WIDESPREAD FAILURES —
Texas’ “failsafe” generators failed, risking weeks-long catastrophe

Black start generators—and their backups—failed en masse during deep freeze.

TIM DE CHANT - 5/28/2021

Enlarge / A worker repairs a power line in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.

Texas’ days-long power outages during last February’s deep freeze almost stretched into weeks or even months thanks to a string of failures at “black start” generators.

More than half of the state’s 28 black start generators, which are crucial for bringing a collapsed grid back to life, experienced outages themselves, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. Of the 13 primary generators, nine encountered trouble, as did six of 15 secondary generators acting as backups in case the primary backups failed. Some had trouble getting enough fuel to run, while others were damaged by the cold weather.

“Having had experience for almost two decades with utilities, it’s genuinely inconceivable to me—even in today’s massively deregulated environment—I cannot imagine how any regulatory oversight got itself into this position,” said Evan Wilner, who served as Delaware’s first public advocate representing utility customers.

While one black start generator is theoretically enough to bring a grid back to life, the process would take an exceptionally long time, which is why grids have many such generators standing by.

Five minutes from catastrophe

Early on the morning of February 15, Texas came within five minutes of needing its troubled black start generators. Fossil fuel generators began tripping offline and wind turbines were freezing, eventually causing more than 35 GW of capacity to become unavailable. Cold temperatures were driving demand higher, and the grid’s frequency began dropping dangerously.

FURTHER READINGTexas gov knew of natural gas shortages days before blackout, blamed wind anyway

Just before 2 am, as the frequency dropped to 59.4 Hz and then to 59.3 Hz, grid operators began “shedding load,” a technical term for cutting off power to portions of the grid. That action reduced demand, which brought the frequency back closer to the target of 60 Hz.

If grid operators had been unable to bring the frequency back up, the power plants that had been generating would have been forced offline to avoid damage to their equipment. Already widespread outages would have spread even further, plunging more of Texas into darkness.

If the grid had collapsed, Texas would have needed to turn to its black start generators to slowly bring each power plant back online. But when the state would have needed them most, many generators were unable to fulfill their duties. The black start generator at the massive 3.65 GW coal- and gas-fired W.A. Parish power plant was down for 17 hours on February 15, the day the outages began. Black start at another large generator, the 1 GW T.H. Wharton plant, was down for 84 hours that week because its air intake was frozen. The average length of outages across all black start generators in Texas during the deep freeze was 40 hours.

Black start power

Without working black start generators, power plants cut off from the grid have no way of getting back online. All power plants, including nuclear and hydroelectric, require electricity to jump-start their operations. Without power, pumps can’t feed water to boilers, and spillways can’t open to allow water to course through their turbines. Even the generators themselves require a small amount of electricity to excite the electromagnetic fields in their rotors. Larger power plants generally require larger black start generators, and those units may require smaller generators to get cranking.

Some power plants that provide black start services are finding the economics challenging, according to the WSJ report. One small hydroelectric plant in West Virginia says it spends $65,000 to comply with black start regulations but earns only $51,000 a year for the service.

Every North American grid has black start generators, but there’s no nationwide standard regulating them. Each state or grid operator decides how to operate the generators. Some use a mix of fossil fuel generators and hydroelectric dams. Hydro is particularly attractive because the fuel source is often more reliable—as long as there’s water behind the dam, the generators require just a small amount of power, either from a generator or a battery, to ramp up to full capacity.Advertisement

But Texas no longer has any hydroelectric black start facilities. All of its black start generators use natural gas as a primary fuel, and only 13 generators at six sites can use fuel oil as a backup. When natural gas supplies run short, generators without an alternate fuel source are unable to provide vital services to the grid. Plant operators are required to maintain a reserve supply of fuel, but it wasn’t clear during the February freeze that they were all fulfilling this obligation. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages most of the state’s electrical grid, is reportedly in the process of trying to recover some of the payments made to black start facilities that failed during the outage.

Myriad costs

Utilities in Texas may not have trouble recouping their costs, though. Texas lawmakers are on the verge of passing bills that would allow gas and electric utilities and cooperatives to issue state-approved bonds that would be backed by additional charges on customers’ bills, according to the Texas Tribune.

FURTHER READING Texas’ power grid crumples under the cold

Utilities and cooperatives ran up massive debts when ERCOT set the maximum wholesale rate at $9,000 per MWh, and natural gas prices spiked as supplies tanked. If the bills pass, natural gas utilities could issue $4.5 billion in ratepayer-backed bonds, and electric cooperatives could issue $2 billion in bonds. Retail electric providers could finance $2.1 billion for power bought but never received, and ERCOT would receive an $800 million loan from the rainy day fund to pay companies that are still owed money.

The financial toll is just a sideshow to the human costs of the disaster, though. While 151 deaths have been officially attributed to the outages, a new BuzzFeed News report suggests that the tally is likely closer to 700.

Black People Defeated Trump (The Movement for Black Lives)

We Win when we Follow Black Women (Showing Up for Racial Justice - SURJ)

Black People Defeated Trump (The Movement for Black Lives)
The defeat of Donald Trump and the building of grass roots political independent. 

Reports from The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL); Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ); 

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL),

Black People Defeated Trump (The Movement for Black Lives)

Black people showed up, and we won. From Philly to Atlanta to Detroit, Black people defeated Trump, and pushed back against white supremacy. We proved that the majority of people in this nation support our fight for Black lives and oppose hate, bigotry and indifference.

Black people moved through so much pain and heartbreak to get to today. We’ve lost over 235,000 people to COVID-19, including a disproportionate number of our family and loved ones. We lost millions of jobs when we already face a precarious economic situation every day due to racial capitalism. And lawmakers across the country did everything they could to stop us from organizing, voting and building power.

We won anyway. This is a testament to the power of Black people and Black organizing.

This win is also a testament to the power of Black women. Black cis and trans women and femmes are at the forefront of our movement. Black women rejected the white supremacist agenda and mobilized our communities to turn out and vote.

But our work is not done. We have always said: the fight for justice does not stop at the ballot box. We have our first Black woman Vice President alongside many new Black women, trans and non-binary leaders who were voted into office across the country. Now, our job will be to hold these leaders accountable to the people’s demands.



We have a vision for Black lives and a plan for the first 100 days of the new administration.

We will champion the BREATHE Act to divest from ineffective, racist policing and invest in our communities. We will dig in on local defund the police campaigns all over the U.S. We will double down on our commitment to be about ALL Black lives including trans, gender nonconforming and intersex people, disabled people and immigrants.


Keep Showing Up With Us:


RSVP for our post-election roundtable next week. We’ll detail our plan for the first 100 days and beyond.


Join 150,000+ people and become a community co-sponsor of the BREATHE Act.


Stay ready, be alert and continue organizing to safeguard our communities against state and/or white supremacist violence and repression. The people have spoken and we must ensure the will of the people is respected.


Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to get and share updates using #M4BL and #TheWorkisNotDone.


Text POWER TO 90975 to receive our calls to action.

We must make Black lives matter after elections, too. And we must hold politicians accountable to the Black people who put them into office. We’re not going anywhere — Black movement was here long before this election and will be here long after.

In power and solidarity,

The Movement for Black Lives

[The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) formed in December of 2014, was created as a space for Black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions, develop shared assessments of what political interventions were necessary in order to achieve key policy, cultural and political wins, convene organizational leadership in order to debate and co-create a shared movement wide strategy. Under the fundamental idea that we can achieve more together than we can separately.]

We Win when we Follow Black Women 

(Showing Up for Racial Justice - SURJ)



Today, we are all breathing a collective sigh of relief. The people of this country – led by communities of color – have voted out Donald Trump.

This win is a testament to the power of multi-racial grassroots organizing. These last four years we have again seen that People of Color, but most especially Black women, offer the vision, leadership, and organizing work to get all of us free.

I am so proud of how we showed up in this election. We knew white voters elected Trump and we took responsibility for organizing our own to get him out. We threw down in Georgia – a place the Democratic Party had written off and where Black women organizers have been leading the way. We joined partners on the ground in Georgia, including the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter, Fair Fight, Working Families Party, and so many other groups that had already laid the foundation to flip Georgia because of their tremendous ongoing work to expand the electorate with more Black voters while keeping real solutions to working people’s problems front and center.

SURJ made over a million calls to white voters who we knew were suffering under this administration and who are infrequent voters. Over 3,800 SURJ members had 36,000 conversations with voters and secured 21,200 commitments to vote.

And it worked. The New York Times is reporting that Biden made major gains in majority-white counties among white people who didn’t attend college. That's who we called.

This is what it looks like to organize our own – and to do it at scale and in service of a vision set by Black movement leaders.

When we build multi-racial coalitions and invest in long-haul organizing, we win, y’all! And let’s be clear: defeating Trump was a movement win, not a win for the Democratic establishment. Years of powerful Latinx organizing laid the groundwork for progressive wins in Arizona. Black leadership paved the way to defeat Trump in Georgia. Grassroots organizers across the country built the people power to send visionary progressive candidates to the halls of Congress.

We know the road ahead will not be easy. Our movement is going to have to fight hard against a Biden administration – and we’re up against an emboldened Right. More white people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016 and the Right will not let up for a single second. We’ve got our work to do to continue to organize more of our people away from white supremacy.

Today, we celebrate – and recommit to organizing alongside our partners for the long-haul.

We now know control of the Senate will be decided in Georgia on January 5th. Want to take action with us to help win? Sign up here and we’ll be in touch to put you to work after we’ve checked in with our partners and rested up

In solidarity and with hope,
Erin Heaney
SURJ Director

Showing Up for Racial Justice - SURJ
81 Prospect Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

C.R.T.

Black History Has the Power to Ignite Movements. That’s Why the Right Fears It.

The administration’s pre-emptive assault on history is a desperate attempt to stop new social movements from starting.

By Nicholas Powers ,

Truthout

November 29, 2025

A visitor browses an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on August 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong / Getty Images

Ilooked at the slave shackles in the exhibit. My ancestors wore chains like this one. A bone-deep sorrow hit. When I researched my family history, names began to vanish as I traced it to Indigenous and African slavery. Here, right in front of me was material proof of the horror they survived. What is my responsibility to them?

The Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. is a soul-shaking experience. Going from the bottom level to the higher exhibits, visitors take the journey from slavery to freedom. I went years ago, and decided to go again with family and friends. During the government shutdown, the closed museum doors were symbolic of a larger right-wing attack. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have censored Black history, pulled Black books, removed Black Lives Matters icons, and led to a mass firing of Black federal employees.

The right wing suppresses Black history because it ignites social movements. Black history transforms rage into activism by putting racist events into a larger story of struggle against oppression. It shines a light on a hidden past. It exposes the hypocrisy of MAGA.

The right-wing attack on Black history is stupid, cruel, and futile. The logical end of censoring Black history is national suicide. Black history is a legacy with lessons that can heal the divides in the U.S. and repair our relationship to the world. Black history can free us from the right-wing image of the U.S. as a white Christian nationalist utopia, which never existed, and lead us to a clear-eyed radical realism. Black history bears a truth that makes it possible, finally, to create a future we can live in as liberated beings.


Trump’s War on Black America



Related Story

Interview |
Black History Testifies to the Impossible Creative Power of Black Resistance
Literary scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin discusses how Black yearning keeps surviving in the face of racist violence. By George Yancy , Truthout  February 23, 2025

Trump and MAGA are waging war on Black America. They have attacked it on three fronts; Black culture, Black economics, and voting rights. The attack on history is the most dangerous, because history gives birth to new protests.

Black history bears a truth that makes it possible, finally, to create a future we can live in as liberated beings.

In March, federal workers aimed jackhammers at the Black Lives Matter mural — blocks from the White House — and destroyed it. Less than a mile away, the African American Museum of D.C. was closed during the shutdown and has only recently reopened.

Trump came out the gate of his second presidency with a barrage of executive orders. One executive order titled “Ending Racial Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” led to Black-authored books being yanked from school libraries run by the Department of Defense. Trump shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. He terrified business leaders with possible DEI investigations. Black history month celebrations were cancelled at federal agencies.

In a perverse kind of trickle-down racism, Trump’s attack on Black Lives Matter became a permission structure for increased on-the-ground bigotry. White influencers proudly wore blackface for Halloween. Politico exposed a Young Republicans’ chat where they gleefully traded racist comments. Black comedian W. Kamau Bell has painted a portrait of a right-wing shift in standup performances in which anti-trans jokes and anti-Black slurs have become commonplace. This is not a series of isolated events: FBI statistics on anti-Black hate crime, consistently the most common form of hate crime, spiked during Trump’s two terms.

Side by side with the cultural attack is an economic one. Remember Elon Musk proudly waving a chainsaw at CPAC? Well, it worked. Black women’s unemployment leapt from 5.9 percent in February to 7.5 percent in September. Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and attacks on “DEI” forced 300,000 Black women out of their jobs. Put that number next to the 2003 statistic that 64 percent of Black families are led by a single parent, most of whom are single mothers, and the effects are devastating. Women are now trying to hold families together without work or health care.

When seen in that light, a closed history museum may seem to be at the bottom of the list of things to worry about. Yet a living relationship to history has the power to create a political consciousness for resistance. The ripping up of Black Lives Matter’s art, the censoring of Black books, the effort to whitewash Black history — all are part of a desperate attempt to stop a new social movement before it starts.

The Past Transforms Us

Emmett Till’s casket was right there, and no one could speak. I stood with visitors to the African American Museum in D.C., and the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” exhibit that highlights the Civil Rights Era weighed on us. To be in the presence of history, to be inches away from the casket that Emmett Till lay in, was dizzying.

The ripping up of Black Lives Matter’s art, the censoring of Black books, the effort to whitewash Black history — all are part of a desperate attempt to stop a new social movement before it starts.

Trump actually visited the museum in 2017 and in a somber tone, said, “This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes, heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass.” Eight years later, in August 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” Well, that’s a 180-degree turn.

Why the change? Two events upset Trump’s first term: COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Protests against police brutality have been ocean tides in the Black Freedom Struggle, of which BLM is the most recent wave.

Black protests against police brutality go far back. We see it in Abolitionists fighting the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and we see resistance in the Red Summer of 1919. Racist brutality sparked the Harlem riots of 1935 and 1943. In 1991, the police beating of Rodney King led to the L.A. riots. In 1999 the police murder of Amadou Diallo and the 2006 killing of Sean Bell launched marches. Wave after wave reached higher and higher. In 2020, BLM became a tsunami of protest, the largest in U.S. history — and it was also strong enough to carry voters to the polls and throw Trump out of office.

The Black Freedom Movement has more power than any president or any system. Trump knows this. MAGA knows this. This is why they erase Black history. The past transforms us, it fires up dormant desires. It realigns us with our ancestors. Black artists and intellectuals always documented the dramatic effect of learning about Black history.

Assata Shakur wrote in her 1988 autobiography, Assata, “I didn’t know what a fool they made of me until I grew up and started reading real history.”

Malcolm X wrote in his 1965 classic, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “History had been ‘whitened’ in the white man’s history books and the black man had been brainwashed for hundreds of years.”

From Frederick Douglass to Dead Prez, Ida B. Wells to Alicia Garza, knowing one’s history has always been the key ingredient to activating Black consciousness.

The Black thinker who systemized this transformation is Dr. William E. Cross in his 1971 essay, “The Negro-to-Black Conversion Experience.” Cross had a front-row seat to the 1968 climax of rebellion. He repeatedly saw apolitical brothers and sisters sparked by the revolution; they shed old lives, old fashions, and old ideas, and re-emerged in the street, wearing afros and bright pan-African colors. They went through stages like a butterfly molting in a cocoon, flying out, free as themselves.

Black history is the cocoon; it is the stories and imagery, the feeling of ancestors, it is the site of transformation. When millions upon millions undergo that change, like during the George Floyd protests, it becomes a historical force. A meteorologist, trying to show how interconnected all things are, once said that a flap of a butterfly’s wings can set off a tornado. It’s true. Why? The more that racists try to repress our history, the more we use it to explain what is happening, and how to fight back. The next social movement is already beginning, like a tornado.

As Pressure Builds, More Will Find Our History

When I finished my tour of the African American Museum, I was at the top floor. Sunlight came through the windows. The building is designed to recreate the journey from slavery to freedom. Standing at the top, I felt deeply moved.

Black history is the cocoon; it is the stories and imagery, the feeling of ancestors, it is the site of transformation.

The power of history, especially at a museum, is that right there under glass is evidence of our past. Flesh fades to dust. Bones crumble. Yet here are real things touched by real people. This is why the African American Museum in D.C. is the crown jewel of a large network of Pan-African historical sites. In New York, there’s the African Burial Ground. In Boston, there’s the Black Heritage Trail. In Tennessee, there’s the National Civil Rights Museum. In Ghana, there are slave castles and the heart-wrenching Door of No Return. The interconnected network of sites creates multiple transformation zones, where people enter and come out changed. When we leave, we take this history with us.

The tragedy of this moment is that Trump and MAGA have succumbed to a juvenile, cartoon version of history. If they turn back time, they believe, the joy of unlimited power will be at their fingertips. The harder they push for total control, the more pressure they place on masses of people. The government shutdown worsened hunger. People in the U.S. are facing even more unpayable health insurance. Rage at ICE builds in neighborhoods as masked agents separate families.

Under this pressure, many are forced to ask questions. When they do, they will find answers waiting for them. They will find our history.

Expect more tornados to come.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Nicholas Powers
Nicholas Powers is the author of Thirst, a political vampire novel; The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street; and most recently, Black Psychedelic Revolution. He has been writing for Truthout since 2011. His article, “Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life” in the Truthout anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? coalesces his years of reporting on police brutality.

Black women have always moved this country forward. On Election Day, we won’t be stopped


OPINION: By voting on Election Day, our collective power will continue to move America closer to its promise for all.

Black Women’s Leadership Collective |
Nov 5, 2022

(Getty Images)

Black women are a voting powerhouse. When we show up at the polls, we bring our communities with us and decide elections. In 2020, we turned out in record numbers and helped change the direction of our country. We made it clear that nothing and no one could stop us. In this 2022 midterm election season, our futures, our livelihoods, and basic freedoms are on the ballot. It is again time to organize and mobilize every man, woman and young voter in our communities and vote.

Also Read:
Black votes do matter — if we vote

As leaders of the Black Women’s Leadership Collective — an organizing hub for Black women’s organizations, advocates and supporters representing over 19 million Black women across America — we know just how strong our power is. Together we helped elect Kamala Harris as the first Black woman vice president. By electing President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris, we made it possible for their administration to implement a COVID-19 recovery plan and get vaccines into our communities, lift 716,000 black children out of poverty, give young people up to $20,000 in student loan debt relief, lower prescription drug costs with a $35 cap on insulin and change federal policy on marijuana possession. And, after fierce organizing throughout Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination process, Black women helped her take her rightful seat on the nation’s highest court. But that’s just the start, so together we must make it clear: We won’t let anyone stop us now.

While the country has begun to make progress on a number of issues, there is more work to do to create sustainable change and equity for Black women, our families and our communities. From criminal justice reform, codifying voting rights, help for families including access to affordable child care, getting weapons of war off our streets, to strengthening our democracy at every level, the solutions aren’t going to come from right-wing politicians — they come from us and the leaders we elect and hold accountable. And, with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip away our freedom to control our own bodies, we must elect leaders who will codify reproductive freedom, including access to abortion. There are some who want to pass a national ban on abortion on top of the extreme new measures we are seeing across the country that criminalize women and their doctors. We remember a time when our bodies were treated as property; some said we were less than human and that we couldn’t be trusted with freedom. We are not going back.

(Getty Images)

Not surprisingly, a recent poll from Higher Heights Leadership Fund found that Black women are highly motivated to vote in the 2022 midterm elections with 80 percent saying that we have the power to make change on issues that matter most to our community. We also know how important it is that we make a plan to vote and then encourage our family and friends to do the same. Making a plan is easy; start by deciding if you will vote by mail, early in person or in person on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 8. Visit vote.org to make your plan to vote right now.



The Higher Heights poll also found that a large majority of Black women agree that while we have made great strides, Black women are still underrepresented in the halls of power. In fact, while we are the largest voting bloc in America, there are currently no Black women in the U.S. Senate or serving as governor, but there are Black women running for both as well as elected office up and down the ballot. Fortunately, a record number of Black women are running for office across our country in 2022, and we have the opportunity to elect more Black women to every office from mayor to city council to state legislatures to governors, Congress and the U.S. Senate. You can learn more about the Black women running for office in 2022 here. Electing more Black women means more spaces where our lived experience is represented and part of the decisions that get made on the issues that directly impact our lives.

Also Read:
Oprah delivers November surprise, endorses Fetterman over Oz

Together in this 2022 midterm election, our collective power will continue to move America closer to its promise for all. We won’t be stopped.

This op-ed was written by three leaders of the Black Women’s Leadership Collective (BWLC) – Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Bishop Leah Daughtry, co-convener of Power Rising, and Karen Finney, CNN political commentator.

You Can’t Murder Liberation

Ron Jacobs

 February 21, 2025
Facebook

TwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Image by JD Doyle.

A revolutionary is not a victim. In fact, a revolutionary fights against victimhood past, present and future. When a movement fighting the racism and brutality of police forces uses a slogan like “Hands up, don’t shoot” it is emphasizing its potential victimhood and denying its power. Without power, there can be no long-term victory in the struggle against police brutality, police murders and the white supremacist system police in the US are enlisted to protect. Former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army (BLA) member Dhoruba Bin-Wahad not only understands this truth, he preaches it and he lives it. A new book titled Revolution in These Times: Dhoruba Bin-Wahad on Antifascism, Black Liberation and a Culture of Resistance examines the above statement, both in terms of history and the present moment.

Indeed, another of the points made by Bin-Wahad is that a movement resisting the capitalist state must know history; the history of the struggle and the history of the system the struggle is fighting. While Bin-Wahad lauds the spirit of the BLM protests and the numbers involved in the mobilizations after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, he also criticizes its leadership as a leadership that at best minimized their historical knowledge and focused instead on Floyd’s (and others murdered by police) victimhood at the hands of the police. The criticisms are not made in a manner that diminishes the importance of the movement or the protests, but as a means to understand why they ultimately failed. To those who might argue that they didn’t fail, a few statistics should clarify the truth of that statement. According to Statistia.com and other sources, every year since 2020 has seen an increase in killings by police. Furthermore, the rate of killings of unarmed Black men by cops is more than double the rate of killings of the dead classified as Hispanic or white. These statistics are affirmed in a variety of other sources, including the Washington Post, which no longer keeps track of these murders as of January 1, 2025. The termination of the Post’s keeping track is suspicious if only because of its occurrence after the newspaper’s owner Jeff Bezos groveling before Trump, who was ready to send in the army against the aforementioned protests in 2020.

Revolution in These Times is a collection of conversations, interviews and talks featuring Bin-Wahad. These forums took place over the past ten years or so. Many of them are (edited for clarity) transcripts of conversations held on Black Power Media, an alternative media undertaking founded by Kalonji Jama Changa that describes its politics as Pan-Africanist, internationalist, and socialist. The topics addressed include the history of white supremacy and the resistance to it, the nature of US capitalism and the political system it commands, the nature of reform under that system, and the history of the Black Liberation Army, the New York Black Panthers, COINTELPRO and other counter-intelligence programs run against Black liberation and other radical left organizations by the US government. The result is a book filled with history and political theory examined and discussed by those who have learned from books and from praxis. The understandings expressed within these covers provides both a basis and inspiration to create a way forward in a time when what Bin-Wahad calls “democratic fascism” is removing any of its remaining democratic elements ever more quickly.

One of the crucial features of the current US political system is one Bin-Wahad calls encapsulation. Bin-Wahad describes the process as “the tactic and strategy of war and repression.” (126) The fundamental components include appropriating the language and occasionally even the so-called leaders of a movement into the elites’ political system of elections, lobbying and NGOs. Meanwhile, the actual substance is removed and replaced by often meaningless legislation or the exact opposite of the movement’s intentions. A couple recent examples of this process include the transformation of the moment against the US war on Iraq into a campaign to get Barack Obama into the White House. The war not only continued, it expanded into places not even Dubya Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had sent forces into. Another more recent example is the so-called Black Lives Matter movement. Using the small city of Burlington, VT. (where I live) as an example, the results of the protests against police brutality and racism in that town has resulted in an increase of the police budget and the creation of more police positions that essentially operate as a kinder gentler nightstick. Bin-Wahad brings up similar examples while simultaneously pointing out that this doesn’t mean the protests were a failure, but were focused on victimhood, not on gaining power. In other words, movements against war and the police state must be movements for popular power because those currently in power have no reason to change the way things are.

This juncture is where history becomes ever more important. If those fighting the powers that be today are unaware of the history of their struggle—unaware of its militancy and ts revolutionary politics—they are unlikely to consider such politics for themselves. Instead, radical reform becomes the end goal not merely a place to pass through on the trail to liberation. Like Bin-Wahad and his host remark, if BLM stood for Black Liberation Movement and not Black Lives Matter, then there could be some hope for our future. The focus of movements against fascism and its manifestations should be about building power in the community, not latching on to already existing power structures. This latter phenomenon is one reason the movements Bin-Wahad calls hashtag movements fail.

Dhoruba bin Wahad is legit. Revolution in These Times is a book about history and power. It’s about the powerful erasing history and about having power and fighting for power. It’s about rejecting the identity of victim and learning to be a revolutionary. Like Dhoruba’s life story, it’s also about the determination required to maintain the focus required to oppose the ever more pervasive nightmare the modern world of billionaires and the governments they own. In its telling, the authors go after those who profit from the movement—the folks the Black Panthers called pork-chop nationalists and the self-appointed leaders, and the politicians who talk the game but play for the other side. This aspect of the book is perhaps unforgiving, but it is done with a clear focus on who and what should not be forgiven. Their ultimately regressive role in history is crucial to not repeating that history.

(The title of this review comes from a speech by Black Panther Fred Hampton, who was killed by a FBI-led death squad on December 4, 1969. “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.”-Ron J)

Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com

Bottled up in the Black Sea: Russia is having a dreadful naval war, hindering its great power ambitions

Colin Flint, Utah State University
Thu, October 3, 2024

THE CONVERSATION

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has played out largely on land and in the air. It is a bitterly contested, grueling ground war, accompanied by brutal Russian aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure and a slow but increasing Ukrainian response.

But a less appreciated but vital focus of the war is happening on water, too. There, a contest for control of the Black Sea has seen Russia stunningly defeated.

And this loss has potentially far-reaching consequences. Not only does it constrain Moscow’s ability to project power across the globe through naval means, it has also resulted in Russia’s growing cooperation with China, where Moscow is emerging as a junior party to Beijing on the high seas.

Battle over the Black Sea

The tradition of geopolitical theory has tended to paint an oversimplification of global politics. Theories harkening back to the late 19th century categorized countries as either land powers or maritime powers.

Thinkers such as the British geopolitician Sir Halford Mackinder or the U.S. theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan characterized maritime powers as countries that possessed traits of democratic liberalism and free trade. In contrast, land powers were often portrayed as despotic and militaristic.

While such generalizations have historically been used to demonize enemies, there is still a contrived tendency to divide the world into land and sea powers. An accompanying view that naval and army warfare is somewhat separate has continued.

And this division gives us a false impression of Russia’s progress in the war with Ukraine. While Moscow has certainly seen some successes on land and in the air, that should not draw attention away from Russia’s stunning defeat in the Black Sea that has seen Russia have to retreat from the Ukrainian shoreline and keep its ships far away from the battlefront.

As I describe in my recent book, “Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower,” maritime countries have two concerns: They must attempt to control the parts of the sea relatively close to their coastlines, or their “near waters”; meanwhile, those with the ability and desire to do so try to project power and influence into “far waters” across oceans, which are the near waters of other countries.

The Black Sea is a tightly enclosed and relatively small sea comprising the near waters of the countries that surround it: Turkey to the south, Bulgaria and Romania to the east, Georgia to the west, and Ukraine and Russia to the north.

Control of the Black Sea’s near waters has been contested throughout the centuries and has played a role in the current Russian-Ukraine war.

Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 allowed it to control the naval port of Sevastopol. What were near waters of Ukraine became de facto near waters for Russia.

Controlling these near waters allowed Russia to disrupt Ukraine’s trade, especially the export of grain to African far waters.

But Russia’s actions were thwarted through the collaboration of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey to allow passage of cargo ships through their near waters, then through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean Sea.

Ukraine’s use of these other countries’ near waters allowed it to export between 5.2 million and 5.8 million tons of grain per month in the first quarter of 2024. To be sure, this was a decline from Ukraine’s exports of about 6.5 million tons per month prior to the war, which then dropped to just 2 million tons in the summer of 2023 because of Russian attacks and threats.

But efforts to constrain Russia’s control of Ukraine’s near waters in the Black Sea, and Russia’s unwillingness to face the consequences of attacking ships in NATO countries’ near waters, meant Ukraine was still able to access far waters for economic gain and keep the Ukrainian economy afloat.
For Putin, that sinking feeling

Alongside being thwarted in its ability to disrupt Ukrainian exports, Russia has also come under direct naval attack from Ukraine. Since February 2022, using unmanned attack drones, Ukraine has successfully sunk or damaged Russian ships and whittled away at Russia’s Black sea fleet, sinking about 15 of its prewar fleet of about 36 warships and damaging many others.

Russia has been forced to limit its use of Sevastopol and station its ships in the eastern part of the Black Sea. It cannot effectively function in the near waters it gained through the seizure of Crimea.

Russia’s naval setbacks against Ukraine are only the latest in its historical difficulties in projecting sea power and its resulting tendency to mainly focus on the defense of near waters.

In 1905, Russia was shocked by a dramatic naval loss to Japan. Yet even in cases where it was not outright defeated, Russian sea power has been continually constrained historically. In World War I, Russia cooperated with the British Royal Navy to limit German merchant activity in the Baltic Sea and Turkish trade and military reach in the Black Sea.

In World War II, Russia relied on material support from the Allies and was largely blockaded within its Baltic Sea and Black Sea ports. Many ships were brought close to home or stripped of their guns as artillery or offshore support for the territorial struggle with Germany.

During the Cold War, meanwhile, though the Soviet Union built fast-moving missile boats and some aircraft carriers, its reach into far waters relied on submarines. The main purpose of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet was to prevent NATO penetration into the Black Sea.

And now, Russia has lost control of the Black Sea. It cannot operate in these once secure near waters. These losses reduce its ability to project naval power from the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean Sea.
Ceding captaincy to China

Faced with a glaring loss in its backyard and put in a weak position in its near waters, Russia as a result can project power to far waters only through cooperation with a China that is itself investing heavily in a far-water naval capacity.

Joint naval exercises in the South China Sea in July 2024 are evidence of this cooperation. Wang Guangzheng of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Southern Theater said of the drill that “the China-Russia joint patrol has promoted the deepening and practical cooperation between the two in multiple directions and fields.” And looking forward, he claimed the exercise “effectively enhanced the ability to the two sides to jointly respond to maritime security threats.”

Warships of the Chinese and Russian navies take part in a joint naval exercise in the East China Sea. Li Yun/Xinhua via Getty Images

This cooperation makes sense in purely military terms for Russia, a mutually beneficial project of sea power projection. But it is largely to China’s benefit.

Russia can help China’s defense of its northern near waters and secure access to far waters through the Arctic Ocean – an increasingly important arena as global climate change reduces the hindrance posed by sea ice. But Russia remains very much the junior partner.

Moscow’s strategic interests will be supported only if they match Chinese interests. More to the point, sea power is about power projection for economic gain. China will likely use Russia to help protect its ongoing economic reach into African, Pacific, European and South American far waters. But it is unlikely to jeopardize these interests for Russian goals.

To be sure, Russia has far-water economic interests, especially in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. And securing Russian interests in Africa complements China’s growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean to secure its own, and greater, global economic interests. But cooperation will still be at China’s behest.

Bottled up in Black Sea near waters as a result of its war in Ukraine, Russia’s only current avenue for projecting its naval power is access to Africa and Indian Ocean far waters as a junior partner with China, which will dictate the terms and conditions. Even if Russia achieves victory on land in its war against Ukraine, it will not compensate for its ongoing inability to project power across the oceans on its own.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Colin Flint, Utah State University

Read more:


Chinese warships off Alaska and Cambodia highlight the role of near and far waters in sea power dominance


The US is about to blow up a fake warship in the South China Sea – but naval rivalry with Beijing is very real and growing


Russia’s new ideological battlefield: The militarization of young minds

Russia's strike on a merchant ship in the Black Sea was likely down to poor targeting and aged ammo: UK intel

Mia Jankowicz
Thu, October 3, 2024 



A missile hit the MV Aya, which was carrying grain from Ukraine to Egypt, on September 11.


The strike led to fears of a potential escalation in Russian attacks on the Black Sea grain corridor.


But according to the UK MOD, it was likely an error caused by poor procedures and aging munition.

A strike last month on a merchant ship in the Black Sea was almost certainly the result of a bungled Russian bomber attack using outdated ammunition, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

On September 11, the Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged vessel MV Aya was loaded with grain bound for Egypt from Ukraine's port of Odesa when it was struck by what was widely assumed to be a Russian missile.

There were no casualties reported at the time.

The ship was damaged, but managed to reach Romania's coast under its own steam, where it received help, according to Ambrey, a marine insurer.

The strike led to fears of a potential escalation in Russian attacks on the Black Sea grain corridor. But according to UK intelligence, it was likely not meant for the Aya at all but happened "due to poor targeting procedures from Russian pilots using an aging munition."

According to its assessment, the strike was almost certainly an AS-4 anti-ship missile fired from a Russian Tu-22M3 bomber.

It's possible that the bomber misidentified the Aya, it said, fired "in haste," and then rushed away from the scene "for fear of being targeted by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile."

"It is a realistic possibility a detonation failure avoided catastrophic damage," the UK MOD added.

It also said that Ukraine shot down a Russian Tu-22, also known as a BACKFIRE, in April this year, which would explain why Russian pilots have been "more wary with their strike operations in the Black Sea."

Using long-range missile strikes and naval drones, Ukraine has managed to push much of Russia's Black Sea Fleet from its base at Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, to the safer Russian waters of Novorossiysk.

Since its exit from the Black Sea grain initiative, Russia's attacks on Ukrainian naval export abilities have been largely limited to striking ports, and — it's widely believed — dropping naval mines.

The September 11 incident was the first direct strike on a merchant ship in the grain corridor since November 2023.

"A direct attack" like this would mark "a significant escalation," Ambrey said, adding: "Until Russian officials provide an explanation, the threat to vessels calling Ukraine remains high."

Ukraine's economy is heavily dependent on maritime exports. Before 2022, it accounted for 10% of the global grain market, with 90% of that heading out to the world via the Black Sea, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Despite the potential for economic warfare, Russia has good reason to avoid escalating the threat to shipping in the Black Sea, Ambrey wrote.

Any escalation would have a knock-on effect on naval insurance premiums, which "would make trade with both Russia and Ukraine significantly more costly," it said.

The UK MOD was scathing about the apparent accidental attack on the Aya.

"Launching a supersonic cruise missile on an incorrect heading against a likely erroneous target in international waters demonstrates extremely poor and irresponsible aviation practice," it said.


Russian bomber pilots hit Black Sea grain ship 'by mistake' as they raced off to avoid air defences, says UK

Nicholas Cecil
Thu, October 3, 2024 

Russian bomber pilots hit Black Sea grain ship 'by mistake' as they raced off to avoid air defences, says UK


Russian bomber pilots hit a grain ship in the Black Sea by mistake as they “targeted it in haste” and wanted to fly away quickly to avoid Ukrainian air defences, say British defence chiefs.

The Ministry of Defence in London believes that the merchant vessel Aya may only have escaped catastrophic damage because of a “detonation failure” in the “aging munition” fired at it.

In its latest intelligence update, the MoD said: “On 11 September 2024, the merchant vessel Aya was struck by a missile in the Black Sea as it transited south from the Ukrainian port of Odesa having been loaded with more than 26 thousand tons of grain bound for Egypt.

“It is almost certain that the missile was an AS-4 KITCHEN anti-ship missile launched by a Tu-22M3 BACKFIRE Russian bomber that was operating in the area at the time. It is a realistic possibility that a detonation failure avoided catastrophic damage.”

Russian and Ukrainian forces have fought a series of battles along the Black Sea coastline, and out at sea, including over Snake Island, which was captured by Vladimir Putin’s forces before being seized back, and the sinking of the flagship Moskva warship.

The Russian navy was forced to retreat from the Black Sea after the port of Sevastopol in Crimea was targeted.

But the British military chiefs do not believe that the grain vessel was hit on purpose and instead that it was “likely struck due to poor targeting procedures from Russian pilots using an aging munition”.

They added: “Following the loss of a BACKFIRE in April this year, Russia has almost certainly been more wary with their strike operations in the Black Sea.

“It is a realistic possibility this incident occurred due to pilots incorrectly identifying Aya as their target in haste, wanting to depart the area immediately after launch for fear of being targeted by a Ukrainian surface to air missile.

“The KITCHEN missile has consistently underperformed in the Ukraine conflict. Launching a supersonic cruise missile on an incorrect heading against a likely erroneous target in international waters demonstrates extremely poor and irresponsible aviation practice.”

Britain, the US, Ukraine and its allies have been fighting an information war, alongside the battlefield conflict, against Russia so their briefings need to be treated with caution.

However, they are far more believable than the propaganda issued by the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's armed forces commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday he had ordered defences to be strengthened in the eastern Donetsk region, a day after Kyiv forces announced they had withdrawn from the town of Vuhledar.

Russian troops are steadily inching forward in different sectors in eastern Ukraine despite Kyiv's surprise incursion into Russia's western Kursk region in August that it was hoped would slow the advances.

Syrskyi said on social media he was working on "one of the hottest front sectors" with the 25th Sicheslav Airborne Brigade.

He gave no details on the exact location but the brigade operates in the Pokrovsk front, an area of intensified Russian assaults.

"While working in the brigade, I made a number of decisions aimed at strengthening stability and effectiveness of our defence," Syrskyi said.

Russian forces launched a major drone attack overnight on 15 Ukrainian regions, causing damage to commercial and residential buildings, local authorities said on Thursday, though there were no immediate reports of any casualties.

The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 78 out of 105 Russian drones during the assault, with 23 more likely impacted by active electronic jamming.

Authorities in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv said the air force had downed around 15 drones over the city and its surroundings during an air alert that lasted more than five hours.

A Russian drone targeted a truck delivering gas in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region on Thursday, killing two adults and a child, police said.

Ukrainian drones attacked the "Borisoglebsk" military airfield and warehouses for fuel and guided bombs in Russia's Voronezh region overnight, according to a Ukrainian security source.

The security source said Ukraine's SBU security service was continuing actions to reduce the ability of Russian troops to use fighter jets with guided bombs to strike Ukrainian cities, and that attacks on Russian airfields would continue.

The drones attacked warehouses, parking lots for Russian Sukhoi Su-35 and Su-34 jets and aviation fuel storage facilities at the Borisoglebsk airfield, the source said.

"From there, the enemy actively bombards Ukrainian territories with guided bombs," he said.

Pictures on the attack and a short video clip showing fires could not be independently verified and the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Alexander Gusev, the governor of Russia's Voronezh region, said Russian air defence had shot down 10 drones over the region. He did not report any damage.