Black Panthers

In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.
It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda.

Frequently we see the case against gun control entirely grounded upon a Constitutional defense of the Second Amendment. While the Founding Fathers’ warnings about the importance of defending liberty with an armed populace are as important today as they have ever been, this approach has some flaws.

CINCINNATI, OHIO — In a stinging rebuke of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the organization’s local affiliate here last month announced that it was severing all ties to a movement it characterized as opportunistic, too invested in liberal, electoral politics and the Democratic party, and ultimately ineffective in fighting state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans.

The Marvel/Disney movie “Black Panther” is the latest example of an idea with anti-capitalist origins being co-opted for corporate commodification and profit, explains Lawrence Davidson in this analysis. By Lawrence Davidson Paradoxical Profit Unless regulated, capitalism operates as a wide-open…Read more →

Today’s livestream will cover an odd assortment of films, namely the recent anti-Russian propaganda piece, Red Sparrow starring Katniss as a honeytrap hoe. With nods to Russian versions of MK ULTRA, the story centers around the NKVD style creation of sex operatives at work in the “new Cold War” between the “free” west and “evil” Russia. “Noble” CIA operatives square off against perverse Putin-looking Russkies in this laughable portrayal.

The decades-old case of convicted police killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has always centered on whether the legal process was rigged against the black political activist, an argument that has new life, reports Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein A potential…Read more →

Continuing from the first part of this series, one critique that is missed in the talk about the March on Science is the fact that science has often failed the proletariat, used in their oppression, and as a form of destruction. Of course, this may be too much to expect of a bourgeois progressive and liberal crowd in Washington and across the world who are myopically focused on Trump but not on the bigger picture.

Author John Potash joins me in the first hour for a discussion of his book The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders. John describes the radical political life that Tupac was born into; mother Afeni Shakur and step father Mutulu Shakur were both prominent Black Panthers. We talk about the impact that this had on Tupac and how this would ultimately shape his life and his untimely death. John talk about the political messages with in Tupac’s songs, as well as his efforts behind the scenes to broker peace between gangs such as The Bloods and Crips.

A young boy holds his fist up while wearing tape over his mouth during a Black Lives Matter protest at an entrance to Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016, in response to the police shooting deaths of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla. and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, N.C.