I thought Adam Lambert gave an amazing performance.
It was on YOUTUBE, I was listening to music and doing other things on another screen. That song came on and I was like, "Oh, Cher's doing 'Believe' as a ballad." I thought it would be interesting and then his voice comes on . . .
I didn't know he could sing that amazing.
I was really blown away.
Great job, Adam. Wish I'd seen this in real time (2019)
Friday, August 13, 2021. Criticism is aired at Joe Biden -- for not
supporting Medicare For All? no, for not creating a UBI? no, for not
doing away with student loan debt? no -- for attempting to ease the US
out of the corruption quagmire aka Afghanistan, and much more.
Watching the rapid deterioration of the security situation in
Afghanistan—the Taliban have captured a third of the country’s
provincial capitals in the weeks since the U.S. military pulled its
troops out—has evoked a feeling of déjà vu for me.
In 2005, I was an adviser to an Iraqi infantry battalion conducting
counterinsurgency operations in and around Baghdad, one of the most
violent parts of Iraq during one of the most violent periods in that conflict.
It was difficult to have any hope at the time. I returned to Iraq in
2009, this time in Mosul, where my unit advised and supported two
Iraqi-army divisions, one Iraqi-federal-police division, and thousands
of local police officers. This time, I sensed more progress: Leaving
Iraq in 2010, I felt we had done a great job, turning a corner and
building a capable and competent security force. A year later, I found
myself in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, recruiting and training Afghan
police units and commandos. After nine months there, I again rotated
home thinking we had done some good.
I would be proved wrong on both
counts. In 2014, by then stationed at the Pentagon, I watched in dismay
as the Iraqi divisions I’d helped train collapsed in a matter of days
when faced with the Islamic State. Today, as the Taliban seizes terrain
across Afghanistan, including in what was my area of operations, I
cannot help but stop and reflect on my role. What did my colleagues and I
get wrong? Plenty.
From the
very beginning, nearly two decades ago, the American military’s effort
to advise and mentor Iraqi and Afghan forces was treated like a pickup
game—informal, ad hoc, and absent of strategy. We patched together small
teams of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, taught them some basic
survival skills, and gave them an hour-long lesson in the local
language before placing them with foreign units. We described them
variously as MiTTs, BiTTs, SPTTs, AfPak Hands, OMLT, PRTs, VSO, AAB,
SFAB, IAG, MNSTC-I, SFAATs—each new term a chapter in a book without a
plot.
Let's all sing it with Aretha.
Indeed. Trying hard to recreate what had never been created.
Mike
Todd's nonsense goes to why military experience has little to do with
anything other than military experience. Years and years in the
military and he wants to tell you that the problem in Afghanistan or
Iraq -- the repeated problems -- has to do with flawas in training. And
he tries to pull in sports metaphors because, well, when you're
offering tired observations -- inaccurate at that -- you dress them up
however you can.
The answer was never training.
The US spent a ton of time training in Iraq and almost as much in Afghanistan.
Training was never the issue.
In
2014, in Iraq, the Iraqi security forces did not crumble because of
lack of training. In 2008, in Iraq, the military did not see mass
desertions during the attack on Basra due to lack of training.
The issue has always been that there was no buy-in.
Why risk your life for a government that does not represent you?
In
both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government repeatedly undermined real
democratic efforts when they sprung up. They installed leaders who
were compliant to the US but who were corrupt and despots or tyrants.
They did this over and over.
Some idiots
thought the Sunnis, in Iraq, would rise up against ISIS. And these
idiots usually then turned the lack of an uprising into 'The Sunnis
support ISIS!'
No, the Sunnis were a
disenfranchised group who saw massive failure in the government the
regularly persecuted them. The fight between ISIS and the Iraqi
government wasn't a fight that interested them because neither side had
their best interests ar heart.
Corrupt governments fall -- eventually, they fall.
And it doens't matter how often or how well you've trained their security forces.
If
Mike Jason can't grasp that basic reality -- and it appears that he
cannot -- then he really has nothing much to offer other than a progress
review of what we all already knew.
High-level #corruption has impeded foreign investment in Iraq, much to the detriment of ordinary citizens and businesses. However, we think donor countries are as much to blame as the country's corrupt political system.
The ongoing exodus from Iraq by foreign oil companies can be attributed to several reasons including:
-Iraq's inhospitable investment environment
-Rampant corruption
-Government mismanagement
-Delayed payments
Read here: http://et.aa.com.tr/33179
So
corruption is enough to drive out foreign investment as well as send
Big Oil packing? But it has no effects on the citizens of the country?
Why is that?
Is
that because we're so full of ourselves that we assume the citizens of a
country -- a foreign country -- are just stupid and anything can be
done without them noticing?
The
stupid ones wouldn't appear to me to be the Iraqi people or the citizens
of Afhganistan. The fools, however, would include people who wrongly
thought the US military was a nation building body -- especially foolish
for those who served in it to believe that. A standing military exists
to battle, to carry out war. How do you confuse that with nation
building?
Somewhere along the way, it appears a
lot of people never bothered to learn their vocabulary lists and, as a
result, struggle with words today.
As the Taliban blitz across
Afghanistan and U.S. officials scramble to assess just how quickly the
government in Kabul could fall, President Joe Biden is recalibrating his
message to Americans.
Where he once insisted
that two decades of U.S. backing had left Afghan forces capable of
defending themselves, Biden and his aides have shifted to a more
cold-blooded mantra: If they can’t, that’s not our problem.
As POLITOC tut-tuts throughout, they refuse to grasp that Joe Biden is right.
Joe's right and showing more maturity than many would have guessed he was capable of.
Since
the Afghanistan War started in 2001, there have been three more
presidents -- Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. That's not how
wars are supposed to go, no.
And, if, after all these years, nothing is accomplished, that's your answer.
I
have no idea whether Joe's decision will be a popular one a year from
now. But it was a mature decision. The lack of progress has been
evident for over a decade. Someone had to be the grown up in the room.
Glad Joe stepped up.
If the topic of
corruption is new to you, that's really on you. In terms of
Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes has been writing about it and speaking about
it forever. The video below is from 2016.
Human rights abuses, classically defined, are gory: nighttime
disappearances, a corpse lodged in the weeds by the side of a canal,
scars from electrical burns blotching bruised skin or bodies swinging
above city streets from the crossbeams of cranes. The horror of such
crimes is easy to decry. But what about government crime that may be
less gruesome though possibly even more consequential? Acute, systemic
corruption is such an offense. And that is exactly what the United
States, in the name of democracy, has enabled over the past 13 years in
Afghanistan.
To the east of the Afghan city of Kandahar,
where I lived for most of the past decade, is a long bridge over the
Tarnak River. A decomposing carcass of dangerously exposed sinews,
shattered by war and neglect, that bridge was an obvious reconstruction
project for the Afghan government to take on. But within weeks of each
repair, new holes would spring open; drivers had to pick their way
around them, or abandon the bridge altogether and hazard the rocky
riverbed below. Then repairs would begin anew. Meanwhile, the
contractors on the job, linked to the provincial governor, flaunted
sudden wealth.
A scan of recent reports by the U.S.
government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
reveals dozens more cases out of the $63 billion the United States has
spent on reconstruction there since 2002: an unfinished courthouse in the province of Parwan, millions of dollars in unaccountable fuel purchases by the Afghan National Security Forces, poorly constructed schools.
I once asked a weathered old man who
cultivated grapes and a few pomegranate trees on the parched plain west
of Kandahar what corruption meant. He answered: “When the governor of
the district keeps all the reconstruction money for himself and his
cronies and surrounds himself with armed thugs so no one can approach
him to lodge a complaint, that’s corruption.” For him, it was no
abstraction: When U.S. troops arrived in the man’s village during the
2009 surge, they blew up the thick-walled building his father had
fashioned to dry grapes into prized raisins, lest Taliban militants
shelter there. Afghan national army troops, under nominal U.S.
supervision, stripped the building of its precious wooden beams and
carried them off, presumably to sell.
This wasn’t an example of the system failing;
it was an example of the system—sustained and secured by the United
States—at work. Over the past decade, corruption in Afghanistan has
crystallized into a business of structured networks, with subordinates
paying a part of the take up the line, in return for protection from
repercussions. Impunity has become the rule. President Hamid Karzai and
other top Afghan officials have spent considerable energy guaranteeing
it, releasing suspects from preventive detention, shutting down
investigations or, in one case, even apparently facilitating the flight
to England of a former minister under a travel ban. According to the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghans were forced to pay nearly $4 billion in bribes in 2012. But that can only be a fraction of the overall cost of corruption in the country.
We could do this all day. Sarah's been writing about Afghanistan since the start of the war.
I'm
not seeing any of her isnight in Mike Jason's article. Is he really
unaware of it? Is he that isolated and out of touch and unable to leave
his comfort zone?
Possibly.
Iraq?
Not
that long ago, the man who murdered (or is suspected of murdering -- I
don't believe the trial has taken place yet) -- a government advisor was
arrested. The advisor had been murdered a year prior. The advisor was
a personal friend of sitting Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kahdimi. The
western press tried to promote that as a triumph and answer to the Iraqi
people.
As I noted here, no.
No,
that was not the reaction on Iraqi social media. The reaction was that
if you were a friend of Mustafa's and if you worked for the government
then the otherwise non-responsive government would go after your
killer.
If you were an Iraqi activist? Nothing of the sort happens.
We bring that up because ARAB WEEKLY's noting the assassination of a mayor earlier this week and, golly, gee, the reaction among the Iraqi people is, yet again, not one of jubiliation:
The gunning down in the street of a municipal official in the Iraqi
shrine city of Karbala sparked anger Wednesday over the government’s
failure to halt a wave of assassinations.
Abir Salim, the director of municipal services in the city which
houses the mausoleums of two of Shia Islam’s most revered figures, was
shot dead as he was carrying out his duties on Tuesday, Prime Minister
Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s office said.
He was on foot supervising a survey of unauthorised construction in
Karbala when his killer pulled out a gun and shot him at close range.
Security camera footage posted on social media showed an attacker,
dressed in a traditional white robe, open fire in the street and Salim
fall to the ground.
The suspected killer was arrested shortly afterwards.
“Murderers and criminals will not escape punishment,” the prime
minister promised as he visited Karbala on Wednesday to offer his
condolences to Salim’s family.
His office released photographs of him berating the suspected killer,
who had been blindfolded by his police captors, during a visit to the
crime scene.
The images did little to assuage public anger at the apparent
impunity for politically linked crimes that has seen more than 70
activists targeted for assassination since October 2019.
“The weakness of the security forces goes hand in hand with the
intimidation of society by the tribes, religion and the political
parties,” one Twitter user complained.
Another demanded that Kadhimi show the same energy in tracking down the killers of pro-reform activists.
There have been no claims of responsibility for the wave of killings.
But supporters of anti-government protests that broke out in 2019
charge that the culprits are known to the security forces but allowed to
go free because of political connections, particularly with Iraq’s
powerful neighbour Iran.dsd
The spot where Ehab al-Wazni was gunned down is just out of reach of
the security cameras that project onto a TV screen in the corner of his
family’s living room. His mother Samira casts a nervous glance at the
screen whenever the sound of an engine echoes down the narrow alleyway
that leads to their house in the Iraqi city of Karbala.
“Why
did you kill him? What did he do to you? Did he hurt you? He did
nothing wrong,” she bursts out during an interview with The Daily Beast,
after looking at her son’s portrait arranged next to the TV.
Wazni was on his way home in the early hours of May 9 when two men on a
motorbike pulled up next to his car. CCTV footage shows one man
unloading a silenced pistol
into the white sedan, shooting its driver three times in the head and
twice in the chest. The men speed off into the night, leaving their
victim slumped in his seat.
One of Iraq’s most prominent political activists, Wazni knew he was living in the shadow of death.
“Do
you know what is going on? You know that they kidnap and kill, or you
live in another country,” he had mockingly asked Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in a Facebook post in February this year.
The
prime minister had promised to investigate a wave of killings that has
swept the country. The victims are often young, politically active
Iraqis, and Wazni’s death is one of countless that have gone unpunished.
The
failure to rein in the killers is jarring to many citizens who believe
the government knows who the culprits are. Powerful Iraqi militias,
unshackled from state control, have been linked to the murder of
hundreds during mass protests that engulfed Iraq in October 2019. Seeing
their position under threat in upcoming elections, they are now
suspected of picking off protest leaders, one by one.
Only a few make the headlines. Dr. Riham Yacoub, a human rights activist and protester, was shot in Basra last August. A few months later, the Baghdad activist Salah al-Iraqi was gunned down. Even family members are not off-limits. Ali Karim, the son of women’s rights advocate Fatima al-Bahadly, was kidnapped on July 23. His body was found a day later.
When
hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets to protest
rampant government corruption, high unemployment, and Tehran’s influence
in Iraqi politics, 45-year-old Wazni quickly emerged as a leading
figure. He pitched a tent in front of the governor’s building in
Karbala, firing up the crowd with impassioned speeches. His acerbic
social media posts ruffled the feathers of government officials and gave
impetus to young Iraqis hooked on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
“We protested to put an end to corruption, to establish rule of law, and
not live in a country where the militias rule,” says his brother, Ali.
He and his mother decided to speak to The Daily Beast despite receiving
frequent anonymous threats warning them to remain silent over Wazni’s
killing.
YouTube has continued to enforce and expand its censorship of
opposing views on its site — enforcing what it considers to be the truth
on various issues. The latest subject is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who
has been suspended from the site for expressing his opposition to Covid
mandates. One does not have to agree with Paul on his view of Covid or
mandates to see the danger of such corporate control over public
discourse in the United States. However, politicians (including President Joe Biden) are calling for even greater censorship to silence those with opposing views on such subjects.
Rand posted a video on Sunday in which he lashed out at the calls for
mandates and the “petty tyrants and bureaucrats” supporting them,
including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden. He called for
people to stand up against these efforts:
“It’s time for us to resist. They can’t
arrest all of us. They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. …
We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns and harmful policies of
the petty tyrants and bureaucrats. We can simply say no. Not again.
Nancy Pelosi, you will not arrest, or stop me or anyone on my staff
from doing our jobs. We have either had Covid, had the vaccine, or been
offered the vaccine. We will make our own health choices. We will not
show you a passport. We will not wear a mask. We will not be forced into
random screenings so you can continue your drunk with power reign over
the Capitol.
“President Biden, we will not accept your agencies’ mandates or your reported moves towards a lockdown.”
Sen. Paul has been criticized for this and other statements on Covid
but many agree with him. This is part of our political debate. People
have a free speech right to oppose the mandates and question the science
cited by the government. In this case, a corporation is preventing a
major political figure from being able to use its platform to engage
others on this subject. It is picking and choosing who can speak and
what they can say. It has a right to do so as a private company but it
is wrong to do so. It is a denial of free speech and we need to address
the corporate control over political speech in the United States.
This
issue is huge with many aspects to it. I oppose censorship and I
oppose censoring Paul. f support all the points Jonathan Turley makes.
There's another point though -- there are many other points -- that
doesn't get made by him that I feel needs to be made.
A
sitting senator is being censored? We do understand, don't we, that a
member of Congress can stand on the floor of Congress and read into the
official record anything that they want -- even state secrets. But
YOUTUBE thinks it has the right to censor Rand Paul?
This
is wrong and it has huge implications. It has to do with who gets to
raise issues and who doesn't and who gets access and who doesn't. It has
implications on coverage at election time. Most of all, when a
politician speaks that is political speech.
YOUTUBE and the other Tech Monsters -- as Elaine
rightly calls them -- want to argue what is political speech.
Political speech is Constitutionally protected speech. And we can
debate many things and quibble over it but when we're talking about the
words out of sitting US senator's mouth about a public policy, that's
political speech. There's nothing to quibble over.
YOUTUBE
is censoring political speech and has been for some time. I don't
subscribe to that. I don't applaud it. It needs to be called out.
I'm
getting a message that the HTML code for Glenn's video is not working so
I've tried to do a work around on my own -- my HTML days are really
long ago and self-taught -- if that doesn't work and the video doesn't
show up, click here to stream it.
Thursday, August 12, 2021. The US government continues to persecute
Julian Assange for exposing their lies in Iraq and elsewhere.
Starting with Julian Assange.
Monday April 5, 2010, WIKILEAKS released US military video
of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the
assault including two REUTERS journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed
Chmagh. Prior to the release, the US government had repeatedly lied
about the incident. It was an embarrassment and the US government has
wanted revenge ever since.
Julian remains held in a
UK prison for no valid legal reason. And the US government continues
its efforts to get Julian handed over to them. A new development took
place yesterday. Richard Medhurst reports on it in the clip below . . .
Papers writing on Assange should mention the core of the US's extradition case—a frail and deeply suspect "hacking" claim—collapsed in June when the US's prime witness recanted his testimony (https://stundin.is/grein/13627/). What remains are only "unlawful journalism" charges.
Sarah Abdallah Tweets:
“Nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies.”
Free Julian Assange
3:42 PM · Aug 11, 2021
In the FORBES video below, AP's Matthew Lee asks State Dept spokesperson Ned Price about Julian Assange.
Here's the exchange from the official State Dept press briefing transcript:
QUESTION: Thanks. Just before we get to what I’m
sure will be Afghanistan, I just want to – on the administration’s
commitment to democracy, human rights, which I think includes freedom of
the press and your support for that, I just wanted to ask you really
quickly about the situation with Julian Assange in London, the court
hearing that was held today. And if you’re only going to refer to the
Justice Department, then I don’t need to hear a long explanation of
that, but I just – what I want to know is from the State Department’s
point of view, because it was State Department equities that were among
the first that were compromised, quote/unquote – I mean, you have an
interest in – the State Department has an interest in this case. So I’m
just wondering if it is still the position of the State Department that
Assange is not a journalist and that he is – he should be tried for
theft of what are – what you would essentially say are state secrets.
MR PRICE: Matt, by referring to the Department of Justice, as we always do in cases like this, it doesn’t indicate —
QUESTION: Yeah, no, no, I’m just asking —
MR PRICE: It doesn’t indicate we don’t have an
interest. It indicates that we have a respect for the separation of
institutions and the independence of Department of Justice.
QUESTION: Your – the position of this administration
since it came in talking about how important the freedom of press is,
has – that hasn’t impacted the department’s position on this case. Is
that correct?
MR PRICE: This is a matter before the Department of Justice. It’s a matter the Department of Justice is pursuing.
QUESTION: It’s not a matter before the Department of
Justice. It’s a matter before the British court. But I just want to
know if your position, the State Department’s position, that you
represent to the Department of Justice who then represents you has
changed at all.
MR. PRICE: Matt, the Department of Justice is
pursuing this. I will leave it to them to pursue and to characterize the
United States Government’s position on this.
QUESTION: Okay, so the State Department’s position hasn’t changed, correct?
MR. PRICE: Matt, the Department of Justice is speaking for the United States —
QUESTION: Oh, my god.
MR. PRICE: — in a law enforcement matter.
QUESTION: Why can’t you give straight answers? Yes or no, has it changed or not over the course of the last eight years?
MR. PRICE: The Department of Justice in this matter —
QUESTION: I am fully aware, Ned.
MR. PRICE: Matt, you don’t need to be combative, okay? You don’t need to be combative.
QUESTION: I – I —
MR. PRICE: I know you like to get worked up, but please, this is —
QUESTION: I’m not trying to get worked up. I just want a straight answer. Did —
MR. PRICE: It’s a simple matter that’s before the Department of Justice.
QUESTION: Fine.
All right. So in terms of your grand promotion of democracy, human
rights, which are going to be at the center of U.S. foreign policy, as
we will see no doubt in December when the President hosts his summit of –
for democracy, how does that relate exactly to Afghanistan and your
promotion of human rights and democracy when you have a situation where
the country is rapidly coming under control of a group that has shown no
respect for democracy and human rights ever?
MR. PRICE: I’m sorry, the question was —
QUESTION: How do you reconcile this? How do you –
how does the administration expect to be taken seriously in terms of
promoting human rights and democracy as being at the center of U.S.
foreign policy if it is prepared to allow Afghanistan to deteriorate
into a situation where a group that has shown – that you yourself just
days ago have accused of committing atrocities – if you’re prepared to
allow that to happen.
MR. PRICE: I would reject every single premise of that question. The United States —
QUESTION: Really? Because most of what I just said is actual – is factual.
Staying with the topic of truth tellers, BLACK AGENDA REPORT is currently celebrating the life and work of the late Glen Ford.:
Last week, the great truth teller Glen Ford died. It was a huge loss, the entire Thursday "Iraq snapshot"
was devoted to Glen Ford because he mattered so much. And, honestly,
also because if he were a White person -- say a so-so White woman
playwright -- he'd get tons of attention from the press the way that
hack did when she died at the same time as Coretta Scott King and THE
NEW YORK TIMES chose to run multiple pieces on the so-so playwright
while refusing every submission on the passing of Coretta for their
op-ed pages and also relegating Coretta's death to one -- and only one
-- report. Or, for that matter, the non-stop saturation YOUTUBE
coverage of the death of Michael Brooks.
Hate to break
it to those who seal themselves off in White America, but we didn't know
who Michael Brooks was until after he died and, when the news first
started popping up, for about a week, we thought they were saying radio
personality Michael Baisden had passed away. We honestly don't consider
that lack of awareness of Brooks to be a liability. We do know who
Glen Ford was.
Of the two, we'd argue Glen Ford
mattered much more. But he's African-American and so, to 'liberal'
America -- a largely White and self-contained bubble -- he's not really
known at all and, if he is, well his death isn't as important as yacker
Michael Brooks.
You can see that with a simple YOUTUBE
search. Hundreds of videos when JACOBIN's Michael Brooks dies. Handful
-- a small handful -- when Glen Ford passes.
That
was written the week after he died. It's now been another week. Hate
to break it to the bulk of White Left but one Tweet or one headline is
not really sufficient. And if you think all of America won't notice it
when you're next so-so White person dies and you treat it as though JFK
has just been assassinated, you are wrong.
You are
the reasons that walls exist. Donald Trump didn't build those walls, you
did, while railing against Trump and pretending you were so much better
than him. Sorry, but you're honestly not.
Glen had a
body of work, a lifetime of work, and you didn't judge the work or the
person worthy of truly noting. Your reaction did send a message. And
it made the wall between you and others all the higher.
Ford was among the few journalists who took a stance for Black liberation and against imperialism.
I had the honor of working with the late Glen Ford for nearly 20 years. His passing has created a huge void not just for Black Agenda Report (BAR),
the site we co-founded with the late Bruce Dixon, but for all of Black
politics and left media. Ford identified his political and journalistic
stance with both, having created the tagline: “News, commentary and
analysis from the black left” for BAR. He was the consummate
journalist, a man who demanded rigorous analysis of himself and others,
and he lived by the dictum of afflicting the comfortable and comforting
the afflicted. Ford co-founded a publication in line with his core
values: He did not suffer fools gladly, succumb to corporate media and
government narratives, or feel obligated to change his politics in order
to elevate the Black face in a high place.
Ford spoke of learning this lesson the hard way. He told a story of regret, his ethical dilemma, when he gave one such Black person, Barack Obama, a pass in 2003. At that time, Ford, Dixon and I were all working at Black Commentator. Obama
had announced his candidacy for the United States Senate and he was
listed as a member of the Democratic Leadership Council (DCL), the
right-leaning, corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Obama had also
removed an antiwar statement from his website.
Ford and Dixon posed what they called “bright line questions” to
Obama on issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement,
single-payer health care and Iraq. His fuzzy answers should have flunked
him, but Ford chose not to be seen as “a crab in a barrel,” one who
pulled another of the group down. Obama was given an opportunity to
comment in Black Commentator and Ford wrote, “[Black Commentator]
is relieved, pleased, and looking forward to Obama’s success in the
Democratic senatorial primary and Illinois general election.”
As he witnessed Obama’s actions on the campaign trail and eventually
in office, Ford never again felt obligated to depart from his political
stances or to defend a member of the group whose politics were not in
keeping with the views of the Black left.
From that moment on, Glen Ford did not let up on Obama, just as he
did not waver from his staunch opposition to neoliberalism and U.S.
imperialism. Black Agenda Report became the go-to site for all leftists. BAR’s critique
of Obama when he led the destruction of Libya was no less stinging than
critiques of George W. Bush when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Ford declared
that Obama and the Democrats were not the “lesser evil” that millions of
people hoped for. Instead, they were just the more effective evil, and they were always in BAR’s journalistic sights.
Ford was always an uncompromising defender of Black people and never
shrank from explaining the mechanisms which place that group at or near
the bottom of all positive metrics and at or near the top of all the
negative. He was one of the first to amplify the term “mass
incarceration” in his unsparing analysis of the United States and its
dubious distinction as the nation with more people behind bars than any
other: more than 2 million, with half of those being Black, a cohort
which makes up one-quarter of all the incarcerated in the world. Black Agenda Report can be counted on to give this information consistently and with no punches pulled.
Glen Ford was a committed socialist, a Vietnam-era military veteran
and a member of the Black Panther Party. He spent part of his childhood
and youth in Columbus, Georgia, in the days of apartheid in the United
States. Those life experiences shaped his work and left a legacy that
anyone who considers themselves a leftist ought to follow.
He worked in the media throughout his adult life and served as a
Capitol Hill, White House and State Department correspondent for the Mutual Black Network.
In 1977, he co-founded “America’s Black Forum,” which was the first
nationally syndicated Black-oriented program on commercial television.
That's
just an excerpt. The excerpt alone argues for something more than a
Tweet or, Amy Goodman, a headline. I hope everyone remembers the net
time Amy's devoting a whole show to some movie start who passed away or
some other person that when it came to Glen Ford, a headline was just
enough for Amy.
Where's today's Howard Zinn? Someone
needs to find her or him because we truly need A PEOPLE'S OBITUARY as
much as we need A PEOPLE'S HISTORRY. Glen's life mattered, his actions
mattered and yet we refuse to honor the person or the work when we
resort to silence.
I guess it's really easy for a lot
of White liberals to type "#BLACKLIVESMATTER" but it's harder to
actually do the work required to make that hashtag come alive.
Knowing Glen, I regretted that I hadn’t managed to come up with a few
good jokes in that farewell message, but I wasn’t up to it and didn’t
know how much time I had, so I just did what I could. His readers no
doubt knew what a wicked sense of irony he had but probably don’t know
that he could even turn it to his own illness.
I called once when he was struggling and asked how he was doing,
which seemed like an inane question by that time, but he responded, “I
CAN’T BREATHE,” echoing the words of George Floyd and so many others
with comic irony.
Glen suffered from kidney failure several years before developing
lung cancer and had to begin a dialysis regime three days a week. Once
we exchanged a few messages when he was on his way to a VA Hospital
somewhere in Pennsylvania to be evaluated for a possible kidney
transplant. On the way back he joked that due to his age—near 70 then—
they couldn’t place him high on the waiting list and wouldn’t waste the
best kidney available on him even if his number came up.
I told him that I’d never signed the release to donate my kidneys or
any other organs because I’d subjected my body to so many toxins that my
organs couldn’t be of much use to anyone. He said that had always been
his excuse as well.
Once I sent him a piece
about the latest violent incidents in the Democratic Republic of
Congo’s Virunga National Park, a wildlife reserve and jungle habitat in
the heart of war-torn eastern Congo, and its valiant park rangers, many
of whom have died defending it. Then I asked him which of several photos
he’d like to use and he said, “I like the sister ranger. Took me back
to what I used to get up to in my army days.” (The sister ranger was
cute as hell in a beret and a perky ponytail.) We wound up using a pic
of some brother park rangers with the mountain gorillas that the park is
famous for, but I sent more pics later and said, “Here are some more of
those sister rangers, since you like them so much.”
In 2018, he wrote a more serious account of his time in the U.S. Army
and how his unit, the 82nd Airborne, was transformed by the Newark, New
Jersey, race rebellion of 1967, a year before MLK was assassinated and
they were deployed to Washington, DC:
“An 18 year-old paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division,
stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I had been on field exercises
with my unit the week before, providing security for the commanding
general’s headquarters. Under a big tent, company commanders and their
executive officers spent that Wednesday, April 3, pouring over maps of
Washington, DC, in the event we had to occupy the city. When King was
killed on the evening of the next day, the division hastily packed its
gear and moved back to barracks to prepare for deployment to burning
cities. The general, however, somehow forgot to restrict all 12,000 of
us to base. Some of us took advantage of the oversight, and went home
for the weekend.
“When I and hundreds of other paratroopers straggled back to Fort
Bragg early Monday morning, April 8, the rest of my unit was sitting on
an airfield near Baltimore, as the brass tried to decide whether we
should be deployed in that city or nearby Washington. Both were burning,
along with over 100 other cities. We wound up in the nation’s capital.
“The year before, Newark, New Jersey, had been occupied by nearly
lily-white units of the National Guard, sent there to quell a four-day
rebellion in which 26 Blacks were killed. The Guardsmen behaved like an
Army of White Vengeance,joining the racist
cops in savaging Black people and shooting up businesses displaying
“Black-owned” and “Soul Brother” signs on the Springfield Avenue
thoroughfare. However, the 82nd Airborne Division was a different social
organism, entirely; our ranks were 60 percent Black, and we had been
transformed. All of us (at least in my company) were aware of what had
happened in Newark. As far as the Black troops were concerned, our
division had only one mission in Washington, DC: to make sure the white
soldiers -- especially the mostly white military police -- did no harm
to the Black population. And they did not dare. Not one Black citizen of
Washington was hurt by a soldier of the 82nd Airborne division -- or,
to my knowledge, even verbally abused -- during the occupation.
“Our officers took note, and were clearly disturbed by our
protective postures. The same Black ghetto army that was rebelling in
Vietnam, was showing that it would not be a party to abuse of Black
people at home. It was the beginning of the end of the draft.”
It took me awhile to find that piece, MLK: A Snapshot in Time,
dated April 5, 2018, in the Black Agenda Report archives, but I finally
did after trying the search term “82nd Airborne.” I forget a lot of
names, phone numbers and the like that I should retain, so my memory of
that obscure detail speaks to how deeply the piece affected me. And to
how much more accessible we need to make the BAR archives.
Shortly after Glen’s death, I told Margaret Kimberley, Ajamu Baraka,
Raymond Nat Turner, and Danny Haiphong that people were no doubt reading
and searching for their favorites in Glen’s BAR archives, as I just
did, but that the archives are not as searchable as they should be.
While Glen struggled with illness during the last few years of his life,
he got the weekly edition of BAR out week after week, even that week
before his death, but couldn’t find time or energy for projects like
this, so we will. If anyone reading this has technical skills they might
lend, please write to me at ann@anngarrison.com because I take particular interest in improving the Black Agenda Report’s accessibility and visibility on the Web.
For many years, Nellie Bailey was Glen's co-host on the weekly BLACK AGENDA RADIO and she writes:
Marxist Glen Ford never wavered from his core belief of
self-determination for oppressed nations and the struggles of working
people around the world dehumanized by U.S. imperialism, a geopolitical
paradigm for global domination. Its ruthless and terrifying
destruction of Iraq shocked the civilized world. On the domestic front,
deindustrialization and corporate trade agreements plunged the middle
and working class into an austerity abyss. This political quagmire
demanded a capitalist reset to shore up a collapsing empire in fear of a
restless populace weary of wars that cost billions of dollars and
countless deaths. Enter into this foray the $1 billion presidential
campaign that mesmerized Black folks of every political stripe.
Ironically, it was the Obama campaign that led me to reach out to Glen
in 2007.
I held the unpopular position that Obama was the brown face of U.S.
imperialism. The popularly held notion that Obama gave Black people a
wink and a nod belied the reality of the racist U.S. empire. Glen
agreed to participate in a community forum entitled: “Is Obama Good for
Black People”, a debate between Glen and Amiri Baraka, an outspoken
supporter of Obama. An enthusiastic and overwhelmingly young audience
cheered Glen. That was the beginning of my 13-year membership with the
BAR family.
Few are aware of Glen’s support for our anti-gentrification
resistance campaign against predatory capital that decimated Black and
Brown neighborhoods. He met with the tenant president of a
seven-building complex that housed over 1,700 units of rent regulated
housing. Glen stood with us against Columbia University's $6 billion
expansion that displaced hundreds of low income families. In 2012,
he protested with us against Obama's self-serving appearance at the
Apollo theater.
I'm especially appalled that the national Green Party
has issued no statement. Few outlets gave that party a fair shake.
BLACK AGENDA REPORT covered the Greens. Ajamu Baraka was the Green
Party's 2020 vice presidential nominee. At BLACK AGENDA REPORT, he writes:
It's easy to run with the herd, especially when it can bring possible
career advancements and even significant monetary gain. That is why,
for so many, making decisions to find a way into the mix, to play the
game in order to advance one’s individual objectives, does not present
any internal moral debate. It is just common sense.
But for the oppressed and their radical intellectuals and activists,
accommodationism is not an option without surrendering one’s soul. Glen
Ford and many of our generation refused to do that.
Glen made the decision to devote himself to being a truth teller on
the side of the people back in the 1970s, at a historic moment when it
was very easy to be an opportunist. Co-optation, an aspect of the
state’s counter-revolutionary response to the new forms of Black
radicalism that emerged in the 1960s, was an important element in the
state’s repertoire. That along with, of course, systemic repression.
But Glen made a conscious decision to take, as Kwame Nkrumah framed
it, a “revolutionary path.” That path is always more difficult, for not
many take it. As a result, the path is quite narrow, no more than a
trail through the forest of normalized reaction projected to the masses
as supposed “common sense.” When one takes that path, very few accolades
nor real economic stability, retirement funds or clear paths forward
are available.
It might end with one laying in a hospital bed for two weeks, while furiously pounding out two issues of Black Agenda Report,
suspecting they may be the last few you will have a hand in shaping and
passing quietly on the morning the next issue was due to come out.
When I spoke with Glen a few weeks ago, before he entered the
hospital, I intended to talk him into relinquishing some of his
responsibilities with BAR, so he could concentrate on trying to
extend his stay on this planet and with us. Yet, in the course of our
comical banter about morality and the meaning of our lives—a discussion
that can only happen when you know you are rapidly approaching the end
of your journey—I never raised the issue of stepping back a little
because Glen made it quite clear how he wanted to depart this earth.
“Ajamu, I am going out struggling.” For him, BAR was his most significant contribution to the “struggle.” Even though he was not healthy, Glen was proud of the work the BAR team had developed and he was satisfied it was continuing.
Reading and listening to Glen Ford’s analysis of the Obama
administration placed a bright spotlight on a historical moment of
intense darkness. At present, there are still too few others who have
been able to coherently place the Obama era in its proper context of the
U.S.’s ongoing counterinsurgency warfare against Black liberation and
self-determination. While much of the American left equated the rise of
Obama with “progress,” Glen Ford repeatedly warned us that the Obama
administration rendered U.S. imperialism and white supremacy a more
effective, and therefore more dangerous, evil.
That’s what revolutionaries do. They warn us through careful
explanation and analysis of how oppressive systems work. They prepare us
to make history through revolution; to replace the old decrepit order
with a new one. But revolutionaries do not just champion any social
order. Glen Ford was quite clear that any social transformation of the
United States must satisfy the needs of humanity, especially the most
terrorized and exploited among us. Socialism and self-determination were
not antithetical principles but rather interconnected aims wholly
consistent with the struggle for Black liberation.
Glen Ford’s work convinced me in rapid fashion of the necessity of
Black revolutionary leadership in the long struggle to build a socialist
project in the United States. His grasp of theory and history was
matched by few others. His talent behind the microphone and written word
brought his analysis to life. From 2011 to 2013, I followed Black
Agenda Report regularly and held it to the sky as a necessary source for
anyone claiming interest in “social justice.” Glen Ford’s work on the
U.S. war against the African country of Libya, an invasion led by the
first Black President of the United States, laid the foundations for my
own anti-imperialist approach to both activism and journalism.
In 2013, I took a leap and submitted my first article to Glen Ford
analyzing Barack Obama’s presidency as a corporate brand. My writing was
raw. I was schooled poorly in grammar and had only begun reading
regularly over the last year. Clarity was not yet a strength that I
possessed. Not to worry. Glen’s brief responses to my submissions over
the next several months provided a basic education into concise
analytical writing, and I owe much of my development as both a writer
and political analyst to him.
From 2014 to 2016, I met Glen Ford in the flesh only in brief
encounters at The Left Forum. In 2017, I moved to New York City. Glen
and I would eventually convene at Molly Wee’s in Manhattan on a periodic
basis and speak for hours about the political situation in the U.S. and
abroad. Glen Ford was a communist who shared his experiences in the
Black Panther Party and the Communist Party without hesitation to
trusted comrades. He loved to tell a good story.
But it wasn’t just for the fun of it. Glen had expectations. He
didn’t need to say it bluntly for me to know that he hoped his stories
would be incorporated in my own work in service of the people. Everything with
Glen was for the people. This didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy a good time,
however. A good time for Glen Ford was defined both by the company he
kept and his passion for analyzing the world and those struggling for
power within it. A drink didn’t hurt, either.
Those
are just five of the pieces currently up. Glen Ford spoke out in a
needed voice over and over. He was also able to talk about something
other than the momentary incident, he linked it up so that you saw the
connections in what others were presenting as an isolated incident.
Of
all the people the internet has helped popularize, few gave us much
insight as Glen did. He is greatly missed because he mattered and so
did his work. It's a real shame that someone who gave so much and meant
so much is thought, by too many White liberals, to be worth nothing
more than a Tweet. I believe that judgment reflects more about their
own lives than it does about Glen Ford's.
