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.
Elias Amare is an editor and journalist at Horn of Africa TV. US policy towards Eritrea has always been hostile. Recent events have been no different as the US continues to target that nation with…
Milton Allimadi is publisher of Black Star News, an adjunct professor of history at John Jay College, and an adjunct professor in the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University. He is…
U.S. liberals are the worst perpetrators of Russophobic behavior. They are most likely to follow the dictates of corporate media and the democratic party and proudly take part in discriminatory acts…
Glen Ford reminded us that Black liberation cannot be found over a cheese plate and mimosas in a $6 million southern California mansion.
BAR Contributing Editor Ann Garrison reports from Ethiopia.
