Should Oakland and other U.S. cities replace police with armed mercenaries?

by Jeremy Scahill

http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/should-oakland-and-other-us-cities-replace-police-with-armed-mercenaries-2/

The United States is in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history. We see this in schools, health care, prisons and certainly with the U.S. military/ national security/ intelligence apparatus. There are almost 200,000 “private contractors” in Iraq - more than the number of U.S. soldiers - and Obama is continuing to use mercenaries there and in Afghanistan and Israel/ Palestine. At present, 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget is going to follow private companies.

“Their claim of friendship and early withdrawal from our dear land, according to the security agreement signed by the two Iraqi and US parties, is meaningless,” he said.

Iraq says US raid violated pact

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8019778.stm

A US raid in the south of Iraq, in which two people died, was a crime and those responsible should be tried, says Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

He said the raid in the town of Kut was a breach of the security pact governing US military actions in the country.

The US has said the raid was carried out in full agreement with the Iraqis.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad says it is the most serious dispute between the US and Iraq since the agreement came into force at the start of the year.

One senior local official said the actions had rendered the pact “meaningless”.

US forces stormed buildings in Wasit province early on Sunday morning.

A policeman and a woman were shot dead and six people detained.

The US military said the raid, against a weapons smuggler and “network financier”, had been “fully coordinated and approved by the Iraqi government”.

They said soldiers had shot and killed “an individual with a weapon” outside the house and that the woman who died had “moved into the line of fire”.

Two senior Iraqi army officers were arrested for permitting an American operation to go ahead without the knowledge of the Iraqi authorities.

Pact ‘meaningless’

In a statement read on state TV, Mr Maliki said he condemned the killings as a “breach of the security pact”.

He called on the US to “release the detainees and hand over those responsible for this crime to the courts”.

The incident caused uproar in Wasit, where provincial governor Latif Hamad al-Turfah echoed Mr Maliki’s condemnation.

He said local government and officials had been “surprised that these forces carried out the raid in breach of the agreement signed between the Iraqi and US governments”.

The chairman of the provincial council, Mahmud Abd al-Rida, said the raid had embodied the “meaning of the occupation”.

“Their claim of friendship and early withdrawal from our dear land, according to the security agreement signed by the two Iraqi and US parties, is meaningless,” he said.

The complicated Status of Forces Agreement was signed in November last year and came into force in early 2009.

It requires all military operations in Iraq to have the government’s approval and allows for US soldiers to face trial if they commit crimes off base.

The US currently has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, and combat troops are due to pull out of Iraq’s cities by the end of June.

How is Obama gonna save all those jobs?!   By making sure to maintain the police state.  Oh you think its too soon to criticize Obama?!  We here at Malcolm-Che are revolutionaries.  Obama is specifically giving money to police for “fighting crime,” which we all know really means holding down poor people trying to get a piece of the pie.  We need jobs, healthcare, housing, education…. not more police!! 

Obama hails new officers

 http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/03/07/ObamaCops.ART_ART_03-07-09_A1_BPD577O.html?sid=101

In his first visit to central Ohio since last fall’s campaign, President Barack Obama brought $4.9 million with him.

Speaking to Columbus police recruits whose jobs were spared by the city’s first share of economic-stimulus money, Obama announced that the Justice Department will begin sending more cash to central Ohio for local governments facing similar problems paying for police and anti-crime programs.

It’s part of $61.6 million targeted for law enforcement in Ohio and $2 billion nationwide. The money will begin flowing within 15 days, he said, as federal officials approve plans submitted by states, counties, cities, villages and townships.

The money “will help communities throughout America keep their neighborhoods safer with more cops, more prosecutors, more probation officers, more radios and equipment, more help for crime victims and more crime-prevention programs for youth,” Obama said.

The president spoke to about 1,000 people at the Aladdin Shrine Center near Port Columbus.

Part of Columbus’ $4 million already has been set aside to pay the new officers’ salaries. Community Crime Patrol, which lost more than half its city funding this year, also is likely to get help, said Deputy Safety Director Dan Giangardella.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman has said he will seek federal help to continue police strike forces in high-crime neighborhoods, an initiative that was eliminated from this year’s city budget. Giangardella said that money would come from other sources, though.

The president received a standing ovation from yesterday’s audience — recruits’ families, police officers and safety officials, neighborhood leaders, officeholders and political supporters — for helping save the Columbus police jobs.

Obama stood and applauded, though, after the 25 recruits received their diplomas and took their oaths. The group, down from 27 after one injury and one resignation, entered the police academy last summer but received layoff notices three days before completing their training in January.

The president called the officers an example of the spirit needed during the nation’s economic turmoil.

“If we can show even a fraction of the courage and selflessness that these cadets have already demonstrated, then I have no doubt that we will emerge from this crisis stronger than before,” he said.

He also held them up as an example to opponents of his stimulus plan, some of whom stood along Stelzer Road as he came and left.

“I look at these young men and women — I look into their eyes and I see their badges today — and I know we did the right thing,” Obama said.

None of Ohio’s top Republicans came to hear Obama. A spokesman said Sen. George V. Voinovich declined the invitation. A spokeswoman for Rep. Pat Tiberi said he had other commitments.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, pointed out in a statement that the federal money coming to Columbus will keep the officers on the payroll only through Dec. 31. City officials have said they’ll figure out later how to pay them in 2010.

“Instead of developing long-term strategies to put Ohioans back to work and get our economy moving, some leaders are throwing buckets of tax dollars into special-interest projects and other programs that will not create jobs,” Boehner said.

The city’s plans also include improving fingerprinting of suspects and beefing up domestic-violence investigations. Local requests are being coordinated through Franklin County, which plans to post law-enforcement spending requests on its Web site.

“These aren’t frills,” said county Commissioner Paula Brooks.

Kathleen Herdman is siding with Obama, too, in the stimulus debate. Her son, James, earned his bachelor’s degree in three years, served seven years in the U.S. Marines and began training at the Columbus police academy last summer.

His goal of becoming an officer was left in limbo when he was told in January that he’d lose his job.

“He worked so hard to attain that,” Herdman said. “We are very lucky.”

In other parts of central Ohio, though, some local governments were dismayed at being left off a federal list of money available across the state.

In Madison County, the sheriff already has cut all work for eight part-time deputies. The London Police Department is considering layoffs.

Neither was on the Justice Department list yesterday.

“If there was an application process, we sure didn’t know about it,” said Steve Hume, London’s safety-services director.

This author makes some good points about how no politicians in Washington send their kids to public schools, but fails miserably when she sees the solution in attacking teachers’ unions.  Instead why don’t we ask for more funding for these schools, but no, her solution is to get rid of these teachers that are ‘protected’ by unions even though they’re ‘incompetent.’  You can replace all the teachers you want, but without a committment for equal education for all that is truly pursued (i.e. by inundating the education system with money - that we could take from our expenditures on imperialist wars) we will never have equal education.  We need to pursue the Cuban model, with free education for all through college.  Education is a right, not a privilege. 

Racism persists in public schools

Students walk through a metal detector in an impoverished Washington D.C. high school.

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081217/OPINION09/312179988/-1/OPINION

Nothing dramatizes the two-tier public-education system quite like the announcement by the First Couple that their daughters, 10 and 7, will attend Sidwell Friends, perhaps the elitist of the elite private schools in Washington, tuition $30,000 a year.

“Sidwell,” the parents joke, “is where Episcopalians teach Jews how to be Quakers.” The Obamas called Sidwell, as the locals refer to it, the “best fit” of security and comfort for their children. No doubt. Few begrudge the Parents in Chief seeking the best education money can buy. It’s easier than choosing a puppy.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t have that kind of opportunity or that kind of money, particularly in Washington, where the public schools are, to put it kindly, lousy. These schools are distinguished for the lowest performance rates of any school district in the nation despite spending $13,000 per pupil, third-highest in the country.

No congressman sends his children to public schools in the nation’s capital. More than a quarter of the teachers in the public schools send their children to private schools. The Obamas noted that their friends, many of whom will become colleagues on the White House staff, send their daughters to private schools. Joe Biden’s grandchildren will go to school with the Obama girls. Chelsea Clinton went to Sidwell and then on to Stanford and Oxford. President Carter sent his daughter Amy to a public school for a while, but soon reconsidered and sent her to Sidwell and then to Brown. Private-school education doesn’t determine acceptance to an elite college, but it makes it easier.

Though Washington has several good charter schools, which are funded with public money and run independently of the public-school bureaucracy, their capacity is limited. (The Obama girls would likely have made the cut.) My grandsons attend one, and there’s a long waiting list. Charters are not burdened with platinum-plated union contracts and “teacher tenure” designed to protect the incompetents.

Reforms are vehemently opposed by the American Federation of Teachers, the big umbrella union with lots of clout. Beholden as he is to the unions, the president-elect is not likely to offend them. He has emphatically opposed vouchers because they “might benefit some kids at the top; what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” Unlike his own kids, who have already fled.

Few parents (and grandparents) I’ve talked to envy the Obamas for their presidential privileges — the servants and limousines and the big Boeing 747 — but they truly envy their ability to educate their children in a good school. Michelle Obama insists that her daughters will make their own beds and won’t rely on the servants, and good for her. But neither will they get a glimpse of how most of the children in Washington, the majority of whom are black, suffer from an inferior education. That’s a vividly drawn line dividing childhood friendships.

The public schools were segregated by race when I grew up in Washington. They’re segregated just as rigidly today by economic class, as schools are in many cities, and the result is all but the same — public schools for blacks, private schools for whites. I once took my son out of a public school because his American history teacher was absent more days than she was on the job; in one conversation, she couldn’t identify the fourth president of the United States without consulting her lesson plan, and was not embarrassed for it. She was protected, as incompetent teachers are protected today, by union-backed tenure.

Michelle Rhee, the tough new chancellor of the Washington schools who gets more grief than thanks for trying to do something about the quality of education, offered teachers who agree to give up tenure considerably higher pay. Most declined. They know what we know — that few could pass merit muster.

In the bad old days, Southerners often said they would be happy to send their children to school with the likes of the children of Ralph Bunche, the secretary-general of the United Nations and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, but not with the children the elite private schools wouldn’t take. Such thinking was, of course, racist. Nobody would say such a thing today. But many poor black (and white) children get a public-school education in the ghettos that wouldn’t prepare them for Sidwell Friends even if their parents could afford it.

Administrative and economic racism, which President Bush called “the bigotry of low expectations,” dooms these children, and perpetuates prejudice, as well. Racism, like that rose by any other name, still smells — but it’s not sweet.

Even though we at Malcolm-Che do not give political support to candidates fielded and supported by the ruling class regardless of their race, sex or creed; we can still call racism out when we see it, as well as sexism and other prejudices.  On discussion boards where this article was posted there are a few people who claim there was nothing racist about this incident.  A history of lynching in this country means that anytime a black person’s image is hung or attached anywhere near or on a tree it is going to bring ‘lynching’ to mind.  To think otherwise is to disregard a history of racism and oppression, something mainy in the mainstream would like to do.

A sad day at George Fox

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/09/a_sad_day_at_george_fox.html

A t 5:15 a.m. Tuesday, Prof. Ron Stansell was exercising in front of the TV when he heard the news: A cardboard cutout of Sen. Barack Obama had been found on the Newberg campus, hanging from a tree.

Momentarily, the professor of international studies thought — or hoped might be the better word — that the mock-lynching reflected sheer stupidity. But he quickly realized, “No, nobody’s quite that dumb. There’s malice aforethought there.”

The effigy, strung up with fishing line, included a hate message for minority students in a George Fox scholarship program called Act 6. (The Obama cutout was labeled “Act 6 reject.”) But the approving allusion to mob savagery throughout U.S. history — 28 African Americans were lynched in 1933 alone — was also impossible to ignore.

Painful. Grotesque. And for many at George Fox, mortifying. Also, especially for staunch Quakers like Stansell, a complete nonsequitor in the context of the university’s past, present and future. Founded by Quaker pioneers in 1891, the college is firmly rooted in the scriptural call for justice to roll like a river and righteousness like a mighty stream.

The Quakers, who were persecuted, even executed on American soil for their beliefs, led the Abolitionist movement in the United States and ran the underground railroad; Stansell’s wife’s family had a secret passage in their own home, he said, to shelter runaway slaves.

All of those nuances about the university’s Quaker heritage are likely to be missed, of course, in the national coverage about the incident. And, for the moment, its twisted perpetrators may also eclipse a far more representative “sample” of Oregonians — the crowd of 75,000 who turned out in May to hear Sen. Obama speak in Portland.

What was impressive on Wednesday, though, was the caliber of George Fox’s collective response. Students and faculty rose — literally — to the occasion. By prior arrangement, perhaps a hundred or more of them came forward and stood in solidarity around George Fox president Robin Baker, as he addressed a chapel service.

“It was powerful,” said Melanie Hulbert, an assistant professor of sociology, noting, “We’re very sad, and very distraught … But this act is not representative of who we are or who we have ever been.”

Baker, the college president, denounced the incident in the strongest possible terms and reiterated his vision of a campus that “more broadly represents the Kingdom of God.”

“We absolutely cannot hate those around us and say we love God,” he told the crowd. “It is not possible.”

To Hulbert, the coalescing of students around Baker on Wednesday was deeply symbolic. It meant, she said, that at George Fox, “We are people who won’t stand for this.”

And, equally important, people who stand up to it.
–The Editorial Board

Today’s New York Times has an article which discusses Obama’s rise in terms of the civil rights struggle for blacks.  It has some very interesting points.  First, I’ll give the link, then some clips and commentary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/us/politics/25race.html

[clip:]“I worry that there is a segment of the population that might be harder to reach, average citizens who will say: ‘Come on. We might have a black president, so we must be over it,’ ” said Mr. Harrison, 59, a sociologist at Howard University and a consultant for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies here.

This is truly a danger.  Sadly, many people here in America are already under the impression that racism barely exists or doesn’t exist at all, and the rise of Obama fuels this type of sentiment.  This only matter to us as it pertains to our ability to understand the arguments of our ideological opponents. 

[clip:]“That is the danger, that we declare victory,” said Mr. Harrison, who fears that poor blacks will increasingly be blamed for their troubles. “Historic as this moment is, it does not signify a major victory in the ongoing, daily battle.”

Truly, that is the danger.  For Obama to get elected, for that to be considered the end-all victory of the civil rights movement, is dangerous.  As Harrison points out, in the daily battle of average black people, does it signify a major victory?  No.  A single black mother said to me two days ago, “I’m a 20 year old single mom, fuck Obama, what is he going to do for me?  That’s why I dont vote.” 

[clip:]Bev Smith, a black talk radio host whose program is based in Pittsburgh and syndicated nationally, said some of her listeners echoed those worries.

“There’s an assumption now that we’ve made it,” Ms. Smith said. “Our concern is that we’ll get lost in the shuffle.”

The concerns have been driven in part by opponents of affirmative action who argue that race-based preferences in education and the workplace are increasingly irrelevant given the accomplishments of Mr. Obama and the growing black middle class.

Others, like Abigail Thernstrom, the vice chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, say the creation of minority voting districts should be reconsidered, too, given Mr. Obama’s success at wooing white voters in states like Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming.

Ms. Thernstrom, who is white, said black and white academics who worried about the impact of Mr. Obama’s achievement were engaging in “habits of pessimism.”

“People feel that there’s something callous, something racially indifferent in saying, ‘Wait a minute; we’ve come a long way,’ ” said Ms. Thernstrom, a longtime critic of affirmative action who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group.

“But whether he wins or loses, for a black man to become a standard-bearer for one of the two major parties, it does say something,” she said. “It says that the road we started down in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act has come to an end. We don’t need to talk about disfranchisement in the same way anymore.”

This is exactly the type of ideological framework we must struggle against.  Of course “we’ve come along way,” they don’t bring the kids to the lynchings anymore (they just have the police do it late at night a la Sean Bell).  But are we at the end of ANY road?  No.  Unless she means it in the sense that the reformist path dominated by Democrats - which was never much of a road anyway - has now reached its full extension, however I highly doubt she meant it in such a sense.  We don’t need to talk about disfranchisement?! Has she read anything about what they do to us when we have criminal records, how in many states we can never vote again after being convicted?  Has she read about Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004?  We don’t expect a lot from a conservative capitalist theoretician, but this is ridiculous.  And what does she mean, “we”?  She’s not one of us, she is not one of the oppressed.

The fortunes of black Americans have certainly improved since the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. The number of educated, professional blacks has grown as poverty rates have declined. About 17 percent of blacks held bachelor’s degrees in 2004, compared with 5 percent in 1970, census data shows. (About 30 percent of whites held bachelor’s degrees that year.) In 2005, college-educated black women who worked full time earned more than their white female counterparts, census data shows.

But significant gaps between blacks and whites remain. About a quarter of blacks lived below the poverty line in 2006, compared with 8 percent of whites, census data shows. The median income of blacks, $30,200, is less than two-thirds that of whites, $48,800. And studies suggest that employers often favor white job seekers over black applicants, even when their educational backgrounds and work experiences are nearly identical.

Such disparities might explain the differences in opinion that remain between blacks and whites.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll released last month, 53 percent of whites said that blacks and whites had about an equal chance of getting ahead in society. Only 30 percent of blacks agreed.

Blacks and whites were similarly divided over the state of race relations. Fifty-five percent of whites said race relations were generally good, compared with 29 percent of blacks. Nearly 60 percent of blacks said race relations were generally bad.

“A few of my white friends have asked me, ‘With Barack achieving all of this, will we be in a position where we can put race aside?’ ” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, who is a co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s campaign in that state.

Mr. Cummings said he points them to statistics on lingering racial disparities in education, health and income. “I hope that progressive-minded people will not make a blanket conclusion that if Barack has made it, everybody can make it,” he said.

Sadly, many people in America were already saying these type of things before Barack came around.  Barack is just the icing on the cake.  This phrase has been used a million times:  If _______ made it, everybody can make it (e.g. Oprah, Condoleeza Rice, Justice Clarence Thomas, etc). 

Mr. Obama has occasionally made that point himself, noting that his candidacy alone will not resolve the nation’s lingering racial inequities.

“I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy, particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own,” Mr. Obama said in his speech on race in March.

As part of his urban policy plan, Mr. Obama promises to increase the minimum wage, expand affordable housing, provide full financing for community block grants and create a White House office of urban affairs. Some of his black supporters argue that it would be foolhardy for Mr. Obama to focus more on racial issues, particularly given that he needs to appeal to white voters who can be alienated by such talk.

“He’s running for president of the United States, not president of the Urban League,” said Jabari Asim, editor of The Crisis, the N.A.A.C.P. magazine, reiterating comments made by a fellow writer and editor. “I think most people understand that he can’t go out and push this overtly African-American agenda.”

Mr. Harrison, the Howard University sociologist, worries that such political imperatives might make it less likely that an Obama administration would be inclined to confront entrenched racial divisions.

But he still plans to savor Mr. Obama’s historic moment. He hopes that the nomination will lead to a national conversation about race relations and that the shifting political landscape might give rise to new strategies to address the legacies of America’s color line.

“It will certainly shift the conversation,” Mr. Harrison said. “It might end up being another vehicle for people to press the same points. But it might also open a new chapter of the debate.”

Although I do not offer political support to capitalist politicians - and Obama is most certainly that - I can still defend him against racist attacks such as these which no one should be subject to.

http://russiatoday.com/features/news/27957?gclid=CPLFlt_joZUCFQnIsgodHWWxjg

Obamamania has become so contagious that even staunch opponents like clothing designer Doron Braunshtein are cashing in - but not without controversy. Braunshtein, also known as Apollo Braun, has garnered widespread media attention and death threats for his “Obama Is My Slave” T-shirts. In a racially sensitive America, where people of African origin endured centuries of slavery, this slogan is close to the bone.

Other T-shirts in the store saying “Jews Against Obama” and “Who Killed Obama?” sell for up to $US 250. Braun says he trademarked the phrases which he says have nothing to do with race but have everything to do with Obama’s rumoured ties to Islam - a myth which has been debunked.

“I do not like him. I do not think he is good for the Jews and for Israel. I don’t think he’s good for America,” says Braunshtein.

Even so, the controversy of has been great for business. Braunshtein’s tiny Manhattan Boutique has made thousands of dollars selling the ‘offensive’ Obama T-shirts.

Celebrity publicist Couri Hay says Braunshtein has just proved the age-old marketing cliché that any publicity is good publicity: “Controversy equals sales. Scandal equals sales. And interest and excitement, and this sort of thing, generates sales.”
 
But some New Yorkers living in the melting pot of America say the T-shirts are just plain disgusting.

“It’s pretty gross. Calling anybody a slave is disrespectful whether it’s Obama or anyone else,” said one passer-by.

Omali Yeshitulu Speech On Obama

This is Omali Yeshitulu of the African Peoples Socialist Party.  You have heard his voice on the Let’s Get Free album from Dead Prez, which is my favorite hip-hop album ever.