Leid Stories – 02.09.16

Leak at NY Nuclear Power Plant Again Raises Safety Issue

Haiti: A Horror Show As Clinton’s Toady President Leaves Office

It was to be a raucous Mardi Gras in Haiti today, the annual carnival celebration coinciding with the election of a new president. Instead, a somber mood envelops the country. Michel Martelly, the singer Hillary Clinton helped install as president, left office on Feb. 7 and left total chaos in his wake—postponed elections, a now-leaderless country, violence and turmoil in the streets, and a legacy of corruption that harkens back to the Duvalier regime of 30 years ago. Kim Ives, editor of Haïti Liberté, discusses the current situation.

Paul DeRienzo, who has been reporting on “America’s Fukushima”—actual and looming disasters of America’s nuclear program and at several nuclear power plants—discusses a radioactive leak into the ground water beneath the Indian Point nuclear facility in Buchanan, N.Y., that was found to be 65,000-percent higher than “normal” levels.

Black Agenda Radio – 02.08.16

Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective.

– DeRay McKesson, the Twitter communicator who was a charter school supporter in Minneapolis before he joined the movement for justice, in Ferguson, Missouri, is running for mayor of Baltimore, as a Democrat. McKesson’s Campaign Zero organization met twice with Hillary Clinton, and he has developed a close relationship with the national Democratic Party. Black Maryland state lawmaker Jill Scott, who once ran for mayor herself and is considered the most radical politician in Baltimore, calls DeRay McKesson’s campaign “ridiculous,” and explains why she’s not going to run for City Hall, this year.

– Lynne Stewart, the people’s lawyer who served 28 months in federal prison for the crime of zealously defending her client, and her husband Ralph Poynter, the veteran human rights activist and educator, want to make sure that the incipient new movement for justice keep up the fight to free all political prisoners. We spoke with the couple, in Brooklyn, New York.

– A congressional committee has been holding hearings on the catastrophe in Flint, Michigan, the majority Black city whose water was poisoned under the control of an appointed emergency financial manager. Dr. Cynthia McKinney, the former six term congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate, was active in congressional hearings on the Katrina disaster back in 2005. McKinney is now in Bengladesh, teaching a course in political science and leadership, the discipline in which she earned her PhD. We asked Dr. McKinney if she thinks the current hearings will succeed in holding powerful people and government agencies accountable for what happened in Flint.

– Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, who became president of Haiti in an election racked with fraud and foreign interference in 2010, left office this past weekend, when his term expired. He’s being replaced by a transitional government appointed by the country’s Parliament, which came into office in elections in August that were also fraudulent, in the eyes of most Haitians. These were followed by presidential elections in October that were widely believed to be rigged, and the cancellation of a run-off election that had been scheduled for last month, due to massive protests. Jerome Franz is a Haitian community activist, now living in Miami. He says most Haitians still support the Fanmi Lavalas party of former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide, who was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup in 2004. We spoke to Jerome Franz shortly before the new interim Haiti government was announced.