War Against Libya

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 5/27/13

U.S. Prison Torture Protests

With California prison protests set to renew in July, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network will mark three Days of Solidarity with the 80,000 inmates in solitary confinement, nationwide, June 21 - 23. Solitary confinement, as practiced in the United States, “fits the international definition of torture,” said network spokesman Carl Dix. “In fact, they are held consciously in conditions that are driving them insane.” The network also plans a “Hoodie Day” for June 10, the start of George Zimmerman’s trial in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Obama’s Empty Rhetoric on Global War

President Obama’s speech on the future of U.S. targeted assassinations around the world contained “nothing concrete, anywhere,” said anti-war activist David Swanson, publisher of the influential website WarIsACrime.org. “By the president’s own concession, what he’s been doing for years is an unacceptable outrage,” said Swanson. “The president claims that he will respect the sovereignty of other nations, but there is no evidence that this is the case, and there is no mechanism for any of these criteria to be enforced by anyone other than himself.”

U.S. Would Make Syria a Wasteland, Like Libya

Washington and its allies and proxies are engaged “in an all-out effort at regime change in Syria,” much like the 2011 NATO war against Libya, said Sara Flounders, of UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition. “Libya today has no functioning government, which is really fine for the major oil corporations,” said Flounders. “They don’t have to worry about paying anybody anything, and the oil continues to pump.” Ultimately, what U.S. corporations want “is what they have in Bangladesh – a race to the bottom.”

End UN Occupation of Haiti

Delegates from across the western hemisphere will gather in Port-au-Prince, May 31 and June 1, for a Continental Conference against the 9-year United Nations occupation of Haiti. UN troops “are there to impose repression on a people that have refused to accept the violation of their sovereignty and their right to determine their own destiny,” said Alan Benjamin, a conference organizer and executive committee member of the San Francisco Bay Area Labor Council.

Attempted Land Grab in Cameroon

International protest appears to have halted a 73,000 hectare palm oil and lumber venture by the multinational Herakles Farms corporation in Cameroon. The deal had awarded Herakles a 99-year lease at only $1 per hectare a year. Studies confirm the company’s “intention to make huge profits in transfers and assets on the cheap,” said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute. Such transactions “should serve as a reminder that the land rush that has brought investors into the African nations is not driven by philanthropy, despite claims to the contrary.” Brendan Schwartz, of Greenpeace International, said the scheme “is not a development project,” but would, in fact, create “unemployment and underdevelopment.”

Black Power vs. Capitalism

Majority Black jurisdictions across the nation have seen their local school and governing bodies “set aside, so that the governor can appoint stooges to impose massively unpopular programs of austerity; wage, pension, benefits and service cuts; and privatization,” said Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon, in a commentary on Black Agenda Television. “Quite simply, what austerity regimes do is turn local government from an entity that collects local taxes and fees, in order to pay its employees living wages and provide needed services, into a machine which collects local taxes and user fees from the poor and sends them straight to Wall Street as interest payments on an eternal, unpayable debt.”

More Whites Swept Into U.S. Gulag

The racial incarceration gap has narrowed, slightly, with more whites and going to prison in recent years. “It’s almost like law enforcement is looking for more feeders for their beds,” said Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of The Correctional Association of New York. “As the economy continues to decline, poverty is closely associated with who law enforcement goes after,” she said. “So, you find more whites being swept up in the system.”

New Book Exposes Manning Marable’s Lies About Malcolm X

“The central lie” of Manning Marable’s book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, “is the idea that Malcolm X was not an African Internationalist, not committed to revolution, but that when push came to shove, he was really part of the American dream and the American structure,” said Dr. Todd Burroughs, a professor of communications at Morgan State University. Burroughs and Dr. Jared Ball are co-editors of A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X, a collection of essays by prominent Black intellectuals and activists. “It was a shame that we had to do the book,” said Burroughs. “For him to mess it up this badly is a travesty.”

U.S. Will Bring About World War Three

The U.S. and its allies are running amuk, much like the Axis powers in the 1930s, said Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, at Champaign. “After 9/11, we’ve had the United States, Britain, France and NATO literally rampaging around the world, destroying and invading states,” said Dr. Boyle. “They are going to lead us into a Third World War over something.” Boyle’s newest book is titled Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution.