Smartphones Defeat Corporate Media Coverups: Poll Shows Black People Returned to Reality on Race Relations

Finally, Black perceptions of the actual racial situation in the United States are catching up with reality, after years of collective delusion under The First Black President. “Black perceptions on race have swung 20 percent – from 48 to 68 percent negative – in the year since the emergence of an incipient movement against police violence.” Black pessimism about race relations is up 38% since the “’we HAVE overcome’ days of delusion, in 2009.”

By Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor

“’Good feelings’ in ‘bad’ and ‘dangerous’ times serve only to accelerate the processes of disaster.”

More Black Americans think race relations are generally bad than at any time since the Rodney King rebellion in Los Angeles, a generation ago. Whites feel pretty much the same way, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.

Sixty-eight percent of Black people today believe race relations are bad, substantially more than the 59 percent negative recorded when Barack Obama was presenting himself as a candidate for president, back in 2008. The great dip in the statistics (or peak, depending on one’s perspective), was registered in 2009, the year of Black euphoria that began with Obama’s inauguration. By April of 2009, only 30 percent of Blacks told pollsters they saw race relations in a generally bad light. Half of Blacks’ negative perceptions on race disappeared the moment a Black family set up residence in the White House.

I don’t pretend to understand what white Americans generally mean by “bad” or “good” race relations – except that it is certainly very different than what Black Americans mean, when using the same terminology. I suspect that most whites think relations are “good” when they don’t have to hear Black people complaining too loudly. The perceptions of the people at the receiving end of racial oppression are usually more reflective of racial realities than the impressions of members of the dominant/oppressor group, who in all cultures minimize the degree of harm inflicted by their group. However, the oppressed are also quite subjective in their analyses of conditions. They hope against hope, or are overcome by despair – emotional swings directly related to their perception of the forces allied with, or against, them.

The polls show two recent periods of great volatility in Black perceptions of the general racial climate: the soaring euphoria of 2009, whose effects continued through 2010; and the dramatic year-long rise in Black discontent (translated in polls as pessimism on race relations) that began in August, 2014, when Ferguson, Missouri, rebelled against the police killing of Michael Brown. In between, we see a slow but steady erosion of Black perceptions of “good” race relations beginning in 2012, the year Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida, when Blacks’ negative ratings on race climbed above the 40 percent level for the first time since Obama took office.

Percentage of Blacks that viewed race relations as generally bad, according to New York Times/CBS News poll:

July, ’08 59

April, ’09 30

Jan, ’12 37

Aug, ’12 41

Apr, ’14 46

Aug, ’14 48

Dec, ’14 54

Feb, ’15 58

Apr, ’15 65

July, ’15 68

Black perceptions on race have swung 20 percent – from 48 to 68 percent negative – in the year since the emergence of an incipient movement against police violence. There has been a 38 percent rise in Black pessimism on race since the “we HAVE overcome” days of delusion, in 2009.

“Half of Blacks’ negative perceptions on race disappeared the moment a Black family set up residence in the White House.”

Race relations, as measured by Black perceptions, are now 9 percent “worse” than they were in 2008, before Obama’s election. The objective reality, of course, is that the Black economy collapsed during the financial meltdown that reached its peak in 2009 – the very year when Blacks perceived race relations as “least” bad, at 30 percent. So deep was the “Obama delirium” in 2009, that 39 percent of Blacks told pollsters for the Pew Research Center that African Americans were better off than five years before – even though Black unemployment was hovering around 16 percent, nearly twice the level of 2004, and Black wealth had fallen to one-twentieth of whites, as evidenced by wholesale home foreclosures in Black neighborhoods. Black people’s collective (subjective) perception at the dawn of the Age of Obama, according to the Pew poll, was that “the state of black progress in America [has] improved more dramatically than at any time in the last quarter century.” Every indicator of Black economic well being crashed in 2009, yet Black folks believed the opposite.

The steady rise in “bad” feelings about the racial situation – which is inextricable from the Black economic condition – is, therefore, a good thing. Gross misperceptions, wildly misplaced optimism, and the outright delirium experienced by so many Blacks at the start of the Obama presidency, greatly weaken and disarm a people. “Good feelings” in “bad” and “dangerous” times serve only to accelerate the processes of disaster. We need more “bad” feelings about racial oppression, mass Black incarceration, late-stage capitalism, mad-dog imperialism, and the survival of the biosphere.

No More Empty Celebrations and False Optimism

The Black Misleadership Class, which for two generations has pursued its own narrow interests with no regard for the masses of Black folks, thrives on the illusion of progress, which gives the false impression that their leadership has born fruit. This perfidious class celebrated not only Obama, but also the brief and delirious “era of good feeling” that accompanied his rise, offering no resistance whatsoever to The First Black President’s corporate neoliberalism and hyper-aggressive imperial policies. “Good” feelings led to disastrous results.

The most encouraging development since the emergence of an incipient, grassroots movement against police violence – an occurrence that is inseparable from the increase in “bad” feelings about race in the U.S. – is the growing rejection by young people of a Black Misleadership Class that strives for better “race relations” (peace) rather than a thorough transformation of U.S. society (justice). These are the kinds of Negroes that study the polls, wishing most of all for an increase in whites who sympathize with Blacks (whatever that subjectively means), rather than hoping that huge numbers of Black people get mad enough to make a MOVEMENT.

If an oppressed people don’t believe they are oppressed, they will not do much of anything to change their condition. In the words attributed to Harriet Tubman: “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”


_____________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

'US Gives Too Much to Israel': That's What 6 in 10 American Citizens Think — Says Google Survey

By Robert Barsocchini
Surveying Americans about U.S. aid to Israel requires putting it into proper perspective. Given Israel’s position as the leading single U.S. foreign aid recipient (by a wide margin), as in 1989 asking the foreign aid question requires embedding relevant data to obtain a bona fide response.  When such data is included, the majority of Americans (60.7 percent) believe U.S. aid to Israel is excessive.  The major response, that aid to Israel is “Much too much” is 33.9 percent of Americans.  Some 26.8 percent believe it is “too much” while 25.9 percent believe it is “about right.” Only 13.4 percent of Americans believe U.S. aid to Israel is not enough.

The policy and political implications of this finding are stark.  Elected officials passing ever larger aid packages and supplemental spending for Israel simply cannot claim they are representing the majority interests of their constituents.  American presidents proclaiming the U.S.‐Israel bond is “unbreakable” cannot claim such a bond is willingly underwritten by U.S. taxpayers.  The finding also shines yet more light on Israel lobby organizations as the major factor coming between most constituents and their representatives and quietly working to ensure that Israel’s majority share of the U.S. foreign aid budget continues.

The survey also finds that, in particular, younger US citizens are strongly opposed to the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, and, crucially, finds that “Only the Wealthiest Americans believe U.S. aid is ‘about right’”:

The only category of Americans (47.6 percent) who believed U.S. aid for Israel is “about right” is the segment earning $150,000 or more (although even 42.9 percent in that category thought aid was too high).  The next lower income category, $100,000‐149,000 is the most vehemently opposed to aid, with 79.5 percent believing it is too high (42.9 percent responding “much too much” and 36.6 percent “too much.”)

While the Google report says the findings are “stark”, they are precisely consistent with the findings of the recent study out of Cornell and Northwestern universities, the largest study of its kind to date, which looked at nearly 1,800 individual US policy issues and found that the average US citizen has zero impact on those policies, while the wealthiest citizens essentially get exactly what they want, meaning they dictate US policy (and they largely comprise the US government).

This Google survey simply singles out one of the policy issues, which together illustrate that the USA is not a democracy, but a society in which people are allowed to choose which of two corporate-backed figureheads they want as the face of an oligarchy that dictates government policy in its own interest.

It is also worth noting here that 1) the top ten recipients of US aid (with Israel as #1) all, like the US itself, have torture regimes, 2) US law “prohibit[s] U.S. foreign aid to nuclear weapons states such as Israel that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, and 3) Obama, while repeatedly insisting the US is a “nation of laws”, requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever (among many other blatantly illegal acts).

_________
Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics.  He also writes professionally for the film industry.  Here is his blog.  Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities.  Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

Bill O'Reilly, Bill Maher and Islamophobia

By Peter Hart
There was a pretty heated discussion of Islam on comedian Bill Maher's HBO show over the weekend. And on Monday night (10/6/14), Fox host Bill O'Reilly decided to weigh in.

His first point was that most Muslims support Sharia law, which he portrayed as very troubling:

There are about 1.6 billion Muslims and 35 countries practice some kind of sharia law. That means they are governed by people who abide by principles of Islam that are controversial to say the least. In some places you can even be stoned to death for committing a sin.

A study published by the Pew Research Center last year asked Muslims if they favor sharia law. In Afghanistan, 99 percent do; Pakistan 84 percent; Iraq 91 percent; Egypt 74 percent; Jordan 71 percent…. So you can see that millions of Muslims think their religion should dictate what happens in society.

But "sharia" doesn't mean supporting "stoning people to death." The Pew survey (4/30/13) he allegedly read explains that sharia

offers moral and legal guidance for nearly all aspects of life–from marriage and divorce, to inheritance and contracts, to criminal punishments. Sharia, in its broadest definition, refers to the ethical principles set down in Islam's holy book (the Quran) and examples of actions by the Prophet Muhammad (sunna).

click to see full-size.

Or, as Pew puts it elsewhere: "According to the survey findings, most Muslims believe sharia is the revealed word of God rather than a body of law developed by men based on the word of God."
And Sana Saeed wrote a really great piece about the myths of sharia:

So what does Sharia actually mean? The actual definition of the Arabic term is "path to the watering hole." It consists of moral and ethical principles meant to guide Muslims towards what will nourish their soul. According to Islamic law specialist Dr. Sherman Jackson, Sharia is everything "from honoring one's parents, to helping the poor, to being good to one's neighbor."

So support for sharia law might not be all that revealing. But for Bill O'Reilly, it's a chance to draw the conclusions you wish to draw about Muslims.  The Pew poll also makes clear that Muslims do not "think their religion should dictate what happens in society." Most who support sharia law think it should apply only to Muslims, and Pew notes that "most Muslims around the world express support for democracy, and most say it is a good thing when others are very free to practice their religion."

O'Reilly's rant was intended to support Maher's Islamophobia (see Extra!, 8/13):

Mr. Maher is correct on the overall effect Islam is having on the world right now. The truth is many Muslim nations have not confronted Islamic terrorism, have not attacked violence in the name of Allah, and have not even condemned the jihad. There are exceptions to the rule, but they are few.

It's never a good idea to conflate "Muslims" with the dictators who lead Muslim countries ("Muslim nations"). But if O'Reilly looked at that same poll he found so useful, he'd notice that massive majorities of Muslims oppose religious violence:

Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam. Asked specifically about suicide bombing, clear majorities in most countries say such acts are rarely or never justified as a means of defending Islam from its enemies.

Nonetheless, he wraps up this wildly misleading rant by insinuating that while not all Muslims cheered the 9/11 attacks, a whole lot of them sure did:

You may remember that hours after America was attacked by Al-Qaeda on 9/11, thousands of Muslims, regular folks, celebrated in the streets. They were happy that more than 3,000 innocent people, including Muslims, were murdered. Again, these people are a minority, but they were not called out in any official way by Muslim nations around the world.

To illustrate this, O'Reilly plays a clip (one that is very familiar to Fox viewers) of what appears to be a dozen or people in East Jerusalem. But it is far easier to document the ways Muslims around the world showed solidarity with the United States, with Muslim leaders and scholars speaking out and clearly condemning the atrocities.

And this "where-were-the-Muslims-on-9/11" line is one's been using for over a decade. As I wrote in my book The Oh Really? Factor:

O'REILLY: "The telling event here is that faced with a violent faction using the name of Allah to kill civilians, Muslims the world over did little. There were no mass demonstrations against terrorism, no peace vigils and no organized condemnation of the Al-Qaeda criminals. In fact, many Muslim countries actually condoned the attacks on September 11 or blamed them on 'the Jews.'" (column, 8/1/02)

OH REALLY: There was a vigil in Iran shortly after the attacks: "On Tuesday, more than than 3,000 mostly young people held a candlelight vigil in Tehran for the victims of the terror attacks, closely watched by security forces" (New York Times, 9/21/01). A few days earlier (9/15/01), the Times reported that "thousands of people attending a World Cup qualifying match between Bahrain and Iran observed a moment of silence."

None of this is especially new from O'Reilly (see FAIR Blog, 5/13/14), who is careful to include this caveat:

As Talking Points stated last week, most Muslims are peaceful people. Even if they do believe in sharia law, that's a flaw in their thinking, it doesn't mean they are violent maniacs.

Whew, that's good. Though if he believes that, it would indicate a shift from a few years ago (FAIR Blog, 5/20/11):

For every Muslim in the world that wants democracy and wants human rights, there is one who doesn't. And the one who doesn't, doesn't have any rules. And it will blow the hell out of the one that does.

At least his Islamophobia is evolving.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

What Is The Fifth Estate?: The Role of Media in Affairs of State

Social Media Week Milano (Photo by Bruno Cordioli)

For the first time since 1848, a renewed Europe from the bottom up is possible: with the new social coalitions of the Fifth Estate.

By Giuseppe Allegri and Roberto Ciccarelli
‘A specter is haunting Europe’: the specter of the Fifth Estate, which follows Sieyès’s Third Estate and the Fourth Estate of peasant workers and the proletariat. The Fifth Estate can become ‘a new kind of proletariat’, but without any consciousness of class. It is made of stateless people, the outcast ‘precariat’ of Europe, to whom a new social figure is connected, ‘the included outcast’. This is the one who pays taxes, votes, expresses his/her opinion in real or virtual squares, but never comes out from the grey area between work and non-work.

This stateless person is the puzzle of contemporary citizenship. It is the product of the current European governance: a system formed by national governments and global economic institutions deferring to a technocratic elite and to a form of statism without a State. The outcast is left outside parliamentary representation, trade union or existing business. It floats in the empty space created by the disappeared balance between secular citizenship and the state, state sovereignty and the authorities that govern their lives at a super-national level (the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank: the ‘troika’ which monitors the crisis of European states and their populations).

Understanding the Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate is an existential condition for millions of workers, whether self-employed, temporary or freelancer workers, skilled or mobile workers, ‘precarious’ workers or simply working poor. They are knowledge workers, chain workers, communication or health care workers, mini-job workers, or contract workers in the arts and culture sector.

The Fifth Estate, however, is also the condition for millions of non-working people in the age of unemployment in the European Great Recession (2008 onwards); a condition that affects the existence of young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) as well as that of those over-40s and -50s.

No rights or protection can be thought of for it. Its subjects are stateless people, as they are excluded from social citizenship, and always subjected to the chance of becoming poor. They are the ‘outcasts’ of traditional labor law in the crucial transition from the Welfare State to the Workfare of neo-liberal governance. The subjects of the Fifth ‘precarious’ Estate are stateless and outcasts in that they often live without class identity and political community. Although they are the natives of the particular country in which they live, today they are as foreign and barbaric as the migrants in our midst in those same countries. Both these natives and the migrants belong to the ‘community of those without community’. Their citizenship is without a State, because the State does not recognize their citizenship. This is especially true for Italy, with her 8 million ‘atypical workers’: precarious, self-employed or temporary workers, without a ‘typical’ work contract and deprived of social citizenship.

The Fifth Estate is the condition of common power

The Fifth Estate claims and practices equality, social justice, independence and solidarity. Equality is a product of social cooperation. When it loses its claims for abstract universal law, it acquires the profile of a disturbing power for formal democracy. The everyday practices of millions of people, who are crushed by ruling elites, produce innovative relations in the sharing of good practices, and the setting up of a new citizenship. The Fifth Estate is the condition of this common power, a collective democratic voice: a claim for a new society, against the politics of austerity. The Fifth Estate is the power of a collective redemption against the plunder of financial capitalism and its permanent ‘class struggle from above’. The Fifth Estate shall be all or it shall not be.
The Fifth Estate of self-organization and the new mutualism

In recent years the idea of the Fifth State has allowed for the formation of a widespread network of people who exchange their experience and experimentation, sharing their attempt to practice new independent forms of life and work. The Fifth Estate fights to achieve social justice, solidarity, cooperative mutualism, co-working and autonomy, and to affirm a new society against the austerity of the global recession.

In the USA, for instance, it is worth mentioning the Freelancers union, a ‘Federation of the Unaffiliated’, as their motto says. It consists of hundreds of thousands of ‘independents (workers) united to build a better future’. Their work and struggle for ‘the radical notion of fairness’, with political action and new mutualism, succeeded in obtaining a ‘Freelancer Union Medical Insurance’.

In Italy, ACTA (Associazione Consulenti del Terziario Avanzato - Association of the Consultants of Advanced Tertiary) promotes the self-organization of independent workers connected to new occupations with no professional qualification. Another case worth mentioning is the STradE (Sindacato Traduttori Editoriali - Union of Editorial Translators), which signed a supplementary health care agreement, Mutua Elisabetta Sandri, on behalf of its ordinary members and associates.
The agreement was signed in partnership with the mutual aid society Insieme Salute (Together Health), and was dedicated to Elisabetta Sandri, a ‘self-employed’ colleague who died prematurely after a long and courageous fight with her disease, and with an unfair health system that prevented her from enjoying the same rights as other categories of workers.

These are just a few examples of the self-organization of the Fifth Estate by which its self-protection is enacted and a new idea of social citizenship promoted. This reveals an unprecedented social coalition between movements, associations, and the people, struggling against neo-liberal dogma.
The social coalitions of the Fifth Estate: from the cities to a new social Europe

Social coalitions of the Fifth Estate first began to be formed in the cities. Echoing Guy Debord’s psychogeographic dérive, Henry Lefebvre’s droit à la ville, or David Harvey’s rebel cities, they all claim a new right to the city. As Harvey put it during an interview with Il Manifesto on the occasion of the Citizenship, Orientalism and the Commons seminar at Teatro Valle in September 2011, this stands as ‘a network for the many forms of proximity activism in the cities’.

These localized social coalitions create networks between freelancers’ associations, clubs, social organizations and movements, generating new forms of work and cultural and social enterprise. In this respect, they well reflect what Richard Sennet calls: ‘the essence of urbanity, which is that men can act together, without the compulsion to be the same’.

A remarkable symbol of a new institution of self-government of the commons is offered in this direction by Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome. The idea of the common good encompasses here theatre, cultural and knowledge works, politics and enterprise for people who desire to regain not only their lives, but also the social spaces where they can experiment with new forms of collective life, as they often put it in their interventions.

What we see here in a broad perspective is a unity in diversity that promotes self-organization and self-government in the city, creating a new idea of society that moves from a local to a post-national constellation as Jürgen Habermas anticipated already twenty years ago; that is to say, a European political space based on a federative pact of autonomous cities.

This is a movement for more social justice, equality, social cooperation and independence of life and work. It says with Étienne Balibar: ‘a new Europe can only come from the bottom up’. This new Europe must be a social Europe, allowing for the welfare of the Fifth Estate and the people crushed by neo-liberal plunder.

Real freedom for all (Philippe Van Parijs) begins with a universal basic income and has to promote a pan-European solidarity among all the people who have chosen to live in this continent. For the first time since 1848, a new Europe from the bottom up is possible: with the new social coalitions of the Fifth Estate.

References

Giuseppe Allegri. ‘New Social Movements and the Deconstruction of New Governance: Fragments of Post-Modern Theories in Europuzzle’, European Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3, (2008).

Giuseppe Allegri and Roberto Ciccarelli, La furia dei cervelli, (Roma: manifestolibri, 2011).

Giuseppe Allegri and Roberto Ciccarelli, Il quinto stato. Perché il lavoro indipendente è il nostro futuro: Precari, autonomi free lance per una nuova società, (Milano: Ponte alle Grazie, 2013).

Étienne Balibar. ‘A new Europe can only came from the bottom up’, OpenDemocracy, 6 May 2013.

Basic Income Network Italia (eds.). Reddito per tutti. Un'utopia concreta per l'era globale, (Roma, Manifestolibri, 2009).

Michael Blecher et alii. Governance, società civile e movimenti sociali. Rivendicare il comune, (Roma, Ediesse, 2009).

Roberto Ciccarelli. ‘Il buon diritto alla Comune’, Il Manifesto, 1 October 2013.

Harvey David. Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, (London: Verso: 2012).

Richard Sennet. The Fall of Public Man, (New York: Knopf, 1977).

Guy Standing. ‘The Precariat: why it needs deliberative democracy’, OpenDemocracy, 27 January 2012.

Philippe Van Parijs. Real freedom for all. What (if anything) can justify capitalism?, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Former US Defense Sec Robert Gates: Says Vice President Biden Was "Wrong" About Almost "Everything" But He's Absolutely Wrong On Iraqi Opinion of US

Robert Gates Duty Spoof - Doody
(Illustration by jfxgillis)

By Ronald David Jackson
Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight to hawk his new book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," when he suggested that most Iraqis have a favorable opinion of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: "for most Iraqis, life is in fact significantly better than under Sadam Hussein."

While with Piers Morgan, Gates almost gloated about how consistently "wrong" Vice President Joe Biden has been regarding foreign policy. Yet Gates doesn't seem to have the slightest idea of what he is talking about on the issue of Iraqi views, which calls into question his book, his opinions, and his leadership as Defense Secretary. 

What Iraqis Think:
United States "Broke It" But Didn't Fix It

"If you break it you own it."
General Colin Powell,
warning regarding the invasion of Iraq.

What do the Iraqis themselves think about Iraq after the US invasion? They are not very happy, according to the findings of opinion polls.

According to a Gallup Poll published in March of 2011, Iraqis say security is better as a result of US withdrawal. That is, Iraqis believed the presence of the United States was causing conflict, not reducing it. More than four in five "perceived security to have been positively impacted by the U.S. departure." A poll published by Zogby Research Services in December of 2011 showed that only 30% of Iraqis believed Iraq is "better off" as a result of the US invasion.

In fact, the only segment of Iraqi public opinion that considers itself better off after the US intervention are the Kurds, who gained more independence as Iraq has further splintered into three segments: Shia, Sunni and Kurd.


The Number One Menace for Arabs:
The United States and Israel

Barack Obama's Record Low Poll Ratings: Deteriorating Image Could Shred Remaining Authority

Are Obama's ratings dipping past the point of no return? (via AFP)

Barack Obama's second term fumbles have pitched him to record low poll ratings and splintered his credibility with the American people. But has his presidency reached the point of no return? History and opinion poll data suggest that when reelected…