News & Views

"He was making plans to live, not to die." The mother of Gregory Johnson Jr., 20, questions the suicide theory posed by law enforcement officials, remembering her son as a positive, cheerful young man.

The December 2008 United Nations report is the latest in a series of U.N. reports dating from 2001 that clearly documents the systematic looting and appropriation of Congolese resources by Rwanda and Uganda, two of Washington and London's staunchest allies in Africa.

Black America is engaged in the struggle to end AIDS like never before. That commitment, together with support from the Obama administration, could create real, lasting change in the course of this epidemic.

The place was the historic Black Dot Café in West Oakland; the event, a "Town Bizness" town hall meeting hosted by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) with the presence of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.

Huey P. Newton's name and, more importantly, his history of resistance and struggle is little more than a mystery for many younger people in their 20s. Huey P. Newton was a rebel - and more, a Black Revolutionary.

Instead of trying to get students to come to class, these teachers are trying to get students to go home. Instead of finding students who are struggling to complete assignments and improve their achievement levels, these students are excelling.

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday, Jan. 21, that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.

RIP Oscar Grant III. You, unarmed, pleading for your life as a young father, at the tender age of 22, while a rogue Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Tony Pirone punches you, then crushes your neck with his knee, shortly followed in his enthusiastic, racist, vicious rage by Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shoots you in the back, murdering you.

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates?

In 1920, at the height of Black farm ownership, one in seven U.S. farms was Black-operated; by 1992, the number had fallen to one in 100. From discriminatory lending practices to foreclosures, the USDA's policies have directly contributed to a massive loss of Black land wealth.

With poise and considerable grace, Barack Hussein Obama took the stage of history and tried to turn a mammoth page in the book of America's national life.

Israel's objectives from the war on Gaza were set long before its launch: to remove the Hamas movement and government, achieve the reinstallation of the Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza, and end the armed resistance.

On Wednesday, Jan. 28, the California Supreme Court rejected our appeal, ruling against the 33,000 San Franciscans who signed our referendum and against the right of the 33,000 residents of Bayview Hunters Point - 91 percent of us people of color - to determine our own destiny.

Grading and construction activities by the Florida-based megadeveloper Lennar enter a third year ... with asbestos and particulate levels at air monitor HV9 - located adjacent to a residential complex - skyrocketing to over 296,000 structures per cubic meter Dec. 28-30.

In the first month of 2009, we put a Black man in the White House with our votes and convinced a DA to charge a white cop with the murder of a Black man with our rebellion. Don't miss MOI JR's next Town Bizness Townhall Wed., Feb. 11, 7 p.m., Black Dot Cafe, 1195 Pine, West Oakland, featuring Ch. Fred Hampton Jr., Martina Davis, Min. Keith Muhammad and more, and come with me to the BART board meeting Feb. 12, 9 a.m., 344 20th St., Oakland.

Jan. 23 the movement for justice for Oscar Grant III kicked into high gear at the Prisoners of Conscience Committee's Town Bizness Town Hall Meeting. Follow up by packing the courtroom at Johannes Mehserle's bail hearing Friday, Jan. 30, 2 p.m., at 1225 Fallon St., Oakland. Don't let the cops outnumber us.

Haitian-Americans are working for change on the following priorities and urge President Obama and the new U.S. Congress to incorporate them into a more effective foreign policy that centers on promoting sustainable development, self-sufficiency, and a sovereign, prosperous and stable Haiti.

Forty-eight years ago, the first freely elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, was brutally murdered by the United States, Belgium and certain local elites because he wanted the resources of the Congo to benefit the Congolese people.

"Electing Barack Obama president doesn't mean we have overcome ... We could put too much faith in him to deliver us, when we need to be organizing to deliver ourselves."

"This historic occasion is merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet unseen but soon to surface is the debunking of a global culture of supremacy that assumes or guarantees the authority of European principles, practices, preferences and privilege," said Dr. Tascoe.