Black Agenda Radio – 09.18.17

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: The United States has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and North Korea only has a handful, but the U.S. claims that North Korea is the greatest danger to world peace; and, author and historian Paul …

Leid Stories—Trump: Out of [Executive] Order (Part 2)—01.31.17

With 17 executive orders issued within his first 10 days in office, President Donald Trump already has won the record for most prolific use of the backdoor presidential power that requires no congressional input. Trump’s executive actions are being spun as a man wasting no time in getting things done, but it’s clear he prefers the go-it-alone method of decision making. His business model, after all, is autocratic, so why should he change it just because he’s president?
He probably was not expecting to be opposed this early in his term, and he probably reasoned that even if challenged, he could weather the storm. But the massive Women’s March on Washington the day after his inauguration served notice that his new way of doing things will be matched by new types of opposition. The Women’s March and the protests against his travel ban against people from Muslim-majority countries, for example sparked protests all over the world and revived a moribund opposition at home.
Leid Stories discusses clues that Trump and his administration are miscalculating their strength and power, and the irony that they are actually fueling global anti-U.S. sentiment.

Ann Garrison – Terror Fraud Exposed: Congo (DRC) Massacres Not the Work of Islamic Extremists. U.S. Seeks Secession of Eastern Congo

Beni Territory sits in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) North Kivu Province, bordering Rwanda and Uganda. Rich in oil, timber, gold, diamonds, wolfram, coltan and cassiterite, Beni is a vivid example of the phrase, “Everybody wants a piece of Congo.” Now the indigenous people of Beni are being massacred for their land and its riches.  The massacres in Beni …

Nika Knight – One Out of Every 200 Children in the World Is Now a Refugee: UNICEF

Nearly 50 million children have been uprooted from their homes around the world, and 28 million of those are refugees fleeing violence and conflict—and “that is a conservative estimate,” according to a UNICEF report published Tuesday. “What can the future hold for these children—denied so much of what they need?” —Anthony Lake, UNICEFThe total number of child refugees doubled between …

Chico Harlan – Inside the administration’s $1 billion deal to detain Central American asylum seekers

DILLEY, Tex. — As Central Americans surged across the U.S. border two years ago, the Obama administration skipped the standard public bidding process and agreed to a deal that offered generous terms to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a massive detention facility for women and children seeking asylum. The four-year, $1 billion contract — details …

HENRY GIROUX – Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Civic Illiteracy

The dark times that haunt the current age are epitomized by the monsters that have come to rule the United States and who now dominate the major political parties and other commanding political and economic institutions. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is also evident in their dominance of a formative culture and its attendant cultural apparatuses that produce …

U.S. and Saudis Causing Hundreds of Thousands of Children to Starve to Death In Yemen

The United States is a major backer and supporter of the Saudi-led war against Yemen.  The U.S. supplies the weapons, and provides most of the targeting and military tactics.  See this, this, this, this,this and this.  (And see this for background on the Yemen war.) The Saudi and American military are committing war crimes left and right … For example, a report from the United Nations Children’s Fund notes: Read More

Bamzi Banchiri – What are Americans willing to trade their privacy for?

Many Americans are willing to share their private information, but it depends on what they get in return. A Pew Research Center study released on Thursday revealed that Americans are often reluctant to disclose personal information, and get upset when companies use it to target them with ads. Yet a majority of those surveyed said that they might be willing …

Warming World of Chaos Fueling Global Refugee Crisis Never Before Seen

As ongoing violence and conflicts continue to grip the warming planet, the number of people worldwide forced to flee their homes this year is on track to shatter all previous such records, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned Friday. For the first time ever, that number could hit 60 million by year’s end. The figures on worldwide displacement are documented …

Lisa Schlein – UN: Record-breaking 60 Million Forcibly Displaced Worldwide

GENEVA— The U.N. refugee agency warns the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is likely to exceed 60 million in 2015. The UNHCR has released its Mid-Year Trends 2015 report covering global forced displacement during the first six months of this year. The UNHCR report does not include the hundreds of thousands of refugees who made the perilous …