Barack Obama

Trump Wins! Completing Obama’s Asian Pivot And Confrontation With China

May 13, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Asian Pivot, Barack Obama, China, Donald Trump

The Trump administration is determined to “put China in its place,” a white supremacist mindset that will inevitably lead to monumental errors of judgment. The new bipartisan, ruling class consensus that more aggressive measures were needed to contain China was captured in the now-infamous “pivot to Asia” announced by Barack Obama in 2011. Today the growing ruling class consensus that has given new life to Trump’s anti-China campaign is reflected in the positions that say economic integration with China did not result in any transformation of China into a “regular” capitalist nation. And with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, China is an existential threat that can only be countered by military means.

How To Inoculate Yourself From Establishment Bullshit

July 27, 2019 Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlinjohnstone.com Educate! Barack Obama, Electoral Politics, Presidency

In a recent interview with CBS This Morning host Gayle King, former First Lady Michelle Obama contrasted her husband’s presidency with that of his successor by claiming that unlike Trump, the Obama family had had “no scandal”. “I had to sit in [Trump’s inauguration] audience, one of a handful of people of color and then listen to that speech, and all that I had sort of held onto for eight years, watching my husband get raked over the coals, feeling like we had to do everything perfectly, you know, no scandal,” Obama said.

Stopping Trump’s Immigrant Abuse Requires Understanding Obama

July 21, 2019 By Roqayah Chamseddine, In These Times Educate!, Uncategorized Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Immigrant Rights

Those fitting the national security state's classification of “illegal alien” are subjected to violent administrative detention processes and a myriad of enforcement procedures intended to discourage unauthorized border crossings, including family separation. And now they face Trump's renewed threat to unleash sweeping deportation raids this weekend. Trump’s spectacular crackdown—while an escalation—is not new: These abuses are an enduring legacy of the Obama presidency, which—along with previous administrations—laid the groundwork for the policies being condemned today.

We’ve Come A Long Way: Obama Praises Medicare For All

September 8, 2018 Margaret Flowers, Health Over Profit. Organize! Barack Obama, Health Care, Medicare for all, Single-Payer

On September 7, 2018, speaking at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, President Obama said that Democrats are running on “good new ideas like Medicare for All…” This indicates a significant shift in support of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA). President Obama is campaigning for Democrats in the mid-terms and his public support for NIMA right at the start shows how far we have come and that we have a real opportunity to win in the next few years. Eight years ago when President Obama was pushing through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) he asked in his State of the Union whether anyone had “a better idea.

Trump, Obama And The Nature Of Fascism

July 7, 2018 Tony McKenna, Counterpunch.org Educate! Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Electoral Politics, Fascism, US Imperialism

The latest Trump scandal hitting the news – the interment of children in cages, the forcible separation of screaming toddlers from their parents. It seemed to have touched a level of inhumanity which is breathtaking, even by the standards of the current US administration; an administration which already feels like the court of Caligula set to an episode of bad reality TV, with a soundtrack handily provided by the loony toons. Fortunately, the president has stepped back, has issued a decree which will reverse the vile and traumatising project of cleaving immigrant parents from their kids – though the practise of locking them all up in the same cage still seems to fall somewhat short of a positive exercise in empathy and human rights. As a result of such events, Facebook was deluged with a variety of memes: but all carrying the same essential message.

Obama’s Immigration Agencies Separated Children From Their Families, Too

June 24, 2018 By Colin Kalmbacher, Law and Crime Educate! Barack Obama, Immigration

The Trump administration has an intentional and explicit policy of separating migrant children from their families if caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without permission. Long before that, however, the administration of Barack Obama ramped up a program with a sometimes similar effect. Since 2008, the United States has had a policy known as the Alien Transfer Exit Program (ATEP), or Lateral Repatriation. This program focuses on detaining male migrants of Mexican descent. Here’s how it works: Once an immigrant is caught attempting to cross the border without documentation, they are detained, flown or bused across the United States and then shown the exit at another segment of the U.S.-Mexico border–thousands of miles from their original point of entry.

The U.S. Has Been Breaking Up Families For Years

June 15, 2018 By Brian Sonenstein, Mintpress News Educate! Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Immigrants, Immigration

ICE under Obama averaged 309,887 arrests per year from 2009-2012, while ICE under Trump averaged 139,553 in 2017. Obama set records between 2008 and 2014 with the number of people arrested and placed in deportation proceedings under S-Comm. Those numbers plummeted by more than half in 2015, when S-Comm was replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). Both programs use fingerprints collected during bookings by state and local police departments to identify individuals for deportation. The primary difference between the two programs is PEP attempted to put greater emphasis on deporting people who had been convicted of a crime.

Government Structure—Not Just Personnel—Needs to Change

December 25, 2017 Paul Street, Truthdig.com Strategize! Barack Obama, Donald Trump, oligarchy

We need a “change of structure,” not merely a “change of spirit” or a change of party identity and personnel at the nominal top of the corporate totalitarian state. A nominal Democrat was elected president along with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress in 2008. What followed under Obama (as under his Democratic presidential predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) was the standard “elite” neoliberal manipulation of campaign populism and identity politics in service to the reigning big-money bankrollers and their global empire. Wall Street’s control of Washington and the related imperial agenda of the “Pentagon System” were advanced more effectively by the nation’s first black president than they could have been by stiff and wealthy white-male Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney.

What! Slavery In Libya? You Weren’t Reading Black Agenda Report

December 10, 2017 Bruce A. Dixon, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Barack Obama, Libya, Slavery

If the news that black Libyans and black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were being sold as slaves in Libya was a surprise to you, then you were not reading Black Agenda Report during the 2011-2012 NATO intervention in that country. We covered it. Almost everybody refused to question US foreign policy in Africa during the reign of our first black president. Many US news outlets, many otherwise reasonable people with access to foreign news, and countless others around the world averted their eyes and their ears to the anguish of hunted, lynched and massacred black Africans in Benghazi, in Tripoli, in Sirte and Bani Walid. But as the US Navy and US Air Force unleashed thousands of tons of bombs and missiles on innocent civilians and the military forces of the Libyan government, without which Uncle Sam’s and Barack Obama’s racist rebels could never have toppled Muammar Gadaffi, you heard and read about it each week in Black Agenda Report.

Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’ Led To Libyan Slave Trade

December 1, 2017 Jason Johnson, theroot.com Educate! Barack Obama, Libya, Slavery

By Jason Johnson for The Root - When CNN broke the story several weeks ago that slavery—not wage slavery, not emotional slavery, not virtual slavery, but actual whips-and-chains-forced labor slavery—was alive and well in the North African nation of Libya, Americans finally started to take notice. Sort of. While there has been some reporting on the issue and a few statements from government leaders across the world, there has not been a sustained political and social media effort to address the Libyan slave trade akin to the 2014 Bring Back Our Girls campaign for the kidnapping victims of Boko Haram in Nigeria, or even the well-intentioned but poorly conceived Kony 2012 campaign—perhaps because the “African slavery” issue is stickier, more pervasive and, worst of all, involves the United States. The Root spoke to criminal-defense attorney and asylum expert Yodit Tewolde, who is also a legal analyst for CNN, Fox and TV One, about what is really happening in Libya right now and what responsibility African Americans really have in the current crisis. Yodit Tewolde (pronounced YO-Deet Teh-WELL-dah) was raised in Dallas, but her family is from Eritrea, and she had firsthand experience with the African slave trade long before it become a late-2017 story. “People act like this is new; this has been going on for years,” she said over the phone, holding back frustration and emotion. Thousands of refugees, primarily from countries like Eritrea and Sudan, are fleeing poverty and violence in their own countries, only to end up the victims of smugglers and slave traders at major ports in Libya.

Freedom Rider: Obama’s Crimes Are Revealed Under Trump

November 27, 2017 Margaret Kimberley, blackagendareport.com Educate! Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Electoral Politics, US Imperialism

By Margaret Kimberley for Black Agenda Report - Barack Obama was not the lesser evil president. He was always the more effective evil. The ruling classes were in desperate need of a new and attractive face to complete their ugly agenda. George W. Bush and the Republicans were reviled and thus no longer capable of bringing imperialist plots to fruition. They were bad for the brand and were shown the door for use at a later date. Obama certainly didn’t disappoint his patrons. He claimed that America was exceptional and indispensable and that no other nation had rights that it need respect. He succeeded in making some neocon dreams come true as he tried to bring the Project for a New American Century to reality. He destroyed Libya, supported a coup against an elected government in Ukraine and attempted regime change in Syria too. Blood was shed and lives were upended all over the world under the Obama doctrine of American rights to global hegemony. But the corporate media and most Democrats said nothing. Now that Trump is in office the evil doing that Obama began is suddenly brought to light. In 2016 reports emerged that African migrants were being enslaved in Libya. This columnist wrote about the atrocity here in Black Agenda Report but most of the American corporate media didn’t find the story newsworthy.

Stop Obama- And Trump-Supported War On People Of Yemen!

November 22, 2017 Ajamu Baraka, blackallianceforpeace.com Resist! Barack Obama, Donald Trump, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism, Yemen

By Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace - Barack Obama’s administration gave the green light to the Saudi war on Yemen. Back then, this war could not have been launched and executed without direct support from the U.S. military. That remains the case to this day. The United States provided intelligence sharing and targeting, air-to-air refueling, logistics support, while participating in the naval blockade and selling billions of dollars in weapons. We in the Black Alliance for Peace call on the people of the United States to demand an end to all military support to the murderous Saudi dictatorship. We demand that the blockade be lifted, and humanitarian aid be provided. We demand that the United Nations Security Council move to resolve the war in Yemen by calling for an immediate cessation of military actions, followed by a diplomatic resolution of the governmental crisis in that country. We call on the U.S. Congress to launch an immediate investigation into the Saudis possibly violating U.S. law by using U.S. arms to commit crimes against humanity.

America’s Renegade Warfare Killing Civilians, Violating Law

November 19, 2017 Nicolas J S Davies, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Iraq, Korea, militarism, Nuclear War, Wars and Militarism

By Nicolas J S Davies for Consortium News. Despite the U.N. Charter and international efforts to prevent war, people in countries afflicted by war today still face the kind of total war that horrified world leaders in 1945. The main victims of total war in our “modern” world have been civilians in countries far removed from the safe havens of power and privilege where their fates are debated and decided: Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; Iraq; Somalia; Pakistan; Yemen; Libya; Syria; Ukraine. There has been no legal or political accountability for the mass destruction of their cities, their homes or their lives. Total war has not been prevented, or even punished, just externalized. But thanks to billions of dollars invested in military propaganda and public relations and the corrupt nature of for-profit media systems, citizens of the countries responsible for the killing of millions of their fellow human beings live in near-total ignorance of the mass killing carried out in their name.

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