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.
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Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez Mina’s left-wing ticket could upend Colombia’s conservative status quo. But both leaders face repeated death threats.
Defending Julian Assange, publication of the late Glen Ford's "The Black Agenda," and NYPD killing of Rameek Smith.
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA. She is president of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition and one of the…
Alyson Jones and her mother Janet Jones operate Source Booksellers, a bookstore located in Detroit, Michigan. Alyson Jones invited Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley to discuss The Black Agenda, a…
A young Black man named Rameek Smith was recently shot and killed by NYPD officers. QB, a member of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability, discussed unanswered questions and the New York State Attorney…
