digest commentary:

Obama, Amerika and the Dynamic Dialectics of Class and Race
U.S. Strategic Weakness and Fear

Amerikan capitalism knows no bounds of brutality and cruelty. The canonization of a Black president is another hideous exposure of the rulers' absolute contemptuous, cynical cruelty for the u.s. Black nation, for all oppressed nationalities and nations worldwide.

Obama's selection is equally an exposure of u.s. racist arrogance and ignorance. His elegant, brilliant 'house negro' role will soon crush the hopes and spirits of millions who believe the installation of a Black president shows the promise of real change in the system, but profound disillusionment will not change the powerfully dynamic and transformative dialectics of class and 'race' in amerika. The ruling MFs have not forgotten the rise of Black leadership in rebellion against national oppression has created fertile conditions for revolutionary nationalist and socialist alliances and agendas before in this belly of the beast, and will again. Fear of a resurgence terrifies them.

Here in north amerika, a class-based capitalist political economic system, is intrinsically intersected by 'race' (a social-political construct with no scientific biological basis) from 'bottom' and 'top'. Since the invasion by european colonialist settlers, amerika's 'manifest destiny', constructed on genocide and slavery, fostered the myth of white supremacy to 'justify' racist state terror, hyper-exploitation and extreme oppression. History shows where there is oppression there will be rebellion.

Today in amerika and throughout its blood-soaked empire, the modern slavemasters have been making 'preemptive' preparations for what they fear most: urban guerilla warfare -- in the 'third world' -- against their 'planet of slums'. As the survival of u.s. capitalism, world enemy #1, depends on ever more drastic global destruction, and the potential for revolution here and worldwide grows, the rulers now realize they face danger from the 'homeland slums' and need imperialism's old neocolonial tactic: Black face on fascist agenda. Obama is their hope, not ours.

The selection of a Black president reveals the strategic vulnerability and fears of this ruling class, not a 'change' in its agenda for global domination -- at literally any cost. The 'bottom'-feeding predators are gambling they can use 'race' from both 'top' and 'bottom', as both carrot and stick, to pacify and unify the most brutally oppressed under the amerikan flag to advance the genocidal global u.s. agenda. Those on whom its bloody empire is most gruesomely based, subjected to hyper class-exploitation as well as genocidal national oppression, will play a leading role in uniting us to overthrow its barbaric tyranny. The ruling gangsters know that better at this point than we do. But they have only the same futile tricks of hard and soft power to destroy the potential for revolution, their mortal enemy. First and foremost, preventing the rise of political leadership based on consciousness of the systemic roots of their crimes.

The state has always used a fascist mailed fist, not illusions of popular democracy, against peoples of color and poor whites at the bottom of their system. Beside its relentless brutality, this signals the depths of ruling class FEAR and hatred behind the dehumanization, degradation and savage oppression. 'Our' enemy knows its enemies. We need to know ours. Obama's 27y.o white speechwriter's emphasis on ending 'isms' and 'stale ideologies' was directed at the revolutionary minded: especially at what the u.s. fears most: revolutionary Black leadership informed by revolutionary nationalism and marxism, that, broke through deep class - race divisions, bringing this country to the brink of revolution.

From chattel slavery until today, socialist revolutionary leadership has always been the greatest threat to the dictatorship of capital. The Black Liberation movement of the '60's'-early 70's was as close as this country ever came to revolution. The Black Panther Party's young leaders, built on the legacy of great revolutionary forefathers like Malcolm X, Mao, Lenin and Marx, understood that consciousness not only reflects material reality, but becomes a material force when organized into action. The BPP taught millions how class and race functioned at the 'top' with class-race privilege, and at the 'bottom' with class-race oppression. It trained, organized and way beyond its own numbers influenced millions. The Black Power movement brought genuine possibilities and hope to the oppressed everywhere that world 'people power' could destroy and replace this monstrous imperialist destroyer. Surges of revolutionary nationalist anti-u.s. imperialist struggles burned through the 60's across the 'third world' -- and in amerika where killer Kissinger declared a near 'power vacuum', the greatest threat ever to u.s. capitalism's world domination.

Enter COINTELPRO massacring over 30 young BPP leaders, spreading filthy lies and tricks, infiltrating the party with hundreds of agents and drugs to wreck from within and destroy the BPP leadership that had proliferated into Brown, Red and white revolutionary groups across the country. 'Black Consciousness' leadership was murdered by 'hard power' warfare, plus 'soft power' cultural war to weaken powerful political consciousness: 'cultural Black nationalism', reactionary culture promoting Blacks as 'hos, pimps' and 'gangstas', instead of revolutionaries, 'diversity training', 'multicuturalism' and 'moderate' Black preachers with the age-old 'turn the other cheek' message wrapped up in hip drag.

After the great worldwide revolutionary '60's' reverberated in the 'homeland' , amerika began putting a few 'Black faces in high places', mostly local governments. As the BPP said, on every corner of every ghetto you'll find preachers, pushers and poverty pimps -- helping cool things out -- until the next police murder -- then 'moderate' 'Black leadership' like Jesse Rainbow Jackson pushed front and center, running twice for president in earlier dangerous days for the u.s.

National oppression is not some optional electoral 'policy', it is the foundational lynchpin of amerikan capitalism built on the backs and blood of the indigenous peoples and Black slaves. Cowboys in suits continue the genocide today --- wrapped in hypocritical eloquent lies and propaganda called 'news' ---- institutionalized 'modern' slavery's everyday fascist brutality, bald-faced genocidal events like Katrina that the whole world witnessed --- about which Obama said and did nothing because these are not 'his people', 'middle class'.

No change of electoral leadership can change amerika's racist political reality: 'breathing while Black' is potentially deadly, 'guilty' by virtue of skin color and class, dehumanized, criminalized, portrayed as 'gangsters' in racist popular culture 'justifying' racist fears and pretexts for savage state oppression, incarceration and 'justifiable homicide' by occupying police armies in devastated, impoverished, drug-saturated ghettos --- until "anti-gang and drug wars' drive them out for expensive 'urban communities', 'diversified' by rich white liberals and some 'moderate' upwardly-mobile Blacks --- with safely 'unclenched fists'.

Imperialist agents in 'blackface' are nothing new. U.S. and other western imperialist long ago replaced their white colonialist rulers with native 'third world' puppet agents trying to divert anti-imperialist nationalist revolution. When that too failed, they bought and/or installed rulers of entire nations as u.s. proxies -- 'israel', Iraq Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. in the mideast, in Ethiopia, Kenya and other African countries (where USAFRICOM, must be based in europe because u.s. can't convince Africans of its generous 'humanitarian aid' intentions --- even with a Black amerikan commander) -- to secure u.s. hegemony.

To sustain its global rule against major capitalist rivals -- foremost China and Russia -- and against anti-imperialist resistance
['insurgents', 'al qaeda', 'terrorists', 'foreign agents', NEVER includes u.s. /nato/ UN occupiers -- the media may NOT use the term 'resistance' where u.s. occupation/war faces just armed nationalist resistance --- 'resistance' is used in pro-u.s. countries where 'the opposition' is u.s. supported, like China, Russia, eastern europe, Venezuela, etc.]
more 'national security' and 'democratization', strategized by u.s. thinktanks, are already on the horizon: Obama is needed to repair a disgruntled country's fraying patriotism, to rebuild a unified patriotic nation of hopeful, adoring, obedient suckers. Obama's lustre will fade in the light of the coming reality, and along with it the joy and hope in amerika's mythological past and future promise, that will become anger at amerika cold-bloodedly manipulating peoples' monumental efforts and desperate hopes...again, as always.

Regardless of the bipartisan support for the Democrat/Obama unified geostrategic mission, its 'clean break' with the truth to suck trillions from the working class and oppressed peoples, to wage more wars to save the system that kills them, reality will eventually trump rhetoric. "Capitalism", due to its very nature, ultimately only, as Marx said, "produces its own gravediggers."

PENTAGON PLAN: PRE-CRISIS WILDFIRES, IT DIDN'T INCLUDE THE 'HOMELAND' URBAN CENTERS AMONG ITS EMPIRE'S WEAKEST LINKS
The Pentagon as Global Slum Warlord
Planet of the Slums: Worlds Cities Have Become “The Weakest Link In The American Empire”
By Mike Davis,
Pentagon's MOUT:  "Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain.": "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world" ... how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic "terrorist" insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing megaslums. To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990's to the RAND Corporation. One of the most important RAND projects, initiated in the early 1990s, has been a major study of "how demographic changes will affect future conflict."  The bottom line, RAND finds, is that the urbanization of world poverty has produced "the urbanization of insurgency" (the title, in fact, of their report).... A leading Air Force theorist Captain Thomas (whose article is provocatively entitled "Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights")

Tom Comment, TomDispatch.com, April 19, 2004 :
Forty years ago, the perceived danger came from peasant-based insurgencies led by nationalist intellectuals.  This story indicates some in the U.S. military leadership have a clue as to the new problem for maintaining capitalist class rule. 
Today the world is dominated by huge cities, concentrating the working classes of various nations, including the USA, and shifting the balance of power to them. 
Despite promises and strategies to the contrary articulated here, this new problem for the capitalists and their governments is insoluble.
1.  It assumes that the United States ruling class has the [digest: political], human and financial resource capability to send soldiers to impose its will everywhere necessary on the face of the earth.  We see now how hopeless that fantasy is. 
2.  It assumes that the troops will remain loyal to imperial dreams [digest: to u.s. military]. 
3.  It is silent on the key question:  what do the troops do with rebellion at home?

Barack Obama and the “End” of Racism
Juan Santos
... we stay silent, as a rule, on the job. We stay silent as a rule, in the white world. Barack Obama is the living symbol of our silence. He is our silence writ large. With respect to Black interests, Obama would be a silenced Black ruler: A muzzled Black emperor. A Black man at the head of the White Amerikkkan State – one who’s unwilling to speak truth to power, but more than willing, like a Condi Rice or a Colin Powell, to become that power and to launch wars of aggression against other people of color...

And that’s the Obama equation. Keep your Black/ Brown mouth shut and you can “succeed.” And you can still feel “clean.” Here we have the real story behind Obama’s portrayal of his squeaky clean-ness. Yes, Black man, yes, Black woman, you can have power in this killer-racist system and stay “clean.” In Obama’s carefully constructed image lies a symbolic resolution of a profound inner conflict that all people of color in the US face in their daily lives. Obama plays the role of a Black Cinderella. He does for Black folks what Cinderella does for girls. He shows that oppression and silence can be good for you – at least if you are the one the prince chooses, or if you are the one who gets to be the prince. It’s total fantasy. It’s a glass slipper that will break at the arch and be turned on us like a broken beer bottle or a jagged-edged knife; the same knife Obama has threatened to turn on the people of Iran and Pakistan...

The functioning of this new dynamic of racism is plain to see in Obama’s attitude toward the newest persecuted “Other” in U.S. society – Brown migrants. On one hand, in one of his most impressive moments, he very rightly called attacks on migrants “scapegoating” (although he failed to critique NAFTA or US Imperialism at any level.)...Even more telling is Obama’s refusal to recognize the right of Palestinians to return to the land stolen from them by Israel during the Nakba of 1948– the disaster of the birth of the Israeli regime. Obama supports and promotes the character of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state – in other words, as an Apartheid state, a Jim Crow state that not only keeps Palestinians separate, but which uses its military might to bomb them at will...

He knows how to make white Amerikkka feel good about the status quo, here and abroad. There’s a reason for that. If he told the truth, if he stood up for justice, and on that basis, authentic healing, he couldn’t be president. Under those circumstances, if he’d attracted any measurable attention, much less the global attention he’s gained today, more likely be dead. Like King. Like Malcolm. Dead, like Steven Biko of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania / South Africa, or Fred Hampton from Chicago BPP...

What white Amerikkka doesn’t want to know, Obama is not about to tell them. That’s a large part of why they like him; it’s key. Whites don’t want to know, as a rule, the actual conditions of Black America...It’s not after all, that racism is over. It’s that whites imagine that they can now be at peace about it – that the race war in Amerikkka is over as a two-sided affair...In the white imagination, Barack Obama represents, not the “End of Racism” (racism has an experiential, existential meaning for only the barest sliver of the white population), but, he represents, rather, the end of the struggle to end racism.

The “End of Racism,” like the ”End of History” proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama with the fall of the Soviet Union, is meant to signify and hail the end of polarization and struggle, a final assimilative victory in which the antagonist (Communist or Black, respectively) is absorbed into the benevolent embrace of the white capitalist empire – there to disappear as a problem - even as a distinct entity. Obama, in this context, can be viewed as a kind of Gorbachev, a figure that surrendered the sovereignty and independence of his nation, opened it to overt capitalism, collapse and chaos, and who, in the process, became the darling of the capitalist world; who became, in the West, at least, a figure representing “reconciliation and peace” – not capitulation and betrayal...

The only awareness most whites have of racism comes as a result of the immediate and very short term impact of the struggle of peoples of color upon their consciousness. The silencing of that struggle means only the end of its painful intrusion into white awareness – not the end of racism as an omnipresent, violent burden on the oppressed, not the end of racism as omnipresent oppression and degradation. As noted above, Obama has no plan, and thus, it is fair to say, no intention of ending systemic racism in the US. It’s easier to pretend for popular consumption, that it no longer exists...

It should be more than clear by now that Barack Obama will not save us. But neither is the point to expose the man as an individual, or even as a hypocrite, betrayer or oppressor. The point is to see him in context, within the limits of the system, the matrix, the cultural and political environment in which he arose and in which he operates. It’s not that Barack Obama, per se, is worthless, it’s that none of the dreams in us that he speaks to so deeply in us can be fulfilled under the system of oppression he is an expression of ...
Obama doesn’t represent peace – he represents an expansion of war and the power of Empire. He’s even more extreme on this than Bush himself, except in his public rhetoric. He doesn’t represent the real and legitimate needs, desires and hopes of Black people - he refuses to speak openly of the most fundamental issues affecting Black people. He doesn’t represent the “end of racism,” but the perpetuation of oppression in a new guise...

Attaining authentic freedom requires, as its barest starting point, the naming of what keeps us subjugated. What keeps us subjugated is the very system Obama wants to rule. The system, even with Barack Obama as its first Black emperor, is not our hope. It’s our enemy, the enemy of the world, and, because this system is rapidly undermining the ability of the planet to foster and sustain life, it is the enemy of all Life on Earth.... the lack of such awareness is exactly what Barack Obama depends on to remain a symbol of the impossible dream that the system can be something other than what it is. http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2008/02/barack-obama-and-end-of-rac...

PFLP STATEMENT
PFLP warns against illusions about US President Barack Obama, the new face of US imperialism
obama-israeli-flag.jpg [1]
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the ongoing strategic partnership of the United States with Israel, warning that the inauguration of President Barack Obama merely changes the image of U.S. imperialism, which plays the same destructive role as it always has.

In a press statement issued on January 26, 2009, the PFLP stated that the new U.S. envoy George Mitchell will fail as his predecessors have failed, and as the Israeli/U.S. military machine failed, so long as his purpose is to undermine Palestinian national rights, including the right to return, self-determination, sovereignty and independence, and attempt to end our resistance and our national cause.

The PFLP underlined that the replacement of international legitimacy with the authority and hegemony of the United States is unacceptable, and warned against any illusions about the new administration in the United States, stating that the new president changes nothing in the nature of U.S. imperialism and serves precisely the same interests as former president George W. Bush. The U.S. has been a strategic partner and an imperial enemy in the Arab world for over sixty years, and throughout the sixty years of occupation and colonization of Palestine by Zionism, has been the key supplier of arms, economic, and political support for the occupier. In fact, the Zionist state has served as a military outpost for the United States and its imperial interests.

The PFLP saluted the many people of the United States and the world who have taken action against the occupier, including all actions to internationally isolate the occupier and those who fund and support it, and to bring the perpetrators of crimes, massacres and occupation to justice. The statement further called upon people in the United States and around the world to hold U.S. officials accountable for their actions in providing political, economic and military support and authorization to the ongoing aggression and occupation against our people, to demand and act to break the strategic partnership and relationship between U.S. imperialism and Zionism.
URL: http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=pflp-warns-against-illusions-about-us-pres...
Links: [1] http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=english/%3Fq%3Dnode/1442
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=51467

Fierce revolutionary or 'terrorist'?
Leila Khaled, Highjacker
http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500331065
200658 minsColor
Lina Makboul, Director
In 1969, Leila Khaled, an attractive 24-year-old Palestinian, made headlines as the first woman to hijack an airplane. A year later, after six operations to alter her identity, she did it again. Despite reports of Khaled's death some years ago, filmmaker Lina Makboul found the former PFLP militant living openly in Jordan, where she remains politically active and unrepentant. "A fascinating journey of a woman" (Jewish Independent), provocatively posits whether one person's terrorist can be another's freedom fighter.
Violence, Adult Content
Current Screenings
Monday February 2 at 9PM
Thursday February 26 at 1PM
Cast & Crew
Director Lina Makboul

Screenings
* Full Frame Documentary Film Festival,
    Spectrum Award, Honorable Mention
* Gothenburg Film Festival, Sweden
   Best Film Award
* Tri Continental Film Festival, India
   The Grand Jury Award
* Int'l Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), Amsterdam
* Silverdocs, Silver Spring, MD
* Doxa Documentary Film Festival, Canada
* One World International Human Rights Festival, Czech Republic
* Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Greece
* Encounters South African Int'l Documentary Festival
* Int'l Women's Film Festival, Créteil, France
Available for purchase Email: orders@wmm.com

For Palestinians, Obama's Message is Crystal Clear
Ramzy Baroud
"Obama won't bring my husband back to life," Leila Khalil, a Gazan woman, whose husband was killed during Israel's bloody offensive, told AFP. "He was martyred and left me with six children to feed on my own." Obama's also made himself "clear" regarding the fate of Leila's husband, and thousands like him: "For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror." Luckily, Leila no longer has a TV set to listen to Obama's remarks. It was, along with her home pulverized by Israeli missiles, courtesy of the United States. For Gazans, and most Palestinians, things cannot be any clearer...
Naturally a new administration, promising a new era, requires a new language. Although inundated with lofty terminology, the outlines of Obama's new administration seem, in some instances, a mirror image of Bush.
These are remarks made by Obama (not Bush), on Jan. 22, and seen as the first major statement by his administration regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats…. Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements. Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm."

Funny how Obama started his statement with "let me be clear." He cannot possibly be any clearer as he spent endless hours for many months assuring Israel and its supporters, while condemning Palestinians without any reservation or remorse.

Those who counted on Obama to bring a just peace to the Middle East must've had their hearts broken watching the man charging against Hamas's terror, as thousands of Gazans were killed and wounded, including 430 children in the matter of three weeks as a result of Israel's barbarous attacks, using mostly American weapons (and full, unqualified U.S. backing.) And yet, Obama found it fitting to explain that his administration's foreign policy is not only "critical in terms of projecting … America's power, but also America's values and America's ideals." Of course, it was Palestinian trust in those ideals that led them in droves to the polls in January 2006, and subsequently to their starvation and carnage in Gaza. It is no wonder that Palestinians are unimpressed.
Aside from Obama's unparalleled clarity, thus far, on his utter and "unconditional" commitment to Israel, he, along with his officials, continue to borrow similar vague slogans that were used enthusiastically by the Bush administrations: national security, national interests, spreading of American ideals, values, and all the rest.... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=51250
every stage of [Obama's] political career has been marked by eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them." See also Paul Street , "Obama's Audacious Deference to Power," ZNet Magazine (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936; Paul Street , Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder,CO: Paradigm, 2008).

Eshu’s blues: Obama scabs on the autonomy of Palestine-and the rest of us
by BAR columnist michael hureaux perez
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
The "suspense" is over. President Barack Obama is scabbing on the victims of Gaza, as was made plain in a press conference conducted alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joseph Biden and the president's emissary to Palestine, George Mitchell (1/22/09, "President Obama Delivers Remarks to State Department Employees").

If anyone needed further proof that Obama's perspective is something other than the usual contempt for the independence of the so-called developing world that guides the Imperium of Washington D.C., the evidence to the contrary is right before your eyes right now. Obama continues to praise the efforts of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and former Palestinian Authority and Fateh leader Mahmoud Abbas, which is a little like the rest of the world insisting that it be allowed to conduct diplomatic relations with George W. Bush. The Palestinian people know that, for better or worse, Hamas is their chosen leadership. Not Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Not the State of Israel. Not Hosni Mubarak. And not U.S. President Barack Obama... as usual, the powerful nations of the world stand outside of the consequence of their history, the weaker countries are held accountable for contradictions bred within them by the imperial powers. Gaza is only the latest chapter of this display of selective memory and imperial arrogance. The so-called "war on terror," which President Obama embraced in the opening lines of his inaugural speech, knows neither humility or shame, even as the essential fraudulence of its premise continues to be made manifest.

The late Pan-African scholar Aime Cesaire addressed this ideological barbarity and practice many years ago in his exchanges on colonialism with the Haitian poet Renee Depestre. At the root of Hitlerism, said Cesaire, we find the inability of the western "progressive" to recognize himself in the actions of the classic imperial world, which was the actual progenitor of the policies which led the Third Reich...despite the election of a black man to the presidency, the dictatorship of race and class remains at the core of both U.S. and western ideology and practice. The empire continues. The war on the people of the Gaza Strip is only the most recent evidence.

In attempting to raise this point this glorious inaugural week, I have encountered those who tell me I live with the "stale ideas of another time," and that "the ground has moved from beneath my feet," as the new president says. Methinks I smell the old warped mambo of postmodern dogma, which has a bad habit of declaring ideas its lazy- minded adherents aren't remotely familiar with to be defunct.... the Obamian wholesale repudiation of a century of living anti-imperial and human rights struggle... that's been going on since before the Pastor Wright fiasco made more of us aware of it. That's what Obama and his corporate followers mean when they accuse the weaker nations of the world of "blaming their problems on the west," ...

Mr. Obama's party, the "democrats," were busy alongside the "republicans," shutting down and co-opting our efforts when they weren't telling us that the days of organized labor and what they like to call "the excesses of the Sixties" were a thing of the past....and Obama knows it. There is the reality of the working class world, which is the reality of the Gaza Strip, and the urban Black working class reality of Sean Bell, murdered on his wedding day by New York City cops, and Oscar Grant, who was murdered by the Oakland Transit cops on New Year's Day. The Gaza Strip is the reality of the inner city in the United States, writ large.

Then there is the pseudo-reality of race and class justice that the corporate sponsors of Barack Obama - and his programmatic petty boojwah supporters of whatever racial and class background - want us all to absorb. Well, I been there, and I done that. Only back in my starry-eyed youth, Barack Obama was named David Dinkins, or Norm Rice, or Coleman Young (reservation cops all), or some other sad clown arrogant enough to run interference for a ruling class so venal and crazy it doesn't even care that its ass is on fire. And it doesn't take a stellar political economist to realize that if the problems of race and class or workplace and cultural empowerment can't get solved at the regional level using the political schematics of the capitalist system, those problems sure as hell aren't going to get solved at the national level by a charming rogue who uses the same schematic. Trust me on this, even as the trumpet and rose petal spectacle of the inaugural continues to ring in our ears: Obama's United States is still the Western Imperium, which means it's the tyranny of race, class and commodity, but now it's parading at the national level in blackface. (Talk about stale ideas!)...
BAR columnist michael hureaux is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: tricksterbirdboy@yahoo.com

"The Negro youth must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings they will be dead revolutionaries."
J. Edgar Hoover,FBI Chief, re:COINTELPRO against the Black Panther Party

ABSOLUTE FASCIST LIES HERALD NEW LEVELS OF RACIST WAR AGAINST THE OPPRESSED IN 'THE SLUMS'
'power projection' propaganda by the ruling state terrorist gangsters lays groundwork to "justify" and create public opinion for fascist witchhunts against u.s. capitalism's greatest fear: potentially revolutionary section of poor Black & Brown youth
Gangs Blamed for 80 Percent of U.S. Crimes
Justice Dept. Threat Assessment Finds 1 Million Gang Members Active in All 50 States
By JASON RYAN, Jan. 30, 2009—
http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=6773423&page=1
As many as 1 million gang members are believed responsible for as much as 80 percent of crime in America -- and the gangs are spreading across the country, according to a Justice Department gang threat assessment. Approximately "1 million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs were criminally active within all 50 states and the District of Columbia as of September 2008," the report says. "Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation," the report notes as part of its key findings. "Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder and weapons trafficking."
A copy of the threat assessment, prepared by the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center, was obtained by ABC News from U.S. law enforcement officials on Friday. Historically, gangs have been a bigger problem for cities, but that may be changing."Gang migration from urban communities to suburban and rural locations, which began more than two decades ago, is a significant and growing problem in most areas of the country," the report says. "Gangs are now fully entrenched in many communities across the nation." In a speech before the International Association of Chief of Police in November 2008, FBI Director Robert Mueller [said] "The FBI has, in the past, investigated gangs as criminal enterprises," Mueller said. "Our traditional approach has been to target their leadership and dismantle them from the top down. But the increase in gang violence called for a non-traditional approach. It is not enough to just gather intelligence about the violent offenders. We have to interrupt that violence." The report notes that smaller local gangs and crews are involved in the drug trade. "Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they continue to account for the largest number of gangs nationwide," the report says. "Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution." The report notes that prison gangs are becoming more involved with drug trafficking organizations, too....The FBI houses the National Gang Intelligence Center, which helped prepare the report, and which was established by the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the U.S. Marshals. Last October, elements from the Department of Homeland Security joined the center.
related articles : Cop Drop: Is Economy Putting You at Risk? Murders Among Black Youths on the Rise.

Senate Democrats, complicit to the end, use 'fix bush era' mantra to get FBI funding for racist 'anti-gang' war, called 'fighting financial industry crime'
Senators push for more FBI funding $75 million sought to reverse Bush-era 'lack of balance'
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/398349_fbi02.html
$75 million sought to reverse Bush-era 'lack of balance' to to give the agency $75 million to fight financial industry crime. The sum, to be considered by the Senate as part of the economic stimulus package, would fund at least 165 new agents... Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the FBI's budget, inserted the $75 million into the financial stimulus bill designed to jump-start the nation's economy. It's likely to be signed into law by President Barack Obama by the end of the month. "Since 2001, the FBI has had to ramp up its efforts to fight terrorism and protect our national security -- and still perform its traditional role of combating violent crime," Mikulski said... A P-I analysis of the FBI's manpower needs -- based on information provided by FBI sources -- shows that at least 2,000 agents are needed to bring crime squads back to their pre- 9/11 levels. That would require at least $430 million. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., along with Mikulski and Vice President Joe Biden, have been among a few lonely voices on Capitol Hill calling for the necessary resources to revitalize the FBI... "The funding in this bill is a step forward in building a more balanced FBI that can protect the homeland while also protecting homeowners. But much more needs to be done. I will continue to work with President Obama and Senator Mikulski to invest in the resources the FBI needs to respond and adapt to this growing threat."
A Murray staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said last week that "$75 million is not adequate to reverse the lack of balance during the Bush years. It's a start, but not enough. Even with the $75 million, the FBI is going to have to prioritize their cases." The staffer's concerns were starkly illustrated by Inauguration Day fears that Somali immigrants living in America had returned to Africa, joined a radical Islamist organization and planned to launch terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. The intelligence resulted in heightened FBI activity in communities such as Minneapolis and Seattle, which have large Somali populations. FBI headquarters instructed field offices to make sure their "tripwires" were in place -- meaning that local Somali sources would tell agents of any indication of terrorist activity. In Seattle, agents must keep track of a big Somali community. A Rainier Valley barber who became a Muslim in prison -- Ruben Shumpert -- attracted intense interest from the local Joint Terrorism Task Force because his barbershop became a gathering place for adherents of radical Islam. He showed children videos of "fighting, shooting and killing with images ... of al-Qaida and the Taliban." Shumpert, who had connections to the Seattle Somali community, was free on bond pending sentencing on weapons and counterfeiting charges when he fled to Somalia in 2006. The FBI believes Shumpert has since been killed in a U.S. cruise-missile attack in Somalia, according to an FBI source. Unless there is an adequate number of agents throughout the bureau's counterterrorism units to keep track of people such as Shumpert, FBI crime squads -- whether it is gangs, organized crime or white-collar crime -- will continue to be raided for agents because of overwhelming needs in the counterterrorism program.

"Why nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people?"
Adolf Hitler

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
Greg Miller, LATimes
Reporting from Washington — The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool. Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street...

Projecting U.S. power: being everywhere and nowhere
...the variety of overt and subtle ways U.S. power is projected in the world. Three words to guide the tutorial: partnership, readiness and presence... the essence of the mission of the U.S. Pacific Command led by Adm. Timothy J. Keating [who] presides over a unified command of U.S. military services whose area of responsibility is roughly half of the Earth's surface, comprising 36 nations, the five largest armies, the globe's three largest economies, and 40 percent of U.S. foreign trade....a setting of vast, complex strategic relationships, defending U.S. interests throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans...

MANY MORE SCIENTIFIC WARNINGS & CALCULATIONS BEFORE KATRINA, BESIDE THESE....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_preparedness_for_New_Orleans
In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), named three major scenarios as being among the most serious threats to the nation: (1) a major hurricane hitting New Orleans, (2) a terrorist attack in New York City, and (3) a large earthquake hitting San Francisco[2]. In 2004, an Army Corps of Engineers study was done on the costs and feasibility of protecting southeast Louisiana from a major Category 5 hurricane, including construction of floodgate structures and raising existing levees.

Warnings of dangerous vulnerability
In 2001, the Houston Chronicle published a story which predicted that a severe hurricane striking New Orleans, "would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet (6.1 m) of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston."[2] In 2002, the Times Picayune published a feature covering various scenarios, including a Category 5 hurricane hitting the city from the south. The series also explored the various environmental changes that have increased the area's vulnerability. One article in the series concluded that hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it liveable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.[4] Many concerns focus around the fact that the city lies below sea level with a levee system that was designed for hurricanes of no greater intensity than Category 3.[5] Furthermore, its natural defenses, the surrounding marshland and the barrier islands, have been dwindling in recent years.[6] Just a few months before Katrina, the FX docudrama Oil Storm depicted a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans and forcing residents to evacuate and hide out in the Superdome...

Under the National Response Plan, disaster planning is first and foremost a local government responsibility. On the day after the Hurricane, Michael Chertoff invoked the National Response Plan, transferring emergency authority to the Department of Homeland Security.

"Hurricaine Katrina": Aug. 29, 2005
"Hurricane Pam" Projected by 2004 Studies and computer exercises "anticipated" and unreported
Massively attended from all govt. levels it projected the detailed results of a hurricane in detail, especially the deadly impact on low-lying, poor, predominantly Black working class areas...
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:SRXM7_KL8akJ:hsgac.senate.gov/_file...

Racist Genocide in New Orleans Continues: "Like 911 But Add Water"
by liz burbank
[edited version, original published 9/3/05 "A Catastrophic Success": A Holocaust Shaped by Race]
Katrina was no accident, no surprise, no act of 'mother nature', 'gods' , not the result of 'bureaucratic incompetence' and 'poor communication'. The human and environmental impact on New Orleans of a hurricane of this magnitude had been scientifically calculated. ["Hurricane Pam" Projected by 2004 Studies and computer exercises
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:SRXM7_KL8akJ:hsgac.senate.gov/_file... ]

National oppression and its ideological engine racism, are the lynchpin of u.s. capitalism, fattened on genocide and slavery. Katrina is a major intensification of America's historical genocide, a premeditated physical and psychological attack on the Black Nation, part of a strategy to destroy its strength, pride, cultural cohesion that has led in revolutionary resistance against this system in its deepest crisis..

A renaissance of Black resistance and leadership, historically the leading edge of revolutionary resistance in the U.S., is what the postmodern slavemasters fear could derail their imperialist terror war, giving rise to a movement here in the 'homeland', in solidarity with international resistance, that could defeat its global "new world order" agenda . Thus Katrina and its brutal aftermath was engineered to serve the capitalist agenda in two interrelated ways: by uprooting, dispersing and destroying the Black Nation, while simultaneously inflaming always dependable american racism and support for the consolidation of fascist state capitalism -- under the pretext of "rescue, relief and recovery” from a "major casualty-producing event" called a “natural disaster.” [...] full article at http://lizburbankdigest.blogspot.com/2006/03/racist-genocide-in-new-orle...

Selective u.s. 'power projection': even world's eye view of its Katrina crimes didn't stop U.S. vicious lies about China's 'lack of rescue operations'
ABC News: More Than a Million Wait in Icy Darkness Across US
"31 Jan 2009 The storm has been blamed for at least 42 deaths so far..."We've got lots of counties that do not have any communication, any heat, any power,"... Utility officials estimated more than 1.3 million homes and businesses from Arkansas to Ohio were powerless, and warned it could be mid-February before some customers had power....

The Obama Spectacle: History, Hypocrisy, and Empire
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
http://blackcommentator.com/308/308_kir_obama_spectacle_printer_friendly...
Barack Obama, first African-American “presidential” figurehead of the U.S. Empire, is actually the last best hope of continuing U.S. international hegemony under the fake cloak of democracy and justice at home and abroad. Therein is Obama’s appeal to the political and economic ruling elites. He is a conscious, willing, and potent tool of the power elite, and should be understood and dealt with as such. He is neither a progressive, nor a leftist or socialist. He is a cynical opportunist and a shrewd politician, who cloaks his double-speak in glitzy so-called “progressive” sounding rhetoric. He is arguably the most dangerous U.S. politician, to the actual economic and political well being of everyday people of all colors, thus far in this 21st Century....
Place your faith in yourselves and each other, in your / our ability to discern the difference between rhetoric vs. reality, and in our determination to find and create ways of organizing and coming together to bring about real systemic change dedicated to everyday people and not the corporate blood suckers of the peoples of this nation and world.... Let us commit and re-commit ourselves to the struggle for systemic change in this nation, and not be duped by this latest dose of U.S. hypocrisy in the person of Barack Obama. Onward...
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, and former political prisoner.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21862.htm

The Great Black Hajj of 2009
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

"They cheered in acknowledgement of their shared culpability in the ‘collective failure' that had destroyed the global financial system."
They were pilgrims, one million African Americans bent on fulfilling a solemn, silly, tearful, giddy, deep-felt, mindless, gottabethere obligation. They were the faithful, the heretics, the high priests and low-lifes, the innocent and the guilty-as-sin. All were committed to a once (or, at least, first) in a lifetime trek to Washington to bear witness to The Biggest Black Event in History, as so it must have been, based on the numbers. And oh yes, there were white folks there, too, about an additional million. Let it be recorded that all ethnicities were welcomed at the great Black Hajj of 2009.

Obama, the one-word incantation - Oh-Bah-Mah! - would not be denied. The sea of humanity lapped at his feet, as the mountain had come to Muhammad.The Black multitudes waited to be told who they were, and why they were there. They learned that "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." They cheered in acknowledgement of their shared culpability in the "collective failure" that had destroyed the global financial system, the workings of which were beyond their capacity to comprehend, much less influence. Yet, they must be guilty of something. Obama said so.

He informed his followers that "Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered." This they already knew, many through painful, personal experience. What is to be done? Well, "in the words of Scripture," Obama proclaimed, "the time has come to set aside childish things." Things like boorishly interrupting the nation's business (now Obama's business) with complaints about particular African American grievances such as chronically high jobless rates, neglected schools, gross criminal injustice, housing segregation. Citing the litany is bad form - damn near un-American, Obama seemed to indicate.

"Pilgrims understood that Obama was preparing to lower the boom on some undeserving, ‘narrow interests' that had malingered on the public dole."
He pressed the point. "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." Who was Obama talking about? In hindsight, possibly Obama was referring to those whom he knew would in less than a week be complaining that he had delayed congressional action on "universal" health care, dashed the hopes of besieged homeowners in need of a law that would allow judges to adjust their mortgages, abandoned the Gulf Coast Civic Action bill to create 100,000 jobs and affordable housing for Katrina-ravaged Americans, and put organized labor's Employee Free Choice Act on the back burner. Yes, that would be cause for "recriminations" and deployment of "worn-out dogmas" regarding the people's rights to health care, housing, jobs and dignity.

Obama, object of the Great Hajj, personification of Black Mecca, continued: "Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed." Even far out near the Washington Monument, pilgrims understood that Obama was preparing to lower the boom on some undeserving, "narrow interests" that had malingered on the public dole for too long. What they may not have noticed in preparing to join the Hajj - at considerable sacrifice, for some - was that two weeks before, Obama had revealed the "unpleasant decisions" he was contemplating. Social Security and Medicare were "a central part" of his planned overhaul of federal spending.

"Obamites characteristically invest their own meanings in his speeches."
Those who thought the battle of Social Security had been fought, and won, back in George W. Bush's first term, were mistaken. This time, Obama the Democrat is putting "entitlements" on the chopping block, on his own initiative. Few on the Mall understood his meaning. No surprise - Obamites characteristically invest their own meanings to his speeches, while remaining oblivious to his actual political positions. In 17 minutes, it was over, and the pilgrims began to disperse. Obama had spoken of "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights." In fact, Black people haven't lowered their expectations, but instead, imagine that their wildest dreams have come true in the form of Obama. It is an unsustainable delusion, which Obama himself will dispel over time. But you couldn't tell the 2009 hajjis that....
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com This e-mail address protected from spam bots, needs JavaScript enabled to view it .

A MATTER OF DEFIANCE: The Massacre of Innocents
William C. Carlotti, Vermont
williamccarlotti@msn.com

Guernica
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far, far from it: at the same time, he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments.
Pablo Picasso

Giotto, Massacre of the Innocents, Arena Chapel, consecrated 1305.

A recently sent me the following two reviews of the newly released film Defiance and recommended I be sure to see it.
(SEE:  Consider The Source, by Kim Voynar, Movie City News, Oscar Outsider Dec. 24, 2008 and Heroes in the Family, by Eric Herschthal, The Jewish Week, Dec. 12, 2008 )
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c344_a14394/The_Arts/Film.html
 http://www.moviecitynews.com/columnists/voynar/2008/081224.html
 
The film Defiance is one of a group of films that have appeared this year with a similar theme involving the decade long nazi led German government's assault on humanity. The spate of films include The Boy With The Striped Pajamas, Valkyrie, and The Reader. The question that must arise because of this sudden renewal of the genre is --- Is it a result of the increasing criticism of the Jewish Zionist led, Christian Zionist supported Israeli government 60 year murderous assault on the people of Palestine as Israel occupies and absorbs the Palestine beyond Israel's internationally recognized borders demonstrated by its latest barbarous assault on the Gaza sector of Palestine?...
Yehuda Bauer, academic advisor to Yad Vashem in Israel, put it this way on January 27, 2006 at the first commemoration of nazi led Germany's victims at the United Nations, "...why is there a flood of fiction, theater, films, TV series, and music, and, of course, historical, sociological, philosophical, psychological, and other academic research, a flood that has rarely if ever been equaled in dealing with any other historical event? Bauer asks the question as a rhetorical question in his speech---it is a good question-- he has his answer and I have mine.

From my perspective, there are two reasons for the flood. The first and foremost reason is that it makes a hero out of the United States in its historical narrative. The scenario as it is played out in the narrative of the United States is that the "forces of freedom and democracy" defeated "the forces of totalitarianism and genocidal despotism". So much of a hero, in fact, that the three centuries of the organized, industrial, capture, transport, enslavement and murder of millions of Africans and indigenous people of this land is shuttled into the background. So much so that the racist characteristics of the nazi led venture with its racial courts--to detect non-aryans using the tools developed by the eugenics movement in the United States-- is also shunted into the background as the United States' racially segregated armed forces engaged them.
Imagine ---a centuries old industry that has special forces and traders engaged in the capture of humans, has a whole industry that builds special transport ships for its human cargo, has specific insurance for the transport, has an industry that produces special iron forged instruments of containment and torture, has an international trade involving the production and sale of rum as the finance for the human cargo, has a whole religious, philosophical academic rationale for the industry, has special training camps and personnel for breaking the will of the captured, has an entire society built on the premise of this industry for centuries. Then, when the flood described by Bauer of the nazi led decade is considered, there is scarcely, in comparison, a trickle of the myriad of descriptions possible, in the vast variety of genre that Bauer lists, of this enormous racist human crime of the United States. 
This is not a comparative analysis of the two historical events but, instead, it is a description of how the one historical event in its emphasis and abundance, in its "flood" as Bauer puts it about the decade of the nazi led German government's atrocities, is used, on the one hand, to embellish the United States historical narrative and, on the other hand, to subsume and to smother the enormous, unspeakable, human genocidal atrocities committed for centuries by the racist, slave holders controlled United States government....

The second and equally relevant reason has been examined in detail by Norman Finkelstein in his consummate study of the "flood" phenomenon in his books The Holocaust Industry, Reflections On The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering and Beyond Chutzpah, On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and The Abuse of History.
 So as much as I am inspired by the recounting of the stories of the heroes that opposed the nazi led atrocities, the story of my family's participation in the resistance in Italy and of my family's and the myriad of other family's and their organized resistance to the racism of the United States will have to suffice until this latter issue is seriously dealt with  and the "flood" about the stories about the nazi-led German government is recognized for the purposes it serves independent of the accounts of its victims.