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Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Black Leaders And War.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

“In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.” — Alexis de Toqueville

We’ll go live to Egypt and to Lebanon to understand whether the Tunisia effect is indeed spilling over into the larger Arab world. My guests Alex Ortiz and Jackson Allers will give us an on-the-ground report, as well as analysis that American media miss. Plus, the Billionaire funders of the Tea Party are secretly gathering in Palm Springs this weekend to discuss their agenda – we’ll speak with Robert Reich. And this week’s Black Agenda Report.

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President Obama addressed Congress and the nation yesterday in his State of the Union Address. Speaking for about an hour, he referred to this being “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” announcing a relatively bold goal of adopting clean energy so that “[b]y 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.” This went hand-in-hand with his call for cutting subsidies to oil companies. Obama also focused on education by first chastising parents and teachers for their responsibility, and then lauding his own education policy called Race To the Top calling it “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” Obama called on Americans to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world” even as he announced a 5-year domestic spending freeze. The President also obliquely voiced …

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California’s Citizen’s Redistricting Committee will soon begin the complex task of redrawing boundaries for the State Board of Equalization, State Legislative and Congressional districts. Redistricting follows any Census year, when population shifts are recorded and voting areas are redrawn to reflect changes. Traditionally redistricting is done by elected officials, who are notorious for gerrymandering, the practice of intentionally creating districts to benefit one political party or group and dis-empower the political opposition. The practice is blamed for creating a stagnant political environment in which incumbents are unresponsive to their constituents because they are certain their party will retain power year after year. In 2008 Proposition 11 was passed by California voters, establishing that district lines for state legislative districts would be drawn by a 14 member Citizen’s Committee. In November, voters gave …

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According to a 2010 report by the Pew Center on the states, California has the second highest prison population in the nation after Texas. The golden state dropped to number two after leading the nation in inmate population in prior years. However prison overcrowding remains a serious and largely unmitigated issue. California’s correctional facilities are built to house 80,000 inmates. But they hold between 144,000 and 156,000 people. A legal battle to end overcrowding has been waged in California courts and after a three-judge panel in 2009 ordered 40,000 inmates released, the state appealed to the US Supreme Court. The Court heard arguments in the case in early December 2010 and has not yet issued a ruling. While the constitutional rights of California’s incarcerated are debated in court, their …

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The Right Hook, a weekly segment which covers the machinations of the right wing, from the Republican Party to the Tea Party Patriots, and beyond. By Chris Bennett

The Right Hook, a weekly segment which covers the machinations of the right wing, from the Republican Party to the Tea Party Patriots, and beyond. By Chris Bennett
Glenn Beck has again managed to incite death threats from his followers. This time . . . the death threats are for City University of New York professor Frances Fox Piven. For over a year, Beck has targeted Piven as the foil in his paranoid conspiracy theories. Beck has put Piven and her late husband, Richard Cloward, at the center of a powerful left wing movement to “collapse” the …

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.” — Angela Davis

“Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.” — Jose Ortega y Gasset