Grand Juries as Political Weapons, Police Agents Provocateurs, and Privatized Wars
The grand jury process in the U.S. is “an incredibly repressive instrument, says Joe Iosbaker, one of 14 anti-war activist subpoenaed to appear before grand juries probing alleged “material support” to foreign “terrorists.” Iosbaker is a spokesperson for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. He says “the grand jury is an undemocratic tool of repression” that has been used in the past to repress “the Puerto Rican liberation movement, the anti-war movement and Black liberation movement of the 1960s” and in “every decade since the founding of the Republic.”
The case of the 19-year-old Somali-American charged with planning to bomb a public gathering in Oregon is yet another example of police manufacture of “crimes that might never have existed, even as thoughts, without the instigation of police provocateurs," says Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon.
War is a Lie author David Swanson says U.S. wars and occupations have become largely privatized affairs, which has increased profits, dramatically. “That’s become a huge motivation for corporate dollars [flowing] into political campaigns…to keep the wars going.”
Hands Off Social Security
Social Security doesn’t belong in any deficit reduction package, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Taking Economics Seriously. Baker says the deficit is a “response” to the housing bubble-induced collapse of the economy, “not a cause.”
“The whole hysteria around the deficit and the debt is misplaced,” says Jonathan Tasini. The real crisis facing the nation is “how do we stop the robbery of Americans and giving the top one percent all of our wealth?” Tasini is author of It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis.
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 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
African liberation will not be realized without Pan-African unity and socialism, as Kwame Nkrumah made clear at the founding of the Organization of African Unity, the precursor to the African Union.
The ceasefire agreement between rival military factions in Sudan was extended on May 29 as it was on the verge of collapsing. Civilians are suffering, and the Sudanese Communist Party is under attack.
The Dominican Republic continues its policies of deporting Dominicans of Haitian descent, and discriminating against Black Dominicans, and it does so with the permission of the United States. The…
This Black Alliance for Peace Afghanistan update provides analysis of media coverage of the US role in Afghanistan and also links to many news sources.
Black Women's Alliance in Brazil, expunging criminal records, and the Durham Report and the FBI.
