We Are Cornered: There's No Way Out Without A Fight

Glen Ford is a 37-year veteran of Black radio, television, print and Internet news and commentary. He is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com and was co-founder of BlackCommentator.com. www.BlackAgendaReport.com OpEdNews Member for 226 week(s) and 5 day(s) 23 Articles, 0 Quick Links, 2 Comments, 0 Diaries, 0 Polls 23 Articles Wednesday, April 6, 2011 The Obama Disaster, at Home and Abroad (3 comments) Obama has nothing to argue about with the GOP, having himself placed the entire Democratic social welfare legacy on the chopping block for the sake of deficit reduction. Wednesday, February 23, 2011 "We're Broke," Say the Rich, and the Poor Must Pay (10 comments) A society built on racist lies and outright nonsense will believe anything. Therefore, it is no wonder that Republicans have achieved such "wondrous success by planting the words "We're broke' in the mouths of men and women who are transparently rich, and who in turn serve the interests of the super-rich." Unfortunately, President Obama and other Democrats worship the same idols as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Thursday, January 6, 2011 The Whitening of Chocolate City (6 comments) Before the next U.S. Census, several great American cities will lose their Black majorities, an historical development welcomed by some as encouraging racial integration. The author believes otherwise: that Black urban dislocation has created a false impression of fading residential segregation in America, but is "actually a snapshot of a phenomenon in transition towards the unknown." There is nothing progressive about gentrif Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Obama: The Republican's Reliable Interlocutor (2 comments) As Obama tells it, he stood like a pragmatic rock - if one can imagine such a thing - between the Republican "hostage-takers" and the "purist" and "sanctimonious" Democrats - a party of one. Tuesday, November 23, 2010 Psycho-Babbling Obama (23 comments) Still unwilling or unable to admit that they were "psyched out" by Barack Obama and his corporate handlers, Lefties search for psychological reasons that the First Black President has been such a disappointment. It's the failure to fight thing, or the lack of vision thing, or the failure to communicate thing, they say. "It isn't that Obama has trouble conveying his vision, it's that his actual vision is unacceptable ..." Thursday, August 26, 2010 We Are Cornered: There's No Way Out Without A Fight (31 comments) A corporate offensive is rolling down upon us, aimed at wholesale privatization of the public sector. If the Left has learned anything in the last year and a half, it should be that President Obama is Wall Street's guy, having "delivered the highest return on corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy." In this struggle, the people will be left to their own devices. Wednesday, June 23, 2010 America Can't Solve Crises Because It's a Company-Owned Town (6 comments) The Great Gusher in the Gulf is a political, not simply an economic and environmental, crisis. "No amount of public disgust at BP has moved Obama to behave as if he is beholden to the majority that elected him -" for the simple reason that he is not. Thursday, June 3, 2010 Yes, Obama is "Engaged" -- in a Colossal Crime (7 comments) Corporate media pretend to measure degrees of presidential "engagement" with the Gulf crisis -" an "oceanic version of Chernobyl." Such superficial reporting is totally disengaged from the truth that screams from the depths of the sea: "Huge corporations are empowered to seek profits with absolutely no regard for the consequences to Earth or Man." Saturday, May 22, 2010 Massive Race Divide: Blacks Will Never Gain Wealth Equality With Whites Under the Current System A new study shows African Americans are tumbling out of the nation's economic orbit on a tragic trajectory that will never let them achieve parity with whites. Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Forget "Skip" Gates: There Are Real Differences on Reparations (1 comments) Harvard corporate henchman Henry Louis Gates' attempt to absolve Europeans of blame for slavery is easily dismissed as an absurdity. But honest activists on the Black Left disagree on the debt that is owed to African Americans. Some think reparations are a diversion. Others hold that "the debt is inseparable from the fabric of the African American past and present." Sunday, November 29, 2009 Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade (7 comments) If you're looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it's the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. Sunday, September 13, 2009 Black Agenda Radio commentary - The Sham Debate Over Obama's Af-Pak War (2 comments) If the Afghanistan-Pakistan war is a necessity, then it certainly must be escalated. President Obama's framing of the conflict leaves no room for peace, yet purported peace activists refuse to confront him. Such a movement is not simply shallow: “it is a fraud.” Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Obama's Single Payer Beat Down (6 comments) The pattern has been set. President Obama is a poseur, who pretends to take bold (rhetorical) positions on stubborn issues, only to seek cosmetic solutions along lines of least resistance from those in power. On war, the bankers' meltdown, and now health care, it's the same story. The effect on his remaining legions of progressive supporters, is to make them appear more ridiculous by the day. Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Obama's Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers and For-Profit Healthcare (9 comments) The first Black president has racked up some impressive victories. Barack Obama has quarantined single-payer healthcare advocates, crushed dissent against the war in Congress, and transferred more money to the finance capital class than at any time in planetary history. Not bad for just five months in office. "At some point in the near future Barack Obama will become inextricably associated in the public mind with Big Capital" Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Obama Shows His True Katrina Colors (1 comments) The line between Bush and Obama has not simply blurred in New Orleans: it has disappeared." President Obama has adopted, in whole, the Bush approach to rebuilding the city - minus the Black Diaspora that was scattered to the winds in 2005. Notices of eviction have been served on the mostly elderly and Black inhabitants of 3,000 FEMA trailers. Not a single "Katrina Cottage" has been made ready for occupancy. Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Avoiding World Conference on Racism Shows Obama's Disrespect For Blacks (3 comments) This article, originally published on the Black Agenda Report Website, is representative of the exceptional reporting Mr. Ford and his associates have done concerning politics in general and Barack Obama specifically. It demonstrates, unequivocally, that Pres. Obama has a lot of work to do. Wednesday, March 18, 2009 'Left' Obamites Prefer Kool-Aid to Struggle (11 comments) Hilariously, Obamite Linda Burnham credits Obama with having "wrenched the Democratic Party out of the clammy grip of Clintonian centrism" when, in actuality, Obama's government IS Clintonian. And the new president is as skilled and ruthless a triangulator as Bill ever was. Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Who is Black America's Moral Emissary to the World? (6 comments) The global reputation of Black America has suffered greatly under George Bush, who deployed Black faces as fronts for his vicious brand of US imperialism. Barack Obama's silence on the Israeli assault on Gaza suggests that his honeymoon with the planet won't last long. So who is to represent the progressive values of African Americans on the world stage? Cynthia McKinney. Wednesday, December 31, 2008 McKinney to Obama: 'Say Something' About Gaza Humanitarian Crisis (30 comments) Israel attacked the relief vessel carrying McKinney, doctors and three tons of medical supplies headed for Gaza. McKinney calls upon Obama to speak up about the humanitarian crisis facing Gazans. Wednesday, December 17, 2008 Is the Obama phenomenon good news or bad for Black America? (10 comments) Was the Election of Barack Obama Good for Black People? No, argued BAR's Glen Ford, Baruch College professor emeritus of education Donald Smith, and two other distinguished Black educators at a debate in New York's Harlem, this weekend. Four activists lined up on the other side of the question, before a crowd of over 1,500. Wednesday, October 1, 2008 Bailout Lesson: Capital Crisis Will Wreck Both Parties (4 comments) The crisis of finance capital has thrown both big business parties into extreme disarray and split the Congressional Black Caucus right down the middle. Monday's bloody siege, it was difficult to tell who Wall Street guns-for-hire John McCain and Barack Obama hated most: each other, or the citizens who despite their outraged confusion had the presence of mind to bar the doors to the national treasury." Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Death Rattles of a Criminal Class (4 comments) The parasitic investment bankers are dead as engines of healthy development, and should be left in their coffins. Incapable of organizing money in ways that can even sustain itself, much less promote productive economic value and growth, Wall Street specializes in creating bubbles that threaten the economic security of the nation. We need a public mega-development corporation, funded in amounts rivaling what they want to steal Wednesday, February 20, 2008 The Great Global Power Shift: It's Already Here (12 comments) "The U.S. subprime crisis is only a symptom of a much larger, global sea change." The American disinformation regime- a hermetically sealed "bubble"- convinces its citizens that the U.S. is and forever will be supreme on the planet. Ignorance may be bliss, but cannot alter the facts of rapid U.S. decline, a spiral that is the inevitable "blowback" of 60 years of undeserved, coerced, and artificially constructed dominance.