Project Censored – 03.21.17

In the first half of the program, Shahid Buttar discusses the chapter he wrote for Censored 2017, “Ike’s Dystopian Dream,”
where he examines the many ways that President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has proven correct. For the second half of the program, Mickey and Peter survey some of the other chapters of Censored 2017, particularly Peter’s chapter, “Selling Empire, War and Capitalism,” a look at the advertising / public relations industry, and how its influence extends far beyond peddling consumer products.

Allen Barra – The Nixon Effect, The Money Cult, Ratf**ked

“The Nixon Effect: How Richard Nixon’s Presidency Fundamentally Changed American Politics” A book by Douglas E. Schoen No American president has been more maligned than Richard Milhous Nixon, and none has more richly deserved it. Vindictive and paranoid, he is perhaps the most polarizing figure in the history of the office. Douglas Schoen, a Democratic campaign consultant for more than …

John Scales Avery – We Must Not Demonize And Threaten Russia

Eisenhower’s warning In his famous farwell address, US President Dwight Eisenhower eloquently described the terrible effects of an overgrown military-industrial complex. Here are his words: “We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence, economic, …

Jake Johnson – Blame the Neoliberals: Democrats’ Toxic Ideology Paved the Way for Trump

Congratulations are not in order. Donald Trump’s bigotry, his heinous treatment of women, his authoritarian posturing, his hatred of free speech, and his stupendous ignorance are more than sufficient to make him a figure worthy of unqualified contempt — and now he is president of the United States. In the coming months, Trump will attempt to impose himself on the …

William J. Astore – Military Dissent Is Not an Oxymoron

The United States is now engaged in perpetual war with victory nowhere in sight.  Iraq is chaotic and scarred. So, too, is Libya. Syria barely exists. After 15 years, “progress” in Afghanistan has proven eminently reversible as efforts to rollback recent Taliban gains continue to falter. The Islamic State may be fracturing, but its various franchises are finding new and horrifying ways to replicate themselves and …

Andrew J. Bacevich – The Decay of American Politics

My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television.  My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me.  Even as a youngster, …

Spies Who Chased Terrorists Join Banks to Hunt for Rogue Traders

Bryon Linnehan spent more than two years chasing bad guys around Iraq as a U.S. military-intelligence officer. Since May, he’s been using skills he honed on the battlefield to monitor electronic communications inside Barclays Plc. Desperate to avoid more costly run-ins with regulators, investment banks are hiring former intelligence professionals like Linnehan to scrutinize virtually all aspects of their employees’ working …

The Gary Null Show – 02.12.16

Glen Ford is the Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report, son of the famed disc jokey Rudy “The Deuce” Rutherford, the first Black television host to have a non-gospel radio in the Deep South. In the 1970s he was a correspondent and journalist covering Capitol Hill and the White House for the Mutual Black network, and later hosted the nation’s first syndicated Black news interview program, “America’s Black Forum.” Since then, Glen has been one of the nation’s leading voices in political and social analysis and commentary on current affairs in the African American community. He is also a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, a board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists and is a frequent lecturer on the role of progressive media at universities. His website is BlackAgendaReport.com. Glen’s radio program – The Black Agenda Report – can be heard every Monday at 11:00 am on the Progressive Radio Network

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.