Tag: President Barack Obama

A nationwide coalition of U.S. activists is calling on President Barack Obama to intensify pressure on the government of newly re-elected Rwandan President Paul Kagame. They want Obama to immediately terminate all military assistance and freeze the $240 million scheduled for Kagame's undemocratic regime.

"There was no ethics violation." - Joseph Debro, president of Bay Area Black Builders. "Rep. Waters is far too valuable to our community to give up without a fight!" - Danny Bakewell Sr., chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. "This is a political witch-hunt that singles out advocacy for the poor." - Len Canty, chairman of the Black Economic Council

President Barack Obama's decisions could free millions of Africans from bondage – the one imposed for decades now by African dictators often with Western collusion – save millions of lives in avoided bloodshed and help unleash the great reservoir wherein Africa’s vast potential has been condemned.

President Obama said, in his 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, that America should support strong institutions and not strong men. But Obama has expanded AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and now he remains silent as Rwanda’s strongman, President Paul Kagame, prepares a sham presidential election to retain his brutal grip on power.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack admitted in a press conference today, “I did not think before I acted.” It is clear from his press conference that he failed in his treatment of USDA Georgia State Rural Development Director Shirley Sherrod. Unfortunately, Secretary Vilsack has also thrown Black farmers under the bus.

There is a growing discontent amongst the people in Haiti with the political establishment under the direction of President Rene Preval. Many people believe that Preval has mortgaged the nation to powerful multinational corporate interests and subjected the people to military occupation by the U.S. and the U.N. under the guise of providing “security.”

The vicious, premeditated and illegal attack on the six-boat Freedom Flotilla by Israeli Zionists on May 31 in international waters left nine humanitarians shot dead – one of whom was an American citizen – and over 40 wounded on the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, as well as many others traumatized and injured from being badly beaten, jailed and/or hospitalized.

"Peter Erlinder is in need of all assistance the international organization for human rights lawyers can muster. He is in the hands of a murderous, brutal regime," declares six-term Congress member and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. Professor Erlinder was jailed after traveling to Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire, leading candidate challenging incumbent President Paul Kagame.

"Damn Detroit Police Department! You burned, shot and killed Aiyana Jones, a little 7-year-old girl. You threw a stun grenade through the front window and lit the little girl’s blanket on fire! And then you shot off a bullet that landed in her neck!" - Read this account by Kimora Lee Simmons, another by a 12-year-old girl and the full story by veteran Detroit journalist Abayomi Azikiwe.

The U.S. Justice Dept. refuses to charge the NYPD officers who murdered Sean Bell on his wedding day in 2006. We can’t let this happen again; it’s ON US to get Oscar Grant’s killer cops convicted of murder! Minister of Information JR is hosting two events on two days, tonight in West Oakland and tomorrow in Los Angeles.

The Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) community was hopeful of your appointment almost a year ago by President Barack Obama and felt that finally there was to be deliberate dialogue, transparency, community engagement and participation in formulating solutions for environmental issues.

The New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl 44. I can’t believe I’m even typing the words. Four and a half years ago, after the levees broke, the concern was not whether there would be a Saints, but whether there would even be a New Orleans.

Once the French army had subdued L’Ouverture and his rebel force, Napoleon intended to advance to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River. By 1803, a frustrated Napoleon – denied his foothold in the New World – agreed to sell New Orleans and the Louisiana territories to Jefferson.

Since President Barack Obama signed his stimulus package into law in February, the U.S. Department of Transportation has handed out more than $150 million in contracts to companies for street, highway and bridge construction. New statistics released by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN) show that from that pot of money not a single dollar had been allocated to any African-American owned business.

Loans handed out to struggling small businesses as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package have largely shut out minority businesses – especially those owned by Blacks and Latinos. Overall, white-owned businesses received over $130 million in loans through the program, while Hispanic-owned businesses got $4 million and Black-owned businesses less than $2 million.

Despite years and months of intense advocacy and organizing, whole nations and masses of people are facing increased possibilities of drowning, burning and/or starving to extinction. All the progressive forces we have met – inside and outside of the governments – have told us how determined they are to continue our generation’s mandate to reclaim the power from the selfish polluters who threaten the survival of all of us.

Faced with mounting issues like melting glaciers and destruction of the rainforests on his home continent, President Morales has called for very necessary measures to lower our world’s temperatures by even more than the recent warnings from most scientists and even our colleagues in G77, Africa Group and AOSIS. “One degree (Centigrade) rise is too much!” says Morales. Negotiators remain at work. Keep calling the Obama administration.

The 10 Black members of the powerful House Finance Committee are still being applauded this week by the Black press and Black leaders nationally for boldly boycotting a committee meeting in order to force a $4 billion allocation to benefit the Black community. They plan to escalate protests if lawmakers continue to ignore the suffering of their constituents, including advertising discrimination against Black newspapers.

We are too big to fail! Call President Barack Obama to remind him that a bold reinvestment in, recovery for and restoration of our environment is even more critical, and less expensive, than the trillions he has given to prop up Wall Street, the military contractors, capitalist for-profit corporations and now the insurance industry that stands to benefit so greatly from his health care “reform.”

Here in the frigid capital of Denmark, we continue our long and difficult work to achieve REPARATIONS NOW! for Afrikan and Indigenous nations and ascendants, women and girls, and everyone in our sacred earth.