Grand Juries as Political Weapons, Police Agents Provocateurs, and Privatized Wars
The grand jury process in the U.S. is “an incredibly repressive instrument, says Joe Iosbaker, one of 14 anti-war activist subpoenaed to appear before grand juries probing alleged “material support” to foreign “terrorists.” Iosbaker is a spokesperson for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. He says “the grand jury is an undemocratic tool of repression” that has been used in the past to repress “the Puerto Rican liberation movement, the anti-war movement and Black liberation movement of the 1960s” and in “every decade since the founding of the Republic.”
The case of the 19-year-old Somali-American charged with planning to bomb a public gathering in Oregon is yet another example of police manufacture of “crimes that might never have existed, even as thoughts, without the instigation of police provocateurs," says Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon.
War is a Lie author David Swanson says U.S. wars and occupations have become largely privatized affairs, which has increased profits, dramatically. “That’s become a huge motivation for corporate dollars [flowing] into political campaigns…to keep the wars going.”
Hands Off Social Security
Social Security doesn’t belong in any deficit reduction package, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Taking Economics Seriously. Baker says the deficit is a “response” to the housing bubble-induced collapse of the economy, “not a cause.”
“The whole hysteria around the deficit and the debt is misplaced,” says Jonathan Tasini. The real crisis facing the nation is “how do we stop the robbery of Americans and giving the top one percent all of our wealth?” Tasini is author of It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis.
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Videos from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital show rescuers scrambling to save people as they struggle to contain a major fire.
The Dominican Republic is deporting Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent at an increasing rate and without any consideration for human rights. AfroResistance calls for all people of…
This week, we discuss efforts in Pennsylvania to end the sentence of life in prison without parole for felony murder. Also, we examine Syria and US imperialist policy there and elsewhere. First, we…
Prudence Iticka and Obioma Ohia recently returned from a delegation that traveled to Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, nations that recently formed the Alliance of Sahel States. They join us to discuss…
Quinn Cozzens joins us to discuss the case of Derek Lee, convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for a killing he did not commit. Derek Lee is challenging his…
