By Robert Parry
American pundits are missing the bigger point about the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government and the GOP’s threatened default on America’s credit.

By Cong. John Connyers
In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it’s passed into law.
President Barack Obama placed his presidency on the line for national healthcare, known as Obama-care. Conservative Republicans shut down America’s national government over it. Here are five reasons why Obamacare scares people.

We were/are both products and co- producers of the Black Freedom Movement, members of a defiant and determined generation and organization, Us, which self-consciously responded to Frantz Fanon’s challenging insight and insistence that “each generation must. . .
While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades.
After the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, as Nation editors were trying to figure out what should go into that week’s issue, William Greider, the magazine’s national affairs correspondent, offered some wise words that I’ve never forgotten. “Later, there will be time for analysis of who and what was responsible,” he said. “Right now, it’s time to grieve.”

Only a couple of weeks ago, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, I was reminded of the Rev. King’s last birthday, in January 1968.
By Michael Ortiz
We’ve heard the argument over and over. “Of course we’re in a post-racial society; racism is over; slavery is long gone; the president is black, etc.” And then we’ve heard the counterargument over and over. “Post-racial?! How can that be the case when health disparities remain significant along racial lines? When unemployment and incarceration continue to disproportionately affect people of color, etc.?”
Sometimes when data is released on social conditions the numbers do not surprise. Such is the case with the revelation from Census data that poverty in New York City is on the upswing and that income inequality in the nation’s largest city has widened.

The warmongers in Washington have stepped back from the brink of waging war against the Syrian people, but no one should imagine they have been converted to peace or have lost faith in the devastating effectiveness of overwhelming firepower in meeting challenges and making self-serving changes in the world.

Five years after the beginning of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, where are we? This week, President Obama offered Americans a progress report. He hailed the steps taken to turn the economy around and rescue the auto and financial industries. He used the occasion, sensibly, to challenge Republicans in the Congress not to do more damage to the slow recovery by manufacturing another unnecessary budget crisis.