leutisha Stiills and her Congressional Black Caucus Monitor colleagues – the only Black organization that monitors Black lawmakers on a values-scale based on Black people’s politics – is closely associated with The Black Commentator. The CBC Monitor puts out a Report Card twice a year. We urge you check out the scores, to see who is doing our work, and who is not. You may be surprised.

Let’s Do Battle

The Black Commentator is relentless in its pursuit of traitors in our midst. The traitor-in-chief is Harold Ford, Jr., congressman from Tennessee, who wants to be a senator. He is the worst Black congressman in the House, based on his voting record. If he becomes a senator, the corporate media will make him our leader, and proclaim that his politics of betrayal are a model for future Black politicians. The Democrats may need him, but we do not. In our cover story of March 30, 2006, we exposed Harold Ford for what he is: a degenerate who tried to make his Black grandmother white.

But we do have our bright, shining lights in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cynthia McKinney, representing the Atlanta Black suburbs centered on Dekalb County, is a singular personality. BC supports her without reservation – because she stands fearlessly for our people. Her presence in the Congressional Black Caucus causes other members to examine their backbones – to see if they have any. Many do not. They allowed the spineless chairman, Mel Watt (NC), to humiliate and isolate McKinney on orders from his boss, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. BC revealed the sordid details on April 13, 2006, in our Cover Story, “The McKinney Affair: Rampaging Racism and a Cowardly Caucus.”

The sole Black senator has also been a great disappointment. Barack Obama telegraphed his political intentions early on, when he erased from his web site a stirring campaign speech against the impending Iraq invasion. Once elected, Obama changed his tune, in a process of Hillary Clintonization that he apparently expects will make him the first Black Vice President. Obama now raises funds for the right wing of the Democratic Party, most notably for his mentor, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the closest thing to a Republican in the party. What a shame, and a waste of our collective investment. On December 1, 2005, BC deconstructed Obama’s dishonest stance on Iraq, in an article titled, “Obama Mouths Mush on War.”

Freedom Rides

Margaret Kimberley is peerless. She has graced our pages for three years with the smoothest and politically penetrating prose ever written. She cuts no slack for former icons like Andrew Young, whom she skewered in her September 29, 2005 column, “Andrew Young and Vote Theft.” Young, the former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, has gone totally over to the other side, endorsing Georgia’s Voter Identification Act, designed to keep poor and Black citizens away from the polls, and fronting for the racist Wal-Mart corporation, which pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars to betray us as a lobbyist for millionaires.

Margaret unmasks Andrew Young, the pretender. She also has no mercy on Shelby Steele, who has made a career out of doing white folk’s dirty work. Ms. Kimberley snatches the mask off the traitor, Shelby Steel, in her May 11, 2006 article, “Shelby Steele Loves White Supremacy.”

No one is spared from Margaret’s tongue. She is fearless. The very fiber of America’s vaunted civilization is challenged by our columnist. On April 6, she wrote of “Immigration and America's Bad Karma,” in which she said “racism was at the heart of the anti-immigrant backlash.”

Margaret speaks truth to power, as should we all. Her courage was manifest with her article, “Israel’s Terror,” of July 20, 2006, in which she articulated the human rights problem that Israel presents to the world.

Cartoons with a Punch

It is difficult to determine which of our cartoons should be included in this Best of BC issue because we love them all. Here, however, are a few we find exceptionally relevant.

American Bully

What We Demand

Thou Shalt Not Question My War

Star Spangled Hypocrite

The Feeding of the Halliburton Pig 

Prison Nation

Art with a Soul

Art may be more difficult to judge than cartoons, but that didn’t stop us from selecting one piece of work from each of the artists currently represented by BC.

Venture & Freedom by Larry Richardson

Queen Mother by Margaret Warfield

ECCLESIASTES 11:9 by Mwandishi Henry

Afrika's children die for Fascist fools greed
on a world wide scale and no one cares by Fulani

BC is the only news/issue oriented related Website on the Internet that features Art as an integral part of its publication. The African American artists represented by BC support themselves with their work. The art is for sale. BC receives a small commission on any piece sold as a result of its exposure here. Please consider adding art into your life by making a purchase. Art helps the bright light of your soul shine onto the path ahead and into the minds and hearts of others.

We at Black Commentator have always sought to focus our people’s attention on the issues that are most important, so that we will not continue the ridiculous process of disinformation that has soaked our folks with false data.

While we are on our summer hiatus we have opened up all the BC archives. This means all readers will have full access to the Past Issues, Guest Commentators, Think Pieces, Search, Cartoons and Radio BC Master pages. If you have not yet become a BC Paid Subscriber or Contributor we hope having full access to everything BC has ever published will convince you to do so. Our fund raising effort is still short of what it will take to keep the BC voice alive. Now is the time to click on any of the buttons below and join the growing list of those who have made a financial commitment to the future of BlackCommentator.com.

We hope that we have done our job. Have a good summer, hot as it is. You’ve got a lot to read.

Glen Ford, BC Co-Publisher and Executive Editor

Peter Gamble, BC Co-Publisher and Chief Technical Officer

is on summer hiatus - we will return on August 31, 2006