Lead Not Manage - Potent Whisper

#LeadNotManage is the latest episode of Potent Whisper's new Spoken Word series 'Yeah I Said It', which uses Rap to respond to current affairs.

Why I Became A Black Men’s Rights Activist

“We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”
-Malcolm X

By Mumia Ali: Paul Elam’s recent column, addressing Black male feminist Byron Hurt’s article in The Root, raises a number of very interesting questions, a few of which I’d like to expand upon in this essay. But, before I do, I’d like to more personally address Mr. Hurt myself, because, let’s face it: in a world and at a time when Identity Politics is a way of life, where “Who, Whom?” is the order of the day, a White Guy(TM) like Mr. Elam really can’t “go in” in the way that I, a blue collar, union card-carrying Brotha, can.
So, let’s get to it.
Since what has informed, and inspired, Mr. Hurt’s evolution as a Black male feminist is his personal life experience living with his own parents, I’d like to return the favor and offer a bit of my own personal life, which informed and inspired my own evolution as a Black Men’s Rights Activist.
It began with my parents and grandparents; you see, what they, and indeed much of my extended family, all had in common, is that they were rich with “strong, independent” Black women – you know, the kind that is lauded by Black America-proper.

Alexis Tsipras Most Outrageous Outburst Yet?

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Speaking in May 2014 (ahead of Ukraine's elections) new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made very clear why he is now against Germany's push for further sanctions against Russia.

Via VoR,
[The SYRIZA] party believes that the new government in Ukraine came to power as a result of a coup, and call it a junta.

"We should not accept or recognize the government of neo-Nazis in Ukraine," the Athens News Agency quotes Tsipras who believes that the Ukrainian people should decide their future themselves.

Speaking about different peoples' movements for self-determination, Tsipras said that the European left respected the right to self-determination, but nationalism and clashes could not lead to positive results.

"We in the EU should not give preference to changing borders, but must respect the position of the peoples, who have decided to create a Federation within the state," said the SYRIZA leader.

The Terrorist Zio-Nazi Regime Has Begun A War In The Middle And Vows To "Butcher All Sand Niggers"

JSIL [Israel] and Hezbollah are at war.

By Michael Snyder: On top of everything else that is going on in the world, now we have a new war in the Middle East, and nobody is quite certain what is going to happen next.  Israel has been preparing for this moment for more than 8 years.  So has Hezbollah.  According to some reports, Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of 50,000 rockets since the end of the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006.  If all-out warfare does erupt, we could potentially see tens of thousands of missiles rain down into an area not too much larger than the state of New Jersey.  And of course the Israeli military is also much more sophisticated and much more powerful than it was back in 2006.  If cooler heads do not prevail, we could be on the verge of witnessing a very bloody war.  But right now nobody seems to be in the mood to back down.  Hezbollah is absolutely fuming over an airstrike earlier this month that killed six fighters and a prominent Iranian general.  And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel is “prepared to act powerfully on all fronts” in response to a Hezbollah ambush that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded seven.  Just such an incident is what sparked the war between the two sides back in 2006.  But this time, a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spark a full-blown regional war.

Greece At The Crossroads: The Oligarchs Blew It

Once one oligarchy falls, it will threaten to topple a long line of oligarch dominoes.

By Charles Hugh Smith: A great many narratives invoking Greece are being tossed around, but only one really encapsulates the unvarnished truth: the Oligarchs blew it. The oligarchs in both Greece and the European Union/ECB had the opportunity a few years ago to trade some of their outsized wealth and political power for stability and sustainable expansion.
Instead, they chose to not just cling to every shred of their outsized wealth and power but to actively increase it. Their greed and hubris has now put their entire system of parasitic wealth extraction at risk of collapse. Their political stranglehold on power has been weakened, and there’s no going back: they blew it, and now it’s too late. The debt-serfs have finally had enough.

Gorbachev Warns Of Risk Of US-Russia Armed Conflict

The last Soviet leader has accused the US of pushing Russia into a new Cold War that could lead to an armed conflict.
Press TV: "America... has already drawn us into a new Cold War," Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview published on Thursday.
He added that “I can't say for sure that a Cold War won't lead to a 'hot' one. I fear they could take the risk."
"Today, we keep hearing all the time about sanctions in relations to Russia both from America and the European Union. Have they entirely lost their minds? America has ‘totally lost its way in the jungles’ and is dragging us there as well," he told the Interfax news agency.
The last Soviet leader added that the gap between the West and Russia are “too wide. And, regrettably, it is not getting any narrower. Rather, it keeps growing even further!"
He has also in the past criticized the West for what he called their short-sighted policies on major global issues.
Gorbachev said the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have proven the West’s incompetence in its claim to resolve global issues.

“Mother Jones” Betrays Legacy Of Mary Harris Jones

By Tom Golden: Mother Jones did a 6000 word piece on the Men’s Human Rights Movement and got it wrong in so many ways, and left out so much crucial information, it’s hard to know what to say. Here’s a comment I left on the article:
The namesake of this magazine is Mary (Mother) Jones, a woman who stood up for the rights of men. ​Her husband was an ironworker and organizer of the National Union of Iron Moulders. After​ his early death Mother Jones honored her husband by becoming a highly successful union organizer fighting for the rights of working men. She dedicated her life to helping men get a fair deal and did so with great gusto and aplomb. Far from a suffragette she is often quoted as having said “You don’t need the vote to raise hell.”
The irony of this article is overwhelming.
​The real Mother Jones fought for the rights of men who worked in the death professions. That is, those jobs that have a very high mortality rate. The jobs that are populated almost entirely by men who are sacrificing their own safety in order to provide for their families and loved ones. Workplace death is actually one of the many men’s issues that the author omitted from bringing up in this article. Rather than compliment the people who are working towards helping with this issue and these men her article instead attempts to denigrate and marginalize those working for the human rights of men and boys by name calling those folks haters and trolls. I do wonder if Ms. Blake thinks of Mother Jones as a hater and troll?

Gold And The Fed's Failed 'Utopian Dream'

By Ron Paul: Over the last 100 years the Fed has had many mandates and policy changes in its pursuit of becoming the chief central economic planner for the United States. Not only has it pursued this utopian dream of planning the US economy and financing every boondoggle conceivable in the welfare/warfare state, it has become the manipulator of the premier world reserve currency.
As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke explained to me, the once profoundly successful world currency – gold – was no longer money. This meant that he believed, and the world has accepted, the fiat dollar as the most important currency of the world, and the US has the privilege and responsibility for managing it. He might even believe, along with his Fed colleagues, both past and present, that the fiat dollar will replace gold for millennia to come. I remain unconvinced.
At its inception the Fed got its marching orders: to become the ultimate lender of last resort to banks and business interests. And to do that it needed an “elastic” currency.  The supporters of the new central bank in 1913 were well aware that commodity money did not “stretch” enough to satisfy the politician’s appetite for welfare and war spending. A printing press and computer, along with the removal of the gold standard, would eventually provide the tools for a worldwide fiat currency. We’ve been there since 1971 and the results are not good.

Spain Furious With Israeli Regime For Murdering Their Peacekeeper

Spain has held the terrorist Tel Aviv regime accountable for the murder of a Spanish peacekeeper serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) during an exchange of fire between Israeli forces and freedom fighters from Lebanon’s heroic Hezbollah anti-apartheid resistance movement. 

Orwellian UK BANNED Press TV: "It was because of this escalation of violence and it came from the Israeli side," Spanish Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi told reporters in New York on Wednesday. 
Marchesi further noted that his country demands full investigation into the killing. 
The Spanish defense ministry said in a statement that 36-year-old Corporal Francisco Javier Soria Toledo "died this [Wednesday] morning during incidents between Hezbollah and the Israeli army in the area of responsibility of the Spanish contingent." 
Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressed on Twitter his "great sadness at the death of a Spanish soldier in Lebanon." 
The Security Council also condemned the peacekeeper's death in its strongest terms, and extended its sincere sympathies.

Men Must Prove A Woman Said 'Yes' Under New Radical Feminist Misandric UK Rape Rules

WD: As we have been saying for years, men and boys, ABR for your own protection.

New radical feminist guidance will be issued to all UK police forces and prosecutors as part of a misandric 'toolkit' to keep rape investigations a male only crime and the onus on men.

By Gordon Rayner and Bill Gardner, The Telegraph's resident white knight manginas.  Men accused of date rape will be presumed guilty and need to convince police that a woman consented to sex as part of a major change in the way sex offences are investigated.

The Director of Public Prosecutions said it was time for the legal system to move beyond the concept of “no means no”

Feminism, The Velvet Triangle And India’s Policy Making

By Amartya Talukdar: How did feminists invade India’s policy making mechanism? Can we can prevent them from getting more space? These are the questions that vex India’s men’s rights activists.
India chose to be a planned economy after Independence and a planning commission was established. The planning commission held sway over public policy matters till recently when the planning commission was abandoned for NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India).
A glance into successive plans shows how feminists have slowly made their way into India’s policy making commission. Instead of growth for the entire population, these plans seem to have a special place for women, though strangely they do not have similar schemes for men.

The New Greek Government Arrives In Its Residence: Finds No Power, No Wifi Password And No Toilet Soap

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Things in Greece are bad. So bad, that the outgoing government of Antonis Samaras decided to not only leave the new inhabitants of the official residence of the Greek prime minister, the Maximos Mansion, without power, and without the WiFi password, but they decided to "borrow" all the soap in the toilet as well. More from Spiegel, google translated:

"We sit in the dark. We have no internet, no email, no way to communicate with each other", said an employee of the Office, who has worked for various government for years. "That's never happened before." It shows that Samaras' team have "no manners and no decency."

Because of blackouts in the Maximos Mansion the official website of the Greek Prime Minister still shows the image and the resume of Samaras - even though since Monday, the left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is the head of government in Athens.

It was the first time that a government handover has been so bitter, said the office staff to SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Everything was seamless and worked under Mr Samaras but he would not let Mr Tsipras benefit."