Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 9/09/13
10 Sep 2013
🖨️ Print Article

Syria is Opportunity to Build a Real Peace Movement

“They’ve handed this to us on a silver platter: an announced war,” said David Swanson, veteran peace activist and publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.org. “This is an opportunity to build an anti-war movement.” However, so-called “progressives” on Capitol Hill have proven to be of little use. “For the most part, the Progressive Caucus has reached a new low,” said Swanson. “Now they’re split, half pro-war and half anti-war. You’re not seeing leadership from the usual congresspeople. You see incredible deference to the president.”

Obama is Going Down

“England and Germany and other forces that have usually been reliable partners in crime have tried to distance themselves from this criminal war” that Obama plans against Syria, said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition. The president’s domestic situation is also perilous. “It is difficult for many of the Negroes who have been in bed with Obama to continue this elicit affair. Obama stands the chance of going down in history as a war criminal.”

Deceitful War, American-Style

The U.S. routinely tells bald-faced lies to justify its military aggressions, said John Quigley, professor emeritus of international law at Ohio State University. Quigley, author of Ruses for War: American Intervention Since World War Two, cites phony U.S. pretexts for war in the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Sudan (1998), and Iraq (1993), not to mention the patently false basis for the Iraq invasion of 2003. Is the U.S. a rogue state? “In the sense of taking action that has no basis in international law, then I suppose” it is, said Prof. Quigley.

Lynne Stewart Critiques the “So-Called Left”

People’s lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is suffering from Stage Four breast cancer, will probably not benefit from Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent revisions of Bureau of Prisons regulations on compassionate release, since she is charged with terrorism, said Ralph Poynter, Stewart’s husband and comrade in struggle. Stewart “is very angry with what is happening in the so-called Left, who have neglected the struggle in the rest of the world,” said Poynter. “If we can’t get our minds around freeing our political prisoners, maybe all of our time has come.”

Misleadership Class in Deep Conflict with Black Masses

“I don’t believe there has ever been this wide and extensive a split between the Black elite and bourgeoisie, who are aligned through Obama to finance capital and American empire, and the broad masses” of African Americans, said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, professor of African American Studies at Philadelphia’s Temple University. Monteiro estimates the March on Washington commemoration, organized by traditional Black organizations in deep collaboration with the White House, drew only about 25,000 people. “The elite, the so-called leadership, is in trouble with the great masses of Black people.”

California Prisoners Suspend Hunger Strike

After nine weeks, inmates called a halt to the third hunger strike since 2011, without having forced California officials to accede to any of their major demands, most notably an end to the “torture” of long term solitary confinement. However, the struggle continues, according to Keith James, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Movement. “They are waging a protracted battle,” said James. “We really have to have these prisoners’ backs, because this torture is continuing." At its height, 30,000 inmates were involved in the protest.

 

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.

 


More Stories


  •  Black Urban Crises and Push-Out “Engineered”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Urban Crises and Push-Out “Engineered”
    13 Apr 2021
    Dr David Stovall, author of an article titled, “Engineered Conflict: School Closings, Public Housing, Law Enforcement and the Future of Black Life,” said “one of the ways to attrac
  • Freedom Rider: The U.S. Can’t Control the World
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: The U.S. Can’t Control the World
    07 Apr 2021
    Slow-witted Joe Biden appears to think that we’re still in the age of the sole superpower, when in fact that era has come and gone.
  • Criticizing the Democratic Party is not “Privileged”, It is the Duty of a Revolutionary
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Criticizing the Democratic Party is not “Privileged”, It is the Duty of a Revolutionary
    07 Apr 2021
    Neither AOC nor the rest of the Squad has mounted any significant challenge to the party’s corporate leadership, despite being elected for this exact purpose. 
  • PAMPHLET: Africa Fights for Freedom, Alpheaus Hunton, 1950
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    PAMPHLET: Africa Fights for Freedom, Alpheaus Hunton, 1950
    07 Apr 2021
    A pamphlet written 70 years ago by an exiled Black American communist reveals an African continent seething to break free from European colonization.
  • Rwanda and Zaire (DRC) 1990 to 1997, Where the US Blocked Real Humanitarian Intervention
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rwanda and Zaire (DRC) 1990 to 1997, Where the US Blocked Real Humanitarian Intervention
    07 Apr 2021
    The real story of the Rwandan genocide begins in 1990, when exiled Tutsis from Uganda invaded northern Rwanda, unleashing a deadly campaign that uprooted a million Hutu peasants and set ethnic tens
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us