Tag: President Obama

The racist assault on United States President Barak Obama by the Honduran military coup government, installed on June 28, 2009, was greeted by the U.S. media with what John Pilger called “contrived silence, a censorship by omission.” (Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, 7/6/09) The poisonous racist attack on the first Black U.S. president was based on racist preconceptions and was carried out by interim Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez Colindres on June 29, the day after the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was arrested and sent into exile in his pajamas.

Jubilant at finally breaking the blockade to bring aid to the people of Gaza, three Black heroes - former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, fresh out of an Israeli prison, New York City Councilman Charles Barron and M-1 of dead prez - and Viva Palestina organizer British Member of Parliament George Galloway's are interviewed by the world press. Yet U.S. media are silent. Read all about it right here.

Recently Cynthia McKinney has been traveling to Gaza on human rights missions challenging the illegal Israeli military blockade. She, along with a number of others who were bringing humanitarian aid to the area, were confronted by the Israeli military on two occasions. The first time the Israelis rammed their ship and nearly sank it. The second time, People’s Advocate Cynthia and the rest of the Free Gaza 21 had their boat commandeered and were kidnapped by the Israelis and taken to prison. Check out the People’s Advocate in her own words.

We don’t have to look all the way back to slavery, colonialism or the overthrow of democrats like Lumumba. Even today, U.S. corporations act with impunity in many countries of the continent because the governments are too impotent to stop them. Bono, in writing about Obama’s message to Africa, said: “Corruption stalks Africa’s reformers. ‘If you fight corruption, it fights you back,’ a former Nigerian anti-corruption official said.” Well, this is very true, but we cannot ignore the fact that behind the corruption, it is too often an American policy or corporation pulling the strings.

Minister of Information JR caught up with former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, upon her return to the U.S. from a week’s incarceration in an Israeli jail. She and the Free Gaza 21 – the crew and passengers, including political leaders, human rights workers, Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire among them, and journalists, of the boat “Spirit of Humanity” – had been boarded, assaulted and kidnapped while sailing in international waters by a fleet of Israeli warships.

What was amazing about the hearing Monday was the prosecution’s admission that it didn’t have enough evidence to convict these men. As attorney Daro Inouye said of Jalil Muntaqim, who pled no contest to the prosecution’s charge of conspiracy, his client picked up a loaded grenade to save his brothers, his friends, his fellow defendants, and he didn’t plead guilty. That language did not pass his lips.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence, thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international waters … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

A few days ago, Herman Bell accepted a plea bargain from the prosecution and will be returning to New York for his parole hearing as soon as California gets him on a return flight. The news was greeted soberly and from some quarters with bemusement.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate, as she and 20 human rights workers and journalists from 11 countries on a boat attempting to break the blockade of Gaza were abducted and being dragged by an Israeli gunship to jail in Israel.

Kambale Musavuli, national spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo, in this interview by POCC Minister of Information JR, challenges the people of the U.S. and President Obama to stop the resource wars in the Congo that have killed 6 million people, half of them children, for minerals like the coltan that powers our cell phones and almost everything electronic.

"Look at what Haiti's tyrants did to me!" said the priest who could have been president: The Haitian oligarchy jailed him, the Catholic church denied him health coverage, the hospital denied him care, the Miami Herald denigrated his memory. The Bay Area memorial for Father Jean-Juste is Saturday, June 27, 7 p.m., at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison, Berkeley.

"We should own and operate and control the economy of our community," said Malcolm X. To make that happen, businesses in the hood should grab the new ARC loans: no-interest loans with no payments due for a year, offered beginning June 15 by the U.S. Small Business Administration, revitalized by President Obama. Merchants and residents who hire and trade with each other build peace and prosperity in the hood.

The United Nations report, submitted by Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia Doudou Diene, presents an overview of the United States' compliance with international norms governing racial equality. It sets out several areas where the U.S. has failed to protect its citizens from racially discriminatory practices.

Less than a month after 13 single payer advocates were arrested protesting the exclusion of single payer, it is at the table in both Houses, making progress while the multi-payer pro-insurance reform is faltering.

As an African-American farmer, I am calling on the first African-American president of the United States to lead us quickly away from this deepening crisis. Demand, President Obama, that Congress and your own administration begin without delay the process of reforming our farm and food policies. Start now by correcting the omission in your economic stimulus and recovery act that prevented significant spending on creating new and sustainable jobs for the poor in our urban centers as well as rural farm communities.

Ras Ceylon is a very unique artist that lives in the Bay. He's politically active, his family is from Sri Lanka, he reps Rastafarianism and has linked with Askari X, Tajai of Souls of Mischief, Chairman Fred, Stic.man and a whole host of others to create a piece of audio art.

Angela Davis called for a new movement to abolish what she called "the prison-industrial complex" in the U.S., which has become the largest jailer in the world. "Racism is directly responsible for the fact that the U.S. has become the great incarcerator."

I implore the members of the Congressional Black Caucus to spearhead the participation of the United States in the United Nation's World Conference Against Racism: to boldly go where we have gone before.

The California Universal Health Care Organizing Project wants President Obama to support congressional legislation authored by Rep. John Conyers that will stop the private health care insurance industry from denying claims, neglecting the sick and wasting 31 cents of every health care dollar.

For a degrading, violent, racist cartoon against President Obama, the New York Post wins the prize for reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism.