Tag: Vietnam

Third-party presidential candidate George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, was in Omaha in March 1968 to qualify his American party in Nebraska. Wallace had arrived in Omaha on Sunday, the day before, and held an angry news conference to provoke a large turnout at his rally.

The people of the world need to know that the corporate media is fabricating a massif of lies concerning the on-the-ground facts of the illegal war against the people of Libya by American and NATO forces. News reports represent Qaddafi as a hated and unpopular leader. Yet he has struggled harder than any Western leader to champion the rights of the poor and abolish racism against Black people. I wish the world could see the universal support of the young people for their government.

On Thursday, June 2, 2011, came word that former Black Panther leader, Geronimo ji-Jaga (née Elmer G. Pratt) died in exile in Tanzania.

Political activists around the country are still absorbing the news of Geronimo ji Jaga’s death. His commitment, humility, clear thinking as well as his sense of both the longevity and continuity of the Black Freedom Movement in the U.S. all stood out to those who knew him.

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), born 86 years ago on May 19, 1925, was loved by the oppressed and hated by the oppressors. Our “Black Shining Prince,” in the words of Ossie Davis, aimed to “use whatever means necessary to bring about a society in which the 22 million Afro-Americans are recognized and respected as human beings.” His influence is immeasurable - from music to foreign policy to religion. Today Islam, followed then by very few, is the second largest religion in the United States and Canada.

It is a measure of how powerful the U.S. military is – and how poor the media is – that the nation wages war against peoples and countries it knows nothing about. How many of us know that many of the rebels in Libya don’t want democracy but the old kingdom restored?

It wasn’t just Patrice Lumumba his assassins wanted to kill, it was the genuine self-determination, dreams and aspirations of African people, writes Horace Campbell, reflecting on the murder of the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Jan. 17, 1961. Two poems by Lumumba follow the story.

Across the country organizations and individuals are standing together to protest the United States government’s attempt to silence and criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists in solidarity with them. Legendary lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is already in prison, and an activist who has been subpoenaed by the grand jury tell why they resist.

"The Other America" by Martin Luther King Jr. "is a chilling, troubled speech made with the background of urban riots, pleas for Black Power and the Vietnam War." - Ishmael Reed

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., gained international acclaim for being the only member in Congress who courageously and extraordinarily voted against the authorization of the use of force following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She recently authored a controversial bill, H.R. 3699, that would prohibit the funding for additional troops to Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan war is due for a recycling, but it may not go the way the U.S. has planned. Begun under dubious circumstances, more as a demonstration war to set the stage for the real drama of Iraq, Afghanistan has almost always been more useful as a proxy war fought by others, rather than a direct war fought by Americans.