IBW21

By Helen Redmond
Many Americans who do not use illegal “drugs” assume exemption from drug war policies. But regardless of how much marijuana you do or don’t smoke, the U.S. war on drugs affects nearly everyone.

When the Egyptian army first began its offensive against the Muslim Brotherhood, many speculated that such an assault would likely be extended to the same revolutionaries who demanded — in massive demonstrations — that President Morsi be evicted from office.

There have been several signs that this has already begun, though most notably the government repression against striking workers at Suez Steel and the Scimitar Petroleum company, where the striking workers were accused of being influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

By Paul Le Blanc and Michael D Yates
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The “Freedom Budget” was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the “Freedom Budget” – people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. – understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves.

By Rania Khalek

When Philadelphia public schoolchildren returned to their classrooms on September 9, 2013, there were fewer schools, fewer educators and fewer opportunities because of mass school closings and what amounts to financial starvation. It all started late in 2012, when the Philadelphia School District (PSD) revealed it would be shutting dozens of schools to fill in a $304 million budget gap.

They’re involved in Algeria and Angola, Benin and Botswana, Burkina Faso and Burundi, Cameroon and the Cape Verde Islands. And that’s just the ABCs of the situation. Skip to the end of the alphabet and the story remains the same: Senegal and the Seychelles, Togo and Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia. From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the U.S. military is at work. Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics network, all undeniable evidence of expansion – except at U.S. Africa Command.

By Arthur MacEwan
With a president who is African-American and talk of a “post-racial” society, one might think that the economic position of African Americans relative to European Americans had improved significantly over the last 40 or so years. One would be wrong.

By Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid

Introduction

August 18, 2013 marks the 126th memorial birthdate of Marcus Garvey. In honor of that occasion, the purpose of this brief paper is to cite the influence of Islam and Muslims upon the man known to his millions of followers and admirers as the “Father of Black Nationalism”.