Infants Starving in Squalor Created by EU-Turkey Refugee Deal

Conditions for refugees have deteriorated in Greece in the wake of last month’s controversial EU-Turkey dealto such an extent that newborn babies are being deprived of milk, endangering their lives, refugee advocates and rights groups say. “Approximately 25 babies under the age of six months, whose mothers are unable to breastfeed, are being given roughly 100ml of milk formula just once …

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 …

Ryan Cooper – Why the eurozone is still headed for total disaster

For a few months in 2015, U.S. writers paid rapt attention to eurozone politics. It seemed like tiny Greece was going to force European elites to finally fix some of the crippling defects with the currency area. Left-wing Syriza, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, leveled a challenge to the German-dominated eurozone grandees. With the …

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos and Peter Koenig – The Refugee Crisis Looms: “A New Idea, Turn Greece into a Concentration Camp,[Powder Keg]!”

In this extraordinary essay, Dimitris Konstantakopoulos illustrates what is currently happening in Greece. Dimitris, is a renowned journalist and founder of the Delphi Initiative (website of the Delphi Initiative: http://www.defenddemocracy.press/), a group of Greek and international intellectuals who met last June in Delphi – the birthplace of ‘Democracy’ some 2,500 years ago – in the hope of finding alternatives to the current systematic destruction and …

Ray McGovern – Putin Shuns Syrian ‘Quagmire’

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s abrupt announcement that Russia would begin “the withdrawal of the main part” (????? ???????? ?????) of its military “contingent” (???????????) from Syria has been widely seen not only as a welcome surprise, but also as a hopeful fillip to serious negotiations to end the carnage in what is left of that beleaguered country. As always, a …

Derek Royden – Friend or Foe? How Turkey’s Turn Toward Authoritarianism Threatens Syria and the World

“We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.” -Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey There was a time, not so very long ago, when all seemed well with the Turkish Republic. Although the country’s long running efforts to join the EU had been stymied, through canny diplomacy Turkey had …

Mediterranean may be driest for 900 years

The drought that has blighted the eastern Mediterranean since 1998 could be the worst in nine centuries, according to new research led by scientists from the US space agency Nasa. They report in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheresthat they used a tree-ring chronicle – trees accurately reflect the rainfall conditions of each year in their annual growth – to establish what had happened. They …

Jacopo Simonetta – The other side of the global crisis: entropy and the collapse of civilizations

When we discuss the impending crisis of our civilisation, we mainly look at the resources our economy need in a growing quantity. And we explain why the Diminishing Returns of resource exploitation pose a growing burden on the possibility of a further growing of the global economy. It is a very interesting topic, indeed, but here I suggest to turn …

Mike Giglio – America Is Now Fighting A Proxy War With Itself In Syria

ISTANBUL — American proxies are now at war with each other in Syria. Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government. The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s …

Black Agenda Radio – 02.22.16

Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective with Glen Ford and his co-host, Nellie Bailey.

– Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of political science at the University of Houston, has another book out. It’s titled, “Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary.” Paul Robeson was an NFL-class athlete, spoke 12 languages, a movie star who was one of the biggest draws in the American musical theater, and was probably the best-known American in the world at the height of his popularity, in the early 1940s. Yet, no more than 20 years later, the crusading artist and social activists’ name had been all but erased from public discourse in the United States. How could that happen? We asked Dr. Horne.

– An analysis of employment statistics shows the Black jobless rate in Virginia, the state with the lowest Black unemployment rate in the nation, is the same as the white jobless rate in West Virginia, the state with the highest white unemployment rate, at 6.7 percent. What does this tell us about the so-called economic recovery? We spoke with Dr. Valerie Wilson, of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.

– Turkey is threatening to invade neighboring Syria, creating a direct confrontation with Russian military forces. Political analyst Eric Draitser, founder of StopImperialism.com, appeared recently on Russia Today’s “Cross Talk” program. Draitser says Turkish President Erdogan is playing with fire.

– Hillary Clinton is one step closer to becoming Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, with her victory in Nevada. That’s a scary thought, as far as Dr. Stephen Zunes, is concerned. Zunes is Professor of Politics and International Studies, at San Francisco University. He says Hillary Clinton stoked the flames of war while Secretary of State.

– Ticket sales are soaring for Beyonce’s world tour. The Superstar seems to have profited from the controversy over her Black Panther-flavored performance at the Superbowl. Black Agenda Report editor Ajama Baraka, a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network, says there’s nothing oppositional, much less revolutionary, about Beyonce’s “Formation” album. He also maintains that neither Bernie Sanders nor Ta-Nehisi Coates represents a challenge to the U.S. imperial order.

– Public television last week showed the acclaimed Stanley Nelson film, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” which previously had been playing in selected theaters. Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver was honored at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, in Detroit. Cleaver recounted how she became involved with the Black Panther Party.

– The nation’s best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, is also a renowned author. Abu Jamal gives a boost to a former political prisoner’s latest book.

– Khalil Bennet is also imprisoned in Pennsylvania. Bennet is what inmates call “a child-lifer” – a person given a life sentence for a crime committed while he was a juvenile. The Supreme Court recently ruled that such sentences are cruel and unusual, setting the stage for the release of thousands of prisoners. Khalil Bennet says, when these former child-lifers are let loose, they can become the cadre of a new movement.