Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X Now available for speaking and reading nationwide

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X Now available for speaking and reading nationwide:

Marvin X is one of the outstanding African writers and teachers in America. He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing.--Amiri Baraka

Invite Marvin X to your city, campus, conference, festival, coast to coast. Now preparing 2014 tour schedule.

February

Fresno City College, conversation with Kehindi Solwazi

March

University of California, Merced, Black Arts Movement Conference

Black Bird Press News & Review: Plato Negro, A Day in the Life at Academy of da Corner

Black Bird Press News & Review: Plato Negro, A Day in the Life at Academy of da Corner

Black Bird Press News & Review: Parable of Broken systems, broken minds

Black Bird Press News & Review: Parable of Broken systems, broken minds: These days nothing works, children are stuck on stupid, killing because they are bored. Mentally ill people don't want to live so they kill. No one can do anything right, no matter how much you pay them to do a job, the mind is just not there, so the system is wacko, but it's really the wacko minds! Maybe it's the water, the genetically altered food, perhaps the electromagnetic field, but something stinks like rotten meat. The political system is dead in the water, no one cares about the consent of the governed, it's all about the lobbyists. The religious institutions are in pitiful shape, focusing on prosperity while the people starve spiritually--the church cares nothing about the Prince of Peace. The educational system has gone private for the money. The public school drop out rate is 60% in the hood. The prison system is about money: the prisoners are a commodity on the stock exchange, while the prisons are full of the mentally ill and drug addicted. What is the solution? Jump out of the box, the box of ignorance, fear, insecurity, into the pool of love and healing. What did James Brown tell us, Money won't save you but time will take you out! Revolution is the solution, Revolutionary Black Nationalism.

Black Bird Press News & Review: The Meaning of BAM, The Black Arts Movement

Black Bird Press News & Review: The Meaning of BAM, The Black Arts MovementKim,

Somehow I just received your emailed request with me inadvertently at the head of the “TO” line, presumably because it happened to follow a message I had recently sent you. I’ll give the matter some thought and may send a comment later, as I am presently much too humbled by Marvin’s brief but apt  manifesto of the Black Arts Movement I only stumbled into in a small way with the publication of my “Black Anglo Saxons” – and that according to Kalamu ya Salaam (Cf. his “Historical Overview to the Black Arts Movement” in The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature). But more than that, I’m afraid my vision is so blurred and bifurcated the Black Arts Movement momentarily reminds me of a blackened picture of Dorian Gray, with our liberation movement long on ice but continuing to decay. Which I suppose is why these erstwhile and illustrious black arts pioneers are poised to answer your call to converge at the University of California’s Merced campus and paint a Portrait of BAM.

Later,
Nathan (Dr. Nathan Hare, The Black Think Tank, SF, Father of Black Studies)

Homeland Security under investigation for buying hollow point bullets and other ammo

The Department of Homeland Security is under investigation for purchasing large stockpiles of ammunition, days before legislation was introduced that would restrict the amount a government agency can legally buy.

The Government Accountability Office is now conducting the investigation into the alleged DHS purchases, which is “just getting underway,” GAO spokesman Chuck Young told US News & World Report.

DHS officials have repeatedly denied stockpiling ammunition, but AP reports claim that the agency plans to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next four or five years, and has already bought 360,000 rounds of hollow point bullets and 1.5 billion rounds in 2012.

DHS claims that it is buying ammo in bulk to save money, but experts have pointed out that hollow point bullets cost nearly twice as much as full metal jacket rounds. They also explode on impact for maximum damage, which has caused some Americans to wonder what purpose they would serve the DHS domestically. Purchasing 1.6 billion rounds of ammo would also give DHS the means to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq War. Members of Congress say the DHS has repeatedly refused to tell them the purpose of procuring such large amounts of ammo.

“They have no answer for that question,” Congressman Timothy Huelscamp told Infowars in March, pointing out that the purchases are being made at a time when sequestration should be limiting the agency’s spending. “…We’re going to find out… I say we don’t fund them until we get an answer.”

DHS officials testified last week that it was only planning to purchase up to 750 million rounds of ammunition for training centers and law enforcement over the next five years. The agency's spokesman, Peter Boogaard, told Congress that the media reports are ‘misleading’. But Boogard also mentioned a second five-year contract for up to 450 million rounds of ammunition for law enforcement purposes. Together, the two DHS contracts for ammunition would result in purchases of up to 1.2 billion rounds of ammo.

“With more than 100,000 armed law enforcement personnel in DHS, significant quantities of ammunition are used to support law enforcement operations, quarterly qualifications, and training, to include advanced firearms training exercises,” Boogard said. 

But the DHS testimony did not provide an adequate explanation for the large amount of ammo it plans to procure, prompting a GAO investigation at approximately the same time as the introduction of the AMMO Act.

The new legislation, which was introduced in both the Senate and the House on Friday, would prevent government agencies from buying any more ammunition if its stockpiles are already larger than what they were in previous presidential administrations.

Proponents of the bill suspect that government agencies may be making large ammunition purchases to keep the supplies out of the hands of Americans at a time when the administration has been trying to reduce gun violence.

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” US Sen. Jim Inhofe, who introduced the bill, said in a news release. “One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition… [DHS] has two years worth of ammo on hand and allots nearly 1,000 more rounds of ammunition for DHS officers than is used on average by our Army officers.”

Congressman Frank Lucas cited an ammunition shortage in Oklahoma and blamed the DHS for taking away Americans’ Second Amendment rights by removing ammo from the market.

The GAO investigation will attempt to determine whether there truly is a reason for the large ammo purchases, or whether DHS is simply buying large quantities to save money in the long run.

Why is the Department of Homeland Security buying so manny bullets?

Why is the Department of Homeland Security buying so many bullets?

Published February 14, 2013

Associated Press

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REUTERS

Online rumors about a big government munitions purchase are true, sort of. 

The Homeland Security Department wants to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the next four or five years. It says it needs them -- roughly the equivalent of five bullets for every person in the United States -- for law enforcement agents in training and on duty. 

Published federal notices about the ammo buy have agitated conspiracy theorists since the fall. That's when conservative radio host Alex Jones spoke of an "arms race against the American people" and said the government was "gearing up for total collapse, they're gearing up for huge wars." 

The government's explanation is much less sinister. 

Federal solicitations to buy the bullets are known as "strategic sourcing contracts," which help the government get a low price for a big purchase, says Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga . The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises. 

Dixon said one of the contracts would allow Homeland Security to buy up to 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years for its training facilities. The rounds are used for basic and advanced law enforcement training for federal law enforcement agencies under the department's umbrella. The facilities also offer firearms training to tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers. More than 90 federal agencies and 70,000 agents and officers used the department's training center last year. 

The rest of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition would be purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government's second largest criminal investigative agency. 

ICE's ammunition requests in the last year included: 

--450 million rounds of .40-caliber duty ammunition 

--40 million rounds of rifle ammunition a year for as many as five years, for a total bullet-buy of 200 million rounds 

--176,000 rifle rounds on a separate contract 

--25,000 blank rounds 

The Homeland Security ammo buy is not the first time the government's bullets purchases have sparked concerns on the Internet. The same thing happened last year when the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was buying 174,000 hollow point bullets. 

Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency's assistant inspector general for external relations, said those bullets were for the Social Security inspector general's office, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes. 

Jones the t

Fed Reserve to continue $85 billion a month "Quantitative Easing"--Bank the Bankers!

FED RESERVE TO 

CONTINUE $85 BILLION A 

MONTH QUANTITATIVE 

EASING

by WYNTON HALL 18 Sep 2013 182POST A COMMENT

The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday it will continue its unprecedented $85 billion a month bond-buying strategy despite earlier indications it would begin tapering its controversial quantitative easing policies. 

The announcement comes as the Fed has downgraded its outlook for the U.S. economy. The Fed now projects that the economy will grow at an anemic 2% to 2.3%, rather than its earlier forecast of 2.3% to 2.6% growth.

The Fed's quantitative easing policies have already pumped $2.8 trillion into the economy, but a new Reuters poll finds that 73% of Americans do not even know what quantitative easing means. Quantitative easing is when the Federal Reserve buys securities to drive down interest rates and prop up the economy.

The Dow and S&P 500 surged to record highs after the Fed's announcement; the Fed's easy-money policies and suppressed interest rates give banks free money to invest and leverage.

“The Fed has been robbing America’s poor and middle class and essentially underwriting the wealthy, the big banks and big business," explains Jonathon Trugman, writing in theNY Post. "The twisted maneuvers of grand larceny-like proportions have underwritten the greatest transfer of wealth this generation has ever seen.” 

Bankrate.com senior financial analyst Greg McBride said, "The primary goal here is to push money into riskier assets, whether it's equities or the housing market."

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet now stands at an unprecedented $3.6 trillion. Prior to the recession, the Fed's balance sheet was less than $1 trillion.