Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 5/6/13
America: A Law Unto Itself
Longstanding principles of international law “have given way to the idea that there are two sets of rules in the world: one for the United States, and one for everyone else,” said David Swanson, anti-war activist and publisher of the influential website, WarIsACrime.org. “Even so-called ‘human rights’ organizations like Amnesty International are sending out emails lamenting the war-making arsenal of Assad and never mentioning similar actions by the other side, in order to provoke a wider war,” and in which even Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Keith Ellison holds up the U.S. assault on Libya “as a model.”
Release Lynne Stewart, Now
Human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart’s prospects for compassionate release from a 10-year prison sentence have increased because of the many “voices from around the world, the petitions that people have signed,” said Ralph Poynter, Stewart’s husband and partner in activism. “There is no one who can argue whether Lynne has been the sister of us all, or not.” Stewart is suffering stage four breast cancer.
Corporations Too Big for the Law
“The Justice Department is handing out these non-prosecutions and prosecution deferred agreements like candy,” said Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter. The publication sponsored conference, in Washington, under the heading, “Neither Admit Nor Deny: Corporate Crime in the Age of Deferred Prosecutions, Consent Decrees, Whistleblowers and Monitors.” Corporations are “too big to fail, too big to indict, and too big to challenge, apparently,” said Mokhiber.
Mumia Lauds Student Fight Against Mass Imprisonment
“You and those you inspire can be the spark that spells the end of mass incarceration – because movements change everything,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, in a telephonic address to the first national conference of Students Against Mass Incarceration, at Howard University, in Washington.
“The system of mass incarceration is about controlling the people at the bottom of society so that they will not rise up against the 1%,” said Baruch College professor Johanna Fernandez.
Pam Africa, head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, told the conference that Abu Jamal’s death sentence was set aside “because the movement was large, and it needs to get a whole lot larger.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
In Colombia, “all human rights defenders are considered criminals,” especially those who are Black or indigenous.
Millions of Africans in three countries have died in the 25 years since Paul Kagame’s troops shot down a plane carrying two African presidents.
The self-proclaimed interim president committed political suicide when he called for U.S. military intervention in his own country.
US Mercenaries Arrested in Haiti; Chris Hedges: Israeli Apartheid Utterly Indefensible; Laura Henley: Class distinctions among US blacks have always been with us; Vilissa Thompson on the struggles
Vilissa Thompson fights to make sure that Black disabled people’s lives matter, too. A social worker and disabilities activist, Thompson is the creator of “Ramp You
