Table of Contents

There are 16 chapters in this issue

1 - About BlackCommentator.com

2 - Cover Story: The Platinum Trillion Dollar Coin, the Deficit, and Tricksters - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

3 - Quote to Ponder: If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. - Martin Luther King Jr

4 - Political Cartoon - Armed for Prayer By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

5 - The Central Park 5: Where were we then and where are we now? - A View from the Battlefield - By Jamala Rogers - BC Editorial Board

6 - Destruction of U.S. Postal Service Appears to be Going as Planned - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

7 - The Arab Democratic Uprisings Two Years Later - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

8 - Was There a Politically Correct Way for Tarantino to Portray Black Slavery? Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

9 - From 'Entitlements' to Telescreens and No Principles in Between! - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

10 - Political Cartoon - South African Farm Workers Strike, By Zapiro, South Africa

11 - Make Us Do Right - By: Jill M. Humphries, PhD - BC Guest Commentator - Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

12 - The Debt Owed to Haiti - By Nia Imara, PhD - BC Guest Commentator

13 - When Government is the Bad Guys - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

14 - Is Opposing Obama's 'Kill List' & Drone Missile Murders Being Anti-Black? - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

15 - Dr. Woodson and Studying Our History Throughout the Year - Worrills World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

16 - Art - Twilight 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

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Cover Story

The Platinum Trillion Dollar Coin, the

Deficit, and Tricksters

Did you listen to the public discussion about the platinum trillion dollar coin as a way that Obama could avoid the debt ceiling debacle? The tone put forward by most of the perpetrators of this talk was “tongue in cheek.” Yet, almost all knowledgeable spokespersons ended up “copping” to the fact that the procedure is constitutional, legal, and that it would work. The U.S. government could manufacture this coin, deposit it in the Federal Reserve and pay bills based on its chosen value. Nobel economist, Paul Krugman, was an outright proponent of the idea. What’s to be laughed at?

I was intrigued by the example the tone of this discussion presents of the social psychological archetype called “the trickster.” This archetype exists in some form in most human cultures. In Native American cultures it is often known as the “Coyote” or the “Raven.” In West African cultures it is “Anansi,” the spider. Old time African American folklore has “Brer Rabbit.” Henry Louis Gates writes about the phenomenon in our culture today of “signifying.” Carl Jung, a contemporary and corrector of Freud, did some of the original work uncovering the universality of this phenomenon. Medieval royal courts privileged the position of “the court jester” who artfully employed trickster stories about the happenings of the day, including laughing at the king in such stories as “the emperor has no clothes.” Jesters were considered divinely inspired. Usually with positive results, tricksters translate deadly serious human questions into matters that are memorable and knowable at psychic levels other than the forebrain. Negative tricksters can cast doubt and ridicule on honorable people and turn folks away from good choices.

I “smelled” negative trickster energy from most discussants of the platinum trillion dollar coin. Some hoped that the discussion would never have arisen because it exposes just how manufactured this crisis is. Bankers and capitalists use our ignorance to abuse us. So it is useful to them to ridicule or deem amusing alternative solutions that expose their chicanery or that are outside of their control. Reluctant “tongue in cheek” comments were often accompanied by visual images of the coin, such as one with Obama’s head stamped on it. John Stewart, the premiere positive political trickster of our day, did a funny bit on the Daily Show last week that turned the trick around and spoke to the fact that we could have multi-trillion dollar, government manufactured coins that could eliminate all of our federal debt. I was delighted because, if we can penetrate the trickster energy, we will have the opportunity to show many how the currency and public debt systems in the U.S. really work and we will be obligated to change them.

In Forbes magazine, Donald Marron wrote: “Here’s what you should know about this crazy-sounding idea…Treasury is forbidden [by Congressional legislation not by the constitution] from printing (paper) money to cover government deficits. Treasury must issue debt, while the Federal Reserve independently controls our nation’s monetary printing press… [But Treasury is not prohibited from minting platinum coins.] By depositing (the trillion dollar coin) at the Federal Reserve, Treasury could keep paying bills after we’ve fully exhausted our borrowing limit….I’m no lawyer, but the legal arguments [against it] seem wholly unconvincing. The language of the statute is clear, and in any case, the executive branch gets away with expansive actions in extreme times. During the financial crisis...If default became a real possibility, the same expansiveness could easily justify a platinum coin…”

Guess what! Due to this growing interest in a viable alternative, even though the debt ceiling crisis still looms, both the Feds and the Treasury have preempted this viable option which would avoid the imminent disaster. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” said Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley in a statement on Saturday. Obama had already stepped back from the use of The Fourteenth Amendment which gives him the authority and the responsibility to pay U.S. debts, regardless.

Again the Administration gives up options before the struggle has even begun. Man alive! This has become a typical Obama move. It is the height of foolishness to throw away legitimate options hoping that your opponents – who believe themselves to be in an existential struggle after the election loss and the virtual draw over the “fiscal cliff” – will come to their senses and voluntarily admit defeat. Such a strategy is stupid and incomprehensible! Doesn’t anyone in this Administration believe in fighting with all tools available for the wellbeing of the country? Oh! Of course! Fools are another name for tricksters. They are positive and negative and they stand on all sides. The paradigm is both/and not either/or.

[Note: Nafsi ya Jamii is the Swahili phrase that translates in English to “The Soul Community”]

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

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Quote to Ponder

Click here for more about MLK

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

PoliticalCartoon
Armed for Prayer
By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

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

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

The Central Park 5:
Where were we then and where are we now?

As someone who has done work for years around the prison industrial complex and particularly with wrongful convictions, I was elated when I heard a documentary about “The Central Park Five” was in the works. When the news came that “The Central Park 5” was in selected movie theaters in my city, I passed the announcement on to my Facebook friends, urging them to check it out in their respective hometowns. A friend who has a movie review website heard that I was going and asked that I do a movie review. No problemo.

I ended up going to the theater by myself but expected to see many folks that I knew from the social justice scene. I sat in the back of the theater so that I wouldn’t bother people with my note-taking.

As the theater started to darken for previews of upcoming movies, I noticed that no one else had entered the theater. What the hell was going on? I got up from my seat and went to the hallway but saw no one. I was the only person in the 300+ seating theater. I repeat: I was the only person in the theater to view “The Central Park 5.” Before my anger could rise, the documentary was on and I was pulled into the story and quickly became transfixed on the screen.

After the movie, I started to reflect on what I had just experienced. Not only was it surreal to be sitting alone in a big movie theater but it also seemed to be a sad metaphor of how our society, particularly the African American community, has been missing as an unjust system sucks up our children.

“The Central Park Five” chronicles the 1989 case of five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully targeted, wrongfully arrested, wrongfully charged, wrongful convicted, wrongfully sentenced and wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal attack and rape a white female jogger in Central Park. The news media swarmed the case and an overzealous prosecution moved in for the kill while the majority of the New York community (and the country) was on mute. The real truth didn’t become clear until after the five had spent years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. The documentary is about the journey of Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and their families to prove their innocence and to move on with their lives.

This is not to say that there was not support for the teens at the time. There is always some low level of support for these cases but they are often seen as fringe or cuddling thugs. I remember vividly when the jogger case exploded across the national headlines and I expressed my doubts that they boys were guilty. The response was basically here-you-go-again but when you’ve dealt with these kinds of cases for so long, you immediately see the cracks and the contradictions when the cases are presented.

We’ve come a long ways in our awareness of how the criminal justice system works in this country. We’ve seen a wave of exonerations over the last couple of decades and realize that this has to be the tip of the iceberg, that many more are languishing in our prisons who don’t get the lucky break--the interest of organizations or law schools who work on such cases.

Black and brown communities must aggressively fight our internalized oppression that gives way to buckling under the stigma that we are all criminals. We must challenge the negative images of our children in the media with the news shapers as well as with our families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. We must confront police tactics of racial profiling and forced confessions. Finally, we ultimately seek restorative justice for victims and must work for a criminal justice system that seeks the truth, not revenge and perpetrators.

A united and educated community is the firewall to the inherent traps that undermine our children’s development and hence, our own future. This means a sharpened focus on schools and the criminal justice system, a two-headed monster that is eating our kids alive. Our communities cannot afford to stay MIA--Missing In Action.

Note: Jamala’s review on The Central Park 5 can be seen at nickelmustard.com.

BlackCommentator.com EditorialBoard member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organizationfor Black Struggle in St. Louis andthe Black RadicalCongress National Organizer.Additionally, she is an Alston-BannermanFellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Clickhere to contact Ms. Rogers.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Destruction of U.S. Postal Service
Appears to be Going as Planned

First, they said, “let’s privatize just some of the services of the post office.” And they privatized a few functions and, in some others, they set themselves up with “public-private” projects to show that the private sector could “help” the U.S. Postal Service become more efficient and effective…in other words, turn a profit.

At this time, there is a headlong rush to privatize the whole thing and the powers that be are involved and fully supportive, it seems. The members of Congress are on board. Corporate America is on board, without a doubt. Some in academia are on board. And, the press seems to be fully on board. The attitude is that, if the U.S.P.S. cannot turn a profit, it should just fade from sight and the “more efficient” private sector will pick up the slack.

Those in opposition to the closing of thousands of post offices across the nation and a reduction in services at the windows seem to be the workers, those who provide the services, and the American people (at least, those who have not been propagandized by the private entities that are literally drooling to take over mail and parcel delivery). The problem is that a privatized postal service system never will send a first class letter anywhere in the country for 45 cents (scheduled to rise to 46 cents on Jan. 27). In case of privatization, plan to see that number double, or triple, or quadruple. Just pick a multiple and that’s what you’re likely to see.

No one does it better than the U.S.P.S. It is required by law to do that and don’t let the privateers sell you the bill of goods that the Postal Service is a “government monopoly,” and, therefore, not worthy of preserving and improving. Privateers want no part of a delivery system that includes every hamlet and backwater in America. They could not do that job and stay in business, and they know it, yet they are trying to abolish the U.S. Postal Service.

“Privatization” is the watchword of the political right in the U.S. and has been for many decades, and it doesn’t matter that privatization makes no sense in most cases. This time, it’s ideological and nothing will stop the corporations and their right wing think tanks. It’s what we’re seeing in this attempt to hand over a service that taxpayers have been building for more than two centuries. The people have paid for the U.S.P.S. in all its complexities and let us not forget the buildings, some of which will never be duplicated either in their general architecture or in their interior artwork, some of which was done during the years of the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The method chosen to financially debilitate the Postal Service is a masterful one. Back in 2006, Congress passed what is laughably called “The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” (H.R. 6407), which requires the service to “pre-fund” the pensions of its workers 75 years into the future. That means, as one postal union president said, the U.S.P.S. is required to fund the pensions of workers who are not even born yet. The American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers have pointed out that no government agency and no private corporation could stay in business if such a burden were placed on it. If there were no other language in H.R. 6407 than the requirement to pre-fund the pensions, the thrust of the act would be clear: be prepared to fail and to be privatized.

Why would anyone want to cause the Postal Service to fail? First, of course, is the profit motive. If there were no Postal Service, private companies that provide the same kinds of services could charge whatever they wanted, which could be three or four or more times than what the U.S.P.S. charges now for its services. Since the service is such a huge enterprise, it would provide one of the biggest bases of economic activity that any corporation has seen and it makes the most tempting target.

Maybe most important, to many at least: The Postal Service and public work, in general, has been the stepping stone for black Americans and all minorities into well-paying jobs and the middle class. This is especially true for veterans, who have been given special consideration for some of the best-paying jobs in any given community.

One of the reasons for this is that there have been strong trade unions in the Postal Service, even though the entire service is an open shop (workers do not have to join the union or pay dues, but still get the union scale of pay and receive all the benefits for which the union members are paying). Privatization of the service will eliminate strong unions. Every time a function of the service is privatized, there are fewer workers, fewer union members, less money in the paycheck, and less money in the communities (support of all of the small businesses).

A fight-back movement is developing, however, and it is not coming just from the postal workers and their unions. Communities are beginning to understand what is at stake, and they don’t want their local post offices closed. There have been closings announced by the postal hierarchy, most likely at the urging of the privatizers in Congress. Plans announced by the postmaster general call for the closing of some 3,700 post offices and a reduction in staff from the current 550,000 workers, to about 300,000. There are even some estimates that as many as 15,000 of the 32,000 post offices could be closed.

Because of a law passed 43 years ago, the U.S.P.S. has had to be self-sustaining and not require any money from government sources (the taxpayers). That, it has done. That is, until Congress passed the postal-service-killing act that requires funding pensions out to 75 years. The service lost a reported $5.9 billion in 2012, but there is no indication that the “loss” was caused by anything other than the pension requirement (H.R. 6407).

In all of this political hand wringing over the U.S.P.S., there have been few elected officials courageous enough to say in public what is wrong and how it could be fixed. Even fewer have had the spine to stand up and say why this pension mandate law was passed. For at least more than 100 years, since the advent of a corporate culture in America, cries from the political right have been uttered about the “official government monopoly” that is the Postal Service. They don’t mention that in this “monopoly,” every American is entitled to service for the same price, no matter where they live, no matter how remote the ranch or farmhouse.

Private companies never will provide the same service for the same money, because the profit is not there. The founders knew that and Benjamin Franklin, when he insisted on a U.S. Post Office Department, knew that it was the only way for a fledgling country to have broad enough communication among the citizens to have a somewhat effective democracy. He was proven right, and it is the only “business” that is specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

And, while it is true that we, in this hyper-technological era, communicate in other ways, there are many positive attributes for sending things (letters and packages) through the U.S. Postal Service. For many, it is the most secure way to communicate, since hackers have made mincemeat of “security” on the Internet.

Anyone who just wants to send a message to someone, and say it in private, can just go to the Post Office and send it for 45 cents. That’s secure. And that’s a bargain.

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

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

The Arab Democratic Uprisings Two Years Later

A friend recently told me how a relative of theirs was most concerned about developments in Egypt, given the dominance of the right-wing Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. I have heard similar such concerns raised, as conservative Islamists have come to play major roles in post-uprising governments, e.g., Tunisia, Egypt. In some cases, there is an implication in such concerns that it might have been better to have left things as they were with authoritarian regimes in place to block the Islamists.

The Arab democratic uprisings were world-historic, yet their outcome remains uncertain. It is premature to conclude that the rise of the Islamists is necessarily a permanent feature of the politics of these countries. There are, however, certain points to note as we reflect on the results of these uprisings and the road forward.

First, it is fair to say that the so-called Arab Spring represented an accumulation of anti-authoritarian/anti-neo-liberal uprisings. They were not revolutions in the sense of fundamental socio-economic change, but they were popular uprisings that brought down or challenged tyrannical regimes, regimes that had either been client states of the West or, in the case of Syria and Libya, held a more ambiguous international role. In that sense, these uprisings set the stage for the possibilities of something deeper and more long-lasting.

Second, while Tunisia and Egypt carried out largely non-violent uprisings that were successful in bringing down tyrannies, the movement in Bahrain, though quite massive, was successfully divided by the regime using Sunni/Shiite contradictions along with vicious repression. This repression, by the way, was actively supported by Saudi Arabia and the complicity of the USA. In Yemen, the movement stalled and, with the activism of the Al Qaeda affiliate, was not only divided, but disorganized and ignored by the West (except, of course, for the continuous US drone assaults against alleged Al Qaeda targets). In Libya and Syria, as we know, the largely peaceful movements evolved into violent uprisings in the face of active repression by the governments. In the case of Libya, the peaceful uprising was hijacked by NATO, though there were many progressive forces in North Africa who critically supported the NATO intervention due to their hatred of Qaddafi. In Syria, the peaceful uprising now has the feature of a combination of a popular democratic revolt layered with a proxy war (of Iran vs. Saudi Arabia and their Arab/Persian Gulf allies).

Third, organization beats lack of organization. One of the reasons the right-wing Islamists have been able to succeed as well as they have is that they possess organization. It is important, however, to note that a very strange game existed between the right-wing Islamists and the authoritarian regimes. To the extent to which they helped to weaken or crush the political Left (the Sudan being an example of the latter), the Islamists were seen as acceptable allies by these authoritarian governments and their protectors in the USA. When the right-wing Islamists became too audacious, they were then perceived as a threat. In either case, they frequently had a public existence. Forces on the political Left, however, were subject to relentless persecution, weakening their ability to organize.

There is another side to this question of organization, however. In the midst of the massive demonstrations that shook many of these countries, e.g., Tahir Square in Cairo, it was easy for many protestors to believe that organization was not necessarily critical and that the sheer force of the masses would push through a more complete revolutionary process. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The Arab democratic uprisings helped to set in motion popular upsurges in other parts of Africa, in Europe and the United States. However, they have yet to complete their mission. Whether they will do so or whether they will recede like a huge wave returning to the sea, only time will tell. In either case, the people of the Arab World demonstrated that a sensational challenge to the old order and its sponsors in the West could be undertaken. To go further will probably necessitate new social movements and levels of organization that recognize that the process of social transformation goes far beyond cultural and/or religious reaffirmation but must be one that engages the totality of the dispossessed in bringing into being a genuine emancipation.

BlackCommentator.com EditorialBoard memberand Columnist, BillFletcher, Jr.,is aSenior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies,the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum,and the author of “They’reBankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions.He is also the co-author of SolidarityDivided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward SocialJustice, which examines the crisisof organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Was There a Politically Correct Way
For Tarantino to Portray Black Slavery?

2013 is making it difficult to avoid one of America’s greatest sins - slavery. We’ve just marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and a plethora of films, documentaries and TV specials are scheduled to address slavery.

One blockbuster hit that’s playing in cinemas now, and is likely to walk away with several Golden Globes and Oscars, is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

Django Unchained depicts a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who fearlessly treks across the U.S. to find his wife (Kerry Washington) in order to rescue her from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film is classic Tarantino, this time a homage to the spaghetti western with romance and revenge narrative. Tarantino set the story in the most unlikely of places - America’s Deep South before the Civil War in 1858.

Tarantino is known as the “King of Carnage,” and his films’ aestheticized depictions of violence (which he calls “movie violence”) is both cruelly disturbing yet undeniably entertaining. In giving his view of Django Unchained, New York Times film critic, A. O. Scott, wrote, ”A troubling and important movie about slavery and racism...Like Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.”

It is Tarantino’s playfulness, set in the troubling historical environment, that is still unsettling many Americans. Leave it to Tarantino - he’s challenged us to ask a number of difficult questions:

Is it politically incorrect to depict American slavery in a playfully entertaining way?

Is there a politically correct way to depict American slavery?

While some will contest that Tarantino is being, well, Tarantino, and he means no disrespect, others argue that his privilege as a well-respected moneymaking white heterosexual male filmmaker gives him carte blanche to recklessly express his creative juices even if it reinscribes stereotypes that many feel Django does.

But Tarantino pushes his critics back, stating his objective in making Django is to stir a conversation about slavery because America won’t. And he takes his making of Django to heart.

“It’s one thing to write on the page, ‘Cotton field in the background while two white characters are drinking lemonade, 100 slaves picking cotton in the background,’” Tarantino told Nightline. “It’s another thing to plant that cotton and put 100 black folks in slave costumes broiling under the hot sun picking cotton. That can get to your soul a little bit.”

In many African American communities, Tarantino’s film got to their souls, too, and it received mixed reviews from a tepid nod to expressions of outrage. And those outraged by the film feel Django Unchained needs to be locked up, bound, buried if not burned because the film uses the inhumanity of slavery as a backdrop and it dishonors those who have suffered under its reign.

Then there’s the liberal use of the n-word in the film which many will find deplorable. When asked about it, Tarantino told Cynthia McFadden on ABC’s Nightline, “I don’t think anybody is actually going out there saying that we used the word more excessively than it was used in 1858 in Mississippi. And if that’s not the case, then they can shut up.”

But one critic in particular who won’t shut up about Django is renown African American filmmaker, Spike Lee, whose gripes resonate for many and were recorded in the New York Times.

I can’t speak on it ‘cause I’m not gonna’ see it,” Lee said. “The only thing I can say is it’s disrespectful to my ancestors, to see that film.” Days later on Twitter he tweeted, “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

American slavery continues to be a difficult topic to talk about. And it’s avoided at all cost, particularly if not spun to appeal to white audiences.

For example, the Queen of Daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey, tried to tackle the topic with her production of the 1998 film Beloved based on Toni Morrison’s novel by the same name. It was a box office failure. The failure is speculated to be that the film didn’t appeal to white audiences, casting them in a negative light. Some critics contest that the movie was too serious, not entertaining enough, and was mind-numbing to both black and white audiences of all ages. The weekend Beloved opened it was beat out by the horror flick Bride of Chucky.

The 1977 hit television series Roots, based on Alex Haley’s novel by the same name, was an international success, nominated for 36 Emmys and winning nine. It was intentionally written to win over white viewers.

“Familiar television actors like American (sic) actor Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Edward Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley’s novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade,” the Museum of Broadcast Communications reported.

Tarantino’s creative rendering of it, albeit understandably troublesome, sheds a disturbing light on our culture’s ability to willingly sit alone in a dark theater for two plus hours watching an entertaining film about American slavery rather than to voluntarily sit in a lit room face-to-face with each other and talk about it.

American slavery is an American story. And we all have ownership of it.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

From “Entitlements” to Telescreens and

No Principles in Between!

Change does not roll on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

-Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.

Some months ago, I was on the phone discussing with a friend the availability of social programs to those of us over 55 years of age. At some point I brought into the conversation a discussion about people’s perception of these social programs, particularly Social Security and Medicare. My friend responded without hesitation: “we’ve paid into Social Security and Medicare! We worked!”

I worked since my first summer in high school. Both of us have worked. We have had to work. Neither of us married, for one. My friend worked for the government as a social worker and later, past retirement age, she worked for a major producer of computers. As workers, we have paid into Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, and even into the education of other people’s children. Neither one of us had children.

My local neighborhood store claims to offer three “free” items every week: a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk, or liquid detergent. But “free”? No! A clerk told me to see how many points I have accumulated to see if I could get something free. But each item will cost you “points.” That is, you must have a store key card that is scanned every time you make a purchase, and each time, you receive so many points. I believe a customer receives 5 points for every dollar spent at the store. If you then have 1500 points, you can take home the gallon of milk or the liquid detergent or for 600 points, the dozen eggs. But each item is not “free.” You paid for it!

I am not entitled to the eggs, milk or detergent otherwise.

Here in Wisconsin, customers of a particular gas and electric company also pay into a program that allows families, seniors, anyone to request help (once a year) with their bill. A neighbor told me about the program to help with paying a gas and electric bill. What she did not say, because she may not have known, is that this “help” was paid for by the customer seeking help. In other words, as I was told by the intake specialist that day I sat across from him, “you already paid into this program.” In other words, the “help” is not a give away. “Go home and take a look at your bill. Each month you pay into this program.”

Everyone understands and has no objection to the neighborhood store’s “free” products campaign or with the gas and electric company’s “energy service” program. But Social Security - well that is different!

Most who believe this “free” give away program or any similar such program, unfortunately are the same people who celebrate the holidays by spending big at the malls and the Wal-Marts of our world. They are the same people - referred to affectionately by politicians as the American people - who hear from the U.S. government that (as a “beloved” people) they are entitled to a system of labor which delivers to them things relatively “free” from the drudgery of production. That American jobs lost to this “free” system of cheap labor and cheap gadgets and clothing means high unemployment rates in the U.S. is acknowledged but, acknowledged as an inevitable good for the accumulation of U.S. wealth and U.S. status and power in the world. Bangladeshis women, for example, work and pay into this entitlement program for Americans to experience the pleasures of being consumers!

Regardless of the efforts of fellow Americans to educate the Americans people about the banking industry’s and corporate war profiteers’ sense of entitlement to government (taxpayers’ funds), the 99% still stash what little they have at these same banking institutions who, in turn, charge and surcharge with impunity, and sons and daughters, husbands and wives in uniform sacrifice their limbs, their mental health, and even their lives for the “safety” and “freedom” of the American people.

Along with troops of foot soldiers and aircraft pilots, telecommunication companies, weapons manufacturers, oil and a host of other corporations are entitled to assist the government in maintaining the safety of the American people from “terrorists.”

Corporations are entitled to personhood and to the right to free speech!

So it is no wonder that there is a persistent effort by the ruling class to “cut” “entitlements,” that is, social programs. What the American people seem not to hear is the boardroom chant: Only we, the 1%, are entitled to entitlements, and social programs do not make an Empire invisible!

Cut Social Security!

First, Social Security is not an entitlement! As union activist and writer, Roland Sheppard points out in his editorial titled, “The Big ‘Entitlements’ Swindle: Workers Wages Are Not ‘Entitlements’ - We Earn Our Benefits!”:

An Entitlement is the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something. The feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges) or a government ‘entitlement’ program that guarantees and provides benefits to a particular group. (“The Big ‘Entitlements’ Swindle”) [1]

The reality that workers paid into these social programs was conveniently “missing from the whole ‘financial cliff’ debate,” replaced with the fantasy that Social Security is something given away, undeservingly, “free” to the American people! “If one does not work, money is not deducted from one’s pay to purchase Social Security or Medicare Benefits… Most workers pay more into these funds than they will ever live to collect.”

In the 1930s and 40s, continues Sheppard, “the movements lead by labor and the Socialist Party brought forth the current social programs, which the media and the government now call ‘entitlements.’” What the media and the government calls “entitlements” “were won by economic and political action independent of the ruling class.”

But, in order for the 1% to sustain the capitalist system, it needs to reverse the economic and political gains of the working class.

Sheppard continues: ever since 1968, “when LBJ and the Democratic Party” began appropriating social security funds to “balance the budget during the Vietnam War,” the Federal government has been “systematically ‘borrowing,’ (plundering), our money to fund the wars in order to establish a ‘New World Order.’” Furthermore, Sheppard writes, “what they took from these social funds is what they call ‘our’ debt. But it is owed us.”

What is the inconvenient truth? Sheppard writes, the Federal government “owes $4.7 trillion,” currently, to Social Security, Medicare, and other such funds, according to Federal Debt Basics [2] “In reality it is owed to us!”

How much sense does it make to turn over 4.7 trillion to the American people when there is still a world to conquer!

Conquer the American people and you conquer the world! The blitz is on! The government (relying on the corporate propaganda machinery) must start with the workers and retirees themselves! Workers’ wages paid into Social Security must be understood by the consumers of doublespeak, as an entitlement.

Entitlement, Entitlement, Social Security, Entitlement…

Repeat something often enough, Bush II said, and the American people will learn a new reality.

If the 99% are the willing, then democracy and freedom will flow for and among the haves. At the bidding of the Haves, the Have-nots, on the other hand, will continue to assist in the annihilation of each other.

In this case, the Have-nots are those lacking in principles.

Former boxer George Foreman once said of Mohammed Ali that Ali was a man who “found something to fight for other than money and championship belts” (Facing Ali, film, 2009). Ali found what has been lost among the American people in the last 40 years because, similar to their mentors and idols, the 1%, the American people have grown comfortable pursuing the values of the Market.

Take away wage-based benefits; take away the right to protest the take away. It is the practical outcome, since, as Roland Sheppard notes, the ruling class mean to “plunder and end these funds,” earned by and due to the American people in order to maintain capitalism.

Why do the American people, in turn, support the military endeavors when a little more than 50 percent of the budget is turned over to the Pentagon to operate invasions, occupations, regime change, surveillance and spying, and rendition programs? Why is it that the American people do not ask why it is necessary for the 1% to make its profits from the suffering and death of others - and not just people in foreign lands but also those of us citizens, the “beloved” American people, who are left with no option but to walk away from medical treatment or pull the plug on a loved one or live on the streets or in cars, eat less, and expect to educate their young adult through loans for a college education? The American people do not ask why, in a democratic society, “exclusive” schools for children living in “exclusive” neighborhoods leaves most public school children attending schools comparable to those in “underdeveloped” countries.

The capitalist system, the system most Americans want to maintain, requires its participants, both the 1% and the rest, to link definitions of democracy and freedom to the values of the market. The American people are no less in love with the system of relations (humans to humans, humans to nature and things) than are those of the ruling class in love with the dehumanizing sacrificial mechanism of capitalism. It does not help the institutionalization of capitalism if the 1% and the American people reject the value of the dollar and pursue the marginalized principles necessary to resist the tyranny of a corporate world order.

The ideas of fairness, equality, love and peace, for example, are corrupted by the logic of the Market. Competition, greed and accumulation of capital, materials, land, and labor are held close to the heart of those in the 1%. The American people may complain, but by their actions or inaction they are willing to accept the logic of the Market.

A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

If holding close to the heart the principles of fairness and equality, democracy and freedom seem as outdated as a floppy disk, if individual activists such as WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or whistleblower, Bradley Manning, or Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and Assata Shakur or Malcolm X are vilified, if communities of young and old, communities of all races, communities of working class and poor and the middle class come together as the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the government, under the leadership of a “Black” president, Barack Obama, wants to label these activists “terrorists,” then it must be understood that what is under attack is ideas that jeopardize the establishment of a tyrannical State.

In U.S. history, it has never been peaceful for the poor and working class to resist the corruption of the ruling class! It will be unlawful to protest against those who label Social Security and Medicare “entitlements!”

Principles! The Haves do not need it when they have the Have-nots without it!

The narratives of something “free”, an “entitlement,” go hand in hand with the practice of a variant of McCarthyism more sinister and lethal than the original campaign. If you believe Social Security is an entitlement, then you will believe the U.S. government is entitled to expand its surveillance program and deliver to your living room, a Big Brother Telescreen - a complementary gift from your favorite corporation!

BlackCommentator.comEditorial Board member and Columnist, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has aDoctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Political Cartoon

South African Farm Workers Strike

By Zapiro, South Africa

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

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- syndication for regular use in a newspaper or magazine

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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.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Make Us Do Right

By Jill M. Humphries, PhD

and

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

“She’s not qualified. Anyone who goes on national television and in defiance of the facts, five days later - We’re all responsible for what we say and what we do. I’m responsible to my voters. She’s responsible to the Senate of the United States. We have our responsibility for advice and consent.”

(John McCain, CBS “This Morning”)

Since the above quote, Susan Rice has removed her name from consideration to become the next Secretary of State; however, we feel discussing this issue within the Black community remains relevant to understanding foreign policy establishment politics. It is no surprise that African Americans interpreted the GOP’s opposition to Dr. Susan Rice’s possible nomination to be the next Secretary of State and in particular Senator McCain’s rhetorical comments about her to be both racist and sexist. Indeed they are. After all Jim Crow segregation, the model for South Africa's apartheid system, only ended 47-years ago. Likewise the Department of State, as an elite white male dominated institution (founded in 1789) only hired its first African American male Foreign Service officer (Clifton R. Wharton) in 1925. Subsequently, only two white and one black woman (Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hilary Clinton) and one black male (Colin Powell) have held the position of Secretary of State.

We contend that African Americans need to continue to challenge race and gender discrimination within US institutions. However, we question the recent attempts by many Black political female and male leaders and well-meaning citizens to rally support on behalf of Dr. Susan Rice’s nomination for Secretary of State because of the racist and sexist ways she has been criticized, without also calling for a critical review of her foreign policy record particularly in terms of the policies of the USA towards countries around the world, including those with 100’s of millions of Black people. We do not believe that our Black political leadership intentionally used the historical memory of racism and sexism for us to uncritically support Dr. Rice. Unlike the GOP, who also used racism and sexism to attack Dr. Rice, both groups rely on a racial and gender assumptive logic but for different purposes.

The unintended consequence is that both GOP critics and many Rice supporters rely on an uninformed Black populace to either “support” someone/something for superficial reasons or to not oppose someone/something even when it would be in the interests of the African American community and global Diaspora. As a consequence this essay is an attempt to contribute to the conversation by situating this controversy in a larger context about elite networks in the emerging multicultural foreign policy establishment of the USA, and, also US-Africa foreign policy.

First, this essay is not about Dr. Rice’s ability or qualifications in order to assume the position of Secretary of State or the attacks on her pedigree. As the child of Black Washingtonian professionals, a high school valedictorian, a Stanford and Oxford graduate, a Rhode Scholar and recipient of numerous fellowships, her qualifications are beyond question. To this, of course, one can add her stellar professional career as a foreign policy-aide to Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, National Security Council director of international organizations and peacekeeping, as well as having been the youngest person to be assigned as Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, and current UN ambassador. Rather, we argue that African American support for her nomination for Secretary of State should be based on a principled position and a review of her Africa policy record in the context of US and the Obama administration’s foreign policy objectives. This is the context in which we examine the crisis over Dr. Susan Rice’s nomination as the next Secretary of State.

Elite Social Networks and Foreign Policy Establishment Institutions

Susan Rice is one example of the new African American foreign policy civil servant formation that makes up the emerging multicultural foreign policy establishment. Despite the decline in institutional barriers for African American advancement in the foreign policy arena it is quite uncommon for Blacks to access the highest levels of power in US institutions without support and access of elite white social actors, networks, and institutions. This raises a set of interesting questions not just about Dr. Rice but about who has access to elite social networks for career advancement; the need to demonstrate ideological alignment; how elite social networks undermine democratic principles of meritocracy; and accountability to civil society actors.

The Korbel-Albright Family Network. It is no surprise that both Condoleezza and Susan Rice speak about their family ties with the Korbel-Albright family. In the case of Condoleezza Rice, Josef Korbel, Madeleine Albright’s father and a former Czechoslovakian Republic diplomat, was Condoleezza Rice’s professor at the School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She later switched her allegiance to the Republican Party via a similar political network. On the other hand, Madeleine Albright is Susan Rice’s godmother and Rice is the former childhood classmate of Madeleine Albright’s daughter. It’s fair to say that having a family relationship with the Korbel-Albright family opens doors. These invisible elite social networks, regardless of political allegiance, provide a way to understand the rise of African Americans such as Susan Rice and Condoleezza Rice within the foreign policy establishment. For without the assistance and support of white gatekeepers and a demonstrated willingness to align their ideology with them to advance US interest they would be less likely if ever to gain access to the highest bastions of power on merit alone.

So what is the US interest? The US consensus on African policy regardless of political party is to maintain geo-strategic dominance, access to strategic minerals and resources, and more recently the construction of Africa as the new theater for the so-called war-on-terror. In this regard, Dr. Rice would make an excellent Secretary of State for she has sought to protect US interests in Africa by simply implementing the established paradigm. The recent criticisms of Dr. Rice’s Africa policy record concerning her close relationships with several African authoritarian leaders, her attempt to suppress the UN Congo report, pro war attitudes, and, separately, her family's investments in the Keystone XL pipeline are all a reminder that we do not live in a post-racial society. In this sense, it appears that Dr. Rice has behaved no differently than some of her white counterparts who have used their government positions to pursue business relationships for personal gain and to influence foreign policy on behalf of their patrons, even if they are authoritarian leaders.

The most legitimate criticisms come from Black progressive voices and African social justice advocates who have consistently critiqued US policy toward Africa regardless of the political party in power in Washington. Ethiopian social justice advocates have spoken out against the appointment of Dr. Rice as Secretary of State precisely as a result of her relationship with the former Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi. While Dr. Rice is not the only government official who may have benefited from personal ties with authoritarian leaders, the more important question is whether this is the type of model we want to follow? And how does this damage our ability to build relationships across Black ethnic and African Diaspora communities and other progressive groups and movements based on mutual interests, by supporting the nomination of Rice whose record suggests she has always only worked for the interests of the USA as defined by the elites of the USA?

The Black Foreign Policy Consensus. The more important question for the Black community is whether the Civil Rights Movement was only about abolishing Jim Crow in order to provide equal opportunity and access for Black Americans to behave in the same manner as their white counterparts in abusing their relationship with the citizenry and global community? Or more importantly, was it to articulate and advocate for an alternative collective vision based on human rights, anti-racism, political and civil rights, democracy, anti-colonialism, and social and economic justice?

We believe that the current Black foreign policy establishment represents a disjuncture with this history. Historically, many African American Department of State and Foreign Service officers who came of age under the oppressive Jim Crow era had organic connections to the Black community and saw themselves as an extension of the civil rights movement championing equal rights and justice in the US and also advancing a more humane foreign policy abroad. Unlike their predecessors, we can view the rise of Dr. Rice as a new African American foreign policy formation that is more integrated into America’s elite ruling class, but that is also more disconnected from progressive African American and Diaspora civil society actors. This disconnect is ironic in the sense that it was the struggles and sacrifices of progressive African American and Diaspora civil society actors, which made it possible for such African Americans with the right “pedigrees and thinking” to gain access to the career path opportunities associated with America’s elite ruling class.

As a result of the racist and sexist manner in which the debate over the possible appointment of Susan Rice as Secretary of State was handled, it became very difficult to hold a sober exchange on the policy issues at stake. Rather than an examination of Susan Rice-the-person, we needed to look at her candidacy in the context of the objectives of US foreign policy. While Susan Rice is eminently qualified for the position, we in Black America needed to be challenging her policy prescriptions and orientations that, in point of fact, put her at odds with the history of the Black Freedom Movement and its objectives, both domestic and international. When we are silent about such matters, we can objectively become complicit in the crimes that are committed around the world in our name, regardless of our intentions.

For more about this topic, read Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice Foreign Policy, Race, and the New American Century by Clarence Lusane. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Jill M. Humphries, is an educator and researcher on Africana populations and has served as an expert witness on African political asylum sexual minority cases. Click here to contact Ms. Humphries.

BlackCommentator.com EditorialBoard memberand Columnist, BillFletcher, Jr.,is aSenior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies,the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum,and the author of “They’reBankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions.He is also the co-author of SolidarityDivided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward SocialJustice, which examines the crisisof organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

The Debt Owed to Haiti

By Nia Imara, PhD

Three years after the unprecedented earthquake in Haiti that extinguished at least 300,000 lives and upended millions more, the world is asking the same questions that were posed six months, one year, and two years after January 12, 2010. Why, after three years, is there so little evidence of reconstruction? Hundreds of thousands of homes and more than one thousand schools were destroyed on January 12, 2010; given that the world pledged nearly $10 billion in aid, why has there been hardly any construction of permanent housing or new schools? Three years later, why do more than 350,000 Haitians remain homeless, living in tent camps, while foreign companies are opening new, multimillion-dollar, luxury hotels?

The simple answer to these questions is twofold. Amongst those with the power and resources to effect change in Haiti, there is not the will to rebuild the country in a genuinely democratic and inclusive fashion. Secondly, efforts to bring about an authentic reconstruction will be stunted, as long as Haiti - ruled by a government not chosen by the people - continues to be under military occupation.

A recent report in the New York Times gives an account of the money contributed by the world to assist the earthquake victims and to help rebuild Haiti and, in doing so, provides a rather mild criticism of the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) there.[1] As estimated by the Times, of $7.5 billion in aid that has thus far been disbursed, half has gone to temporary relief aid, including temporary shelters (i.e., tents), clinics, schools, and emergency food relief. Of the remaining half, a small fraction has been allotted for actual reconstruction.

Most earthquake survivors, however, have yet to benefit from this aid in any meaningful or lasting way. The majority of money has gone to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors, for whom the earthquake has proved to be tremendously profitable. When these groups spend their collected money, a significant percentage is invariably sucked into administrative costs before it ever reaches the Haitians for whom it was ostensibly intended. Oxfam, for instance, has spent more than one third of its $96 million budget (over a two year period) on management costs. Additionally, many Haitians have expressed outrage at how such NGOs and private contractors have driven up the cost of living since the earthquake: while their employees rent expensive apartments, drive around in brand new cars, and shop at grocery stores that most Haitians cannot afford, a Haitian family in Port-Au-Prince is considered lucky if it can have at least one meal a day.

A report by the Center for Global Development corroborates the assessment of the New York Times that the reconstruction of Haiti’s infrastructure has been lethargic, largely because the recipients of aid money have, more often than not, been non-Haitian groups that have not prioritized actual reconstruction.[2] The Center for Global Development report, less conservative than the Times estimate, discloses that $9.04 billion in aid has been disbursed since 2010, and that the majority has gone back to the donors, foreign NGOs, private contractors, and the United Nations.

The Lack of Will

For all the data provided in the New York Times and the Center for Global Development reports, they ultimately miss the fundamental reasons for why so little has improved in Haiti since the quake. In her Times article, Deborah Sontag attributes the virtual lack of reconstruction to the immensity of the undertaking; to the over-ambitiousness of donors and aid organizations; to the “weakness and volatility” of the Haitian government. She reports on how millions of dollars have been siphoned by planning meetings that never produce tangible results, and how the handful of projects that were finally initiated - such as the American-subsidized construction of 750 houses in Caracol - were abandoned even before half-complete.

But to describe the reconstruction efforts of foreign organizations and the Haitian government as ambitious and “idealistic” must seem absurd to the homeless of Port-Au-Prince who have watched luxury hotels sprout up on the hills of Petionville. This past December, after major setbacks three years ago, the Royal Oasis Hotel opened its doors onto 128 rooms that cost more per night than most Haitians make in a year. The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund invested $2 million in the hotel, which - though its construction began before the 2010 earthquake - reveals how expeditiously progress and profits can be attained in Haiti, if only there is the will. Best Western Premier is also scheduled to open a new hotel in Petionville, and the International Red Cross is said to be considering the building of a hotel on $10.5 million worth of land it purchased with donations raised for quake recovery. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times article, the same Red Cross is sitting on more than $500 million in donations.

What Sontag refers to as the “weakness and volatility” of the Haitian government, a great many Haitians see as outright deceit and illegitimacy. In September, October, and November 2012, Haitians throughout the country staged demonstrations to protest the repressive, corrupt administration of President Michel Martelly, who ascended to power a year after the quake in spite of fraudulent elections. Dominican journalist Nuria Piera exposed Martelly for accepting $2.6 million in bribes since the first round of presidential elections in 2010. And Haitian Senator Moise Jean-Charles recently reproached him for getting a $20,000 per diem - paid by the Haitian government - on his frequent trips abroad. As a solution to the reconstruction stalemate, the Center for Global Development report recommends that donors be more supportive of the needs and priorities of the Haitian government. But similar to the foreign donors and organizations that have attempted to reconstruct Haiti without seeking much input from Haitians themselves, these recommendations fail to see that the priorities of Martelly and his supporters have never been those of the majority of the Haitian people.

Fox Guarding the Henhouse

On each anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, the U.S. media have remarked on the slow progress of reconstruction. They have generally attributed America and the world’s failure to live up to their promises to two interrelated causes: the dysfunction of the Haitian government and the obstacles met when trying to work with Haitian leadership. But this perspective misleadingly presumes that the government, under Michel Martelly, has legitimacy. This point of view ignores the fact that the current government was not democratically elected, since the most popular political party, Lavalas, was banned from participating in the last several elections. More fundamentally, it ignores the reality that Haiti is under a destructive, military occupation that is maintained by some of the very parties who claim to want to rebuild Haiti.

It seems absurd that those responsible for undermining Haiti’s democracy and supporting repressive regimes - the Duvaliers, Martelly - should later rally to Haiti’s cause. It is common knowledge in Haiti that the United States, France, and Canada backed the February 2004 coup d’état in which then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile; without these nations’ financial and military support, the kidnapping/coup and subsequent occupation would not have been possible.

Michel Martelly’s priorities are wholly opposed to those of most Haitians. Since his inauguration in March 2011, the public has consistently called for his resignation. In giving its support to Martelly, it would appear that the Obama administration has implicitly threw its weight behind his repressive policies - in the form of arbitrary arrests and political persecution; his paramilitary activities, his laundering of national resources; his designs to change Haiti’s constitution; and the forced evictions he authorized after the earthquake.

Who Owes Whom?

In February 2010, finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations met and agreed to cancel Haiti’s bilateral debt. The exact amount that was forgiven was not reported, but at the time Haiti’s debt was estimated at $1.9 billion, $1.2 billion of which was supposedly canceled by the G7 the previous June.

Given that the earthquake damage was estimated at nearly $8 billion - which surpassed Haiti’s gross domestic product - the debt cancellation was praised by some who noted the obvious: the Haitian people could now free up more of their limited resources for rebuilding. But if one understands the history of Haiti’s exploitation by some of these very same G7 nations - namely, France, the US, and Canada - one will see that their “forgiveness” came too little, too late. For this sort of forgiveness seems rather like a thief throwing a few coins to the victim he already robbed.

Twenty-one years after the Haitian Revolutionary War ended, France demanded that its former colony pay 150 million gold francs as compensation for its losses, which included human “property.” In order to make the payment - valued at $21.7 in 2002 - Haiti had to take out a number of loans from French and American banks, and her economy, infrastructure, and educational system suffered.

Why didn’t the G7 nations take this debt into consideration at their February 2010 meeting? The only alternatives are to condone or condemn France’s crime against Haiti.

Why didn’t the G7 nations consider that most of Haiti’s recent “debt” was incurred prior to the first democratic elections in 1990? Loans that Haiti received during this period fed and fattened the repressive Duvalier dictatorship, including the death squads that murdered tens of thousands of people.

Today, then, the question ought not be how much debt the world superpowers condescend to forgive Haiti, nor even how many millions they promise for earthquake relief. Genuine rebuilding must take as its premise that the Haitian people are due a justice at least 200-years-old. Their claims for justice are both legally and morally sound and have been ignored for far too long.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Nia Imara, PhD, is a member of Haiti Action Committee. www.haitisolidarity.net. Click here to contact Dr. Imara.

[1] Deborah Sontag, “Rebuilding in Haiti Lags After Billions in Post-Quake Aid,” (December 23, 2012), New York Times

[2] Julie Walz, “Haiti: Three Years After the Quake and Not Much Has Changed,” (December 11, 2012), Center for Global Development.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

When Government is the Bad Guys

I looked upon the recent death of Aaron Swartz. He was the modern-day, internet-saving crusader, who at age 14, co-developed the Really Simple Syndication or RSS web protocol, the key component of much of the web’s entire publishing infrastructure. His untimely death occurred just weeks before he was to go on trial for using computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT - to download millions of copyrighted academic articles from JSTOR, a subscription database of scholarly papers.

Question here is, should he have been pursued like a natural-born killer for making information accessible to fellow Americans - and humanity worldwide? I can identify with Swartz. I was once pursued by the American government like hound dogs after a runaway slave for a bogusly minute offense. Like Swartz, I saw the overkill of U.S. prosecutors trying to “make a statement” by making an example of Americans who dare challenge a corrupt system.

A little more about Swartz: By the time he was 19, he had co-founded a company that would merge with Reddit, now one of the world’s most popular sites. He also helped develop the architecture for the Creative Commons licensing system and built the online architecture for the Open Library. Swartz committed suicide last Friday. At just 26 years old, he hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. The pressure was simply too much for him. I, on the other hand, chose to stay and fight.

The offended company, JSTOR, declined to press charges, but prosecutors moved the case forward. Their autocratic, unchallenged power ruins the lives of thousands of Americans each year, yet, we fail to hold them accountable. Swartz faced up to 35 years in prison and a million dollars in fines for allegedly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Who wants live under that kind of pressure? I was facing 42 years if convicted on the government’s trumped-up drug and gun conspiracy charges, and nothing right could stop them…not even the law.

I have always believed government is necessary in an order-modeled society. It protects; it serves, and yet, it can turn on you like a rattlesnake. When you least suspect your interests are at risk of being eviscerated, Government eviscerates your interests.

Swartz’s family criticized federal prosecutors pursuing the case against him, and rightfully so. “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy,” said his family. “It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death,” they said. MIT’s president Rafael Reif said the university will conduct an internal investigation into the school’s role in Swartz’s death. But you know what internal investigations net…

I know the pressure that Swartz felt. The government versus you. The whole government! No lawyer wants to touch your case. You get appointed a public defender that virtually works for the government. He/she visits you sporadically and only brings you plea deals and not a plan of defense. It’s really just you versus The Government. That behemoth has the face of some prosecutor that you know will be sitting in the US Congress someday in the future - because of your conviction.

The difference between Swartz and me is that he was rich. He had resources and family support. Most of us who are faced with like circumstances don’t have those resources at our disposal. Much like Swartz, I was an activist at the time, fighting against a police department awash in killing Black men in a poor community. I hosted a television show at the time, focused on the conduct of the police. I rallied the poor, Black community to challenge the police Chief and his minions in their era of murder. Aaron Swartz was a vehement activist for an open Internet. Just last year, he helped organize a grassroots movement to defeat a U.S. House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA, and a Senate bill called PIPA, the PROTECT IP Act. The entrenched interests didn’t like that.

Though my instance was a local one, the effects were the same. Approaching trial, I refused to go down without a fight. So, after I saw the government was cheating me out of a just prosecutorial process, I went on the run. July 18, 2004, I left my pre-trial detention at a halfway house - a block away from my home - and tried to get my side of the story out. The government hunted me down like a dog, finally capturing me 500 miles away in Detroit.

Though my Knoxville prosecution didn’t end in suicide, I lost more than just my hair. I lost friends, supporters and the remnants of my belief in the American form of justice. I was later acquitted of each of the government’s trumped-up claims against me, but I didn’t escape unscathed. A piece of me was lost. My spirit wasn’t broken, but the movement I worked so hard to galvanize, quickly disbanded upon my indictment. My community lost a leader. My community lost hope and change.

The government accomplished their objective by piling charges upon me, but no one was ever charged with prosecutorial misconduct. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with me that Knoxville’s prosecutors were wrong, but no one was reprimanded, nor fired. I was not compensated. I don’t know if Swartz would’ve been acquitted, but I understand his not wanting to find out. No man embraces bondage. You never know what you’ll get - no matter how right you may be - when the government is the bad guys.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, is the former ExecutiveDirector ofthe workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the on-linecommentary, “The Other Side of the Tracks.” He is the host of theinternet-basedtalk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Is Opposing Obama's 'Kill List' & DroneMissile Murders
Being Anti-Black?

“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”

-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”

- Frantz Fanon

It is perhaps the irony of ironies in this 21st century that the United States power structure has deliberately re-installed as its imperial leader a man of so-called 'color' who, under the auspices of his very own extrajudicial and infamous 'kill list,' has appointed unto himself the right to murder whomever he chooses in this nation or anywhere else in the world. This is of course Barack Obama, the same person who unceasingly has bombed sovereign nations in Africa, South Asia, and the 'Middle East,' murdering women, children, and men with his drone missiles of destruction and terror. In flagrant violation of international law, common decency, and the U.S. Constitution itself, Obama has proven to be the wily, smiling murderer - reigning down instability, destruction, and death upon huge segments of the people of Mother Earth. Moreover, the increased and sustained violence by the U.S. corporate-owned government, against civil liberties and social and economic justice - right here inside the United States - is at an all time high, with far too few people paying heed. Keep in mind that Barack Obama continues to be the chief executive of this corporate-owned U.S. government.

Nevertheless, those who legitimately, urgently, and strongly criticize the reprehensible, treacherous, and murderous actions by Barack Obama against the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation and world are often fallaciously labeled as being anti-Black. This of course is by systemic design and is a well perpetuated, ridiculous and dangerous myth; but it has thus far been an effective Teflon-tactic-of-diversion, and is precisely why it is so important to the U.S. corporate elite to keep Obama in power in order to do their (sometimes overt though usually covert) bidding. Sadly, a significant portion of Black America, and of the U.S. populace-at-large, have been thoroughly bamboozled by Obama and the corporate-owned 'news' media that overwhelmingly supports him. Thus, it is no wonder that those who legitimately, urgently, and strongly criticize Barack Obama are often described as being anti-Black; when in fact it is none other than Barack Obama himself whose repeated actions have shown him to be not only anti-Black but also anti-Humanity as a whole.

There is absolutely no time to be concerned about being dubbed as anti-Black due to one's legitimate opposition to Barack Obama and/or his corporate-owned Democrat and Republican accomplices. Black America is a part of humanity, and it is in fact our collective humanity as Black Americans that is at stake. In the political, historical, and social context of struggle in the United States – being truly Black has always demanded that we side with humanity. Barack Obama and his corporate/military masters are about distorting and destroying our political consciousness as an integral part of the human family. We must not allow this to happen.

In this context then, it is the very zenith of principles, consciousness, necessity, and of being Black to stalwartly oppose Barack Obama's 'Kill List,' drone missile murders, and his other utterly reprehensible actions against everyday ordinary people both at home and abroad. If you are accused of being anti-Black because of your legitimate opposition to the policies of Obama – hold your head high and intensify in the quest on behalf of not only Black America, but also on behalf of everyday people of all hues and shades of the entire collective human family. This applies to all people irrespective of color. As Malcolm X clearly stated, humanity is engaged in a “clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation.”

Notwithstanding his bait-and-switch tactics and his obfuscated rhetoric, Barack Obama has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that he is on the side of the corporate elite, i. e. “those who want to continue the system of exploitation.” Stop being misled by the systemic gatekeepers. Wake up! Regain your senses, your conscience, and your consciousness – and in so doing regain your humanity! Do this for yourselves, the human family, and for our precious Mother Earth.

Is opposing Obama's 'Kill List,' and drone missile murders, etc. being anti-Black? Absolutely not! To the contrary, supporting Obama's hypocrisy and murders is the height of insanity, and is being anti-Black and anti the human family as a whole. Hold your heads high and intensify in the struggle!

Remember. 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.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Dr. Woodson and Studying

Our History Throughout the Year

The African Centered Education Movement has brought a new meaning to the annual African American History Month celebrations that have become so popular. That new meaning of African Centered thought, as defined by Dr. Wade Nobles, “is nothing more than a term categorizing a quality of thought and practice which is rooted in the cultural image and interest of African people and which represents and reflects the life experiences, history and traditions of African people as the center of analyses.” With this definition it is clear that we must study the liberation of African people.

Dr. Nobles further states that African Centered thought is, “the intellectual and philosophical foundations upon which African people should create their own scientific criterion for authenticating human reality.”

Through the African Centered Education Movement, African American History Month has now become the catalyst for the intense study of Africa and the history of African people throughout the world 365 days a year. We must pay particular attention in our studies to the history of the Reparations Movement.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who founded in February of 1926 what at that time was called “Negro History Week,” would indeed be inspired by the continuing discussion and debate over the infusion of the contributions of African people in all subjects. Dr. Woodson was deeply concerned that the contributions of African people to this society and the world were not given their proper recognition.

Dr. Woodson’s great book The Miseducation of the Negro, written in 1933, described in the first chapter titled, “The Seat of the Trouble,” the essence of what the African Centered Curriculum Movement is battling against today - 80 years later.

As Dr. Woodson explained, “Of the hundreds of Negro high schools recently examined (1933) by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, and in most of the Negro colleges and universities where the Negro is thought of, the race is studied only as a problem or dismissed as of little consequence.”

Continuing on, Dr. Woodson gave an example of, “an officer of a Negro university, thinking that an additional course on the Negro should be given there, called upon a Negro Doctor of Philosophy on the faculty to offer such work. He promptly informed the officer that he knew nothing about the Negro. He did not go to school to waste his time that way. He went to be educated in a system which dismissed the Negro as a nonentity.”

Obviously, since the writing of this great book, we have come a long way in our battle against challenging the white supremacy foundation of the American public school curriculum. However, we still have a long way to go!

The Black Movement of the 1960s gave us an impetus to reexamine our history and its impact on this country and the world. This movement brought on renewed interest, on the part of our people, to study our history.

We moved from the use of the term “Negro” in referring to ourselves and began to use “Black” as the more appropriate way to describe who we are. We went from Black History Week to Black History Month. In fact, some of us began to refer to the month of February as Black Liberation Month.

It was through the movement of the 1960s, particularly the Black Power Phase that we began to re-identify with our homeland - Africa, and the interconnection of African people throughout the world.

The Black student movement of the 1960s sparked demands for courses in Black Studies that lead the famous strike at San Francisco State University.

After a long battle with the administration at the university, the students finally won a victory for the first Black Studies Program to be established at an American college or university. As a result, a movement for Black Studies erupted all over America and stimulated at the elementary and secondary levels demands from courses dealing with Black History.

As we have come full circle today in our general acceptance of being African People, whose ancestral homeland is Africa. We are also beginning to recognize that African American History Month celebrations and activities are great, but the contributions of African people must be emphasized throughout the year.

There is no question that the setting aside of the month of February, as an extension of Dr. Woodson’s original idea of “Negro History Week” is something that we need to continue to support and institutionalize vigorously.

However, we are quite clear that the real meaning of African American History Month in this era, is to take the spirit from all the celebrations, great speeches, great entertainment and festive events to establish as a major agenda item in our movement, the serious study of the contributions of African people 365 days a year.

The basis of the current African Centered Education Movement is to take control of the education of African people in America as we struggle to insure that the truth is taught in all institutions, in our communities and particularly in our schools.

We must take the spirit of African American History Month to another level. Our history must be studied throughout the year!

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is theNational Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Jan 17, 2013 -Issue 500

Art
Twilight
By Kadir Nelson, San Diego CA

36" x 36"
oil on canvas
Kadir Nelson is anaward-winning American artist whose works have been exhibited in majornational and international publications, institutions, art galleries,and museums. Many of Nelson’s paintings are in the collections ofnotable institutions and public collections, including the U.S. Houseof Representatives and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as well asin the private collections of actors, professional athletes, andmusicians.

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

Click here to contact Mr. Nelson