Black Agenda Radio - 07.30.18

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 U.S. has been trying to overthrow the leftist government in Venezuela ever since it was voted into power, back in 1998, but Trump is threatening to use direct American military force; the Syrian so-called “White Helmets” are treated like Hollywood heroes, but they are really Al-Qaida terrorists, subsidized by Britain and the U.S.; and, Mumia Abu Jamal reviews a book about Black communists organizing in Alabama in the 1930s.

Folks on the Left have a lot to say about the pros and cons of Deocrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the young woman that won an upset congressional victory against a machine Democrat in New York City. But Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon says left activists should concentrate on improving their own organizational skills, if they want to serve the people effectively.

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. The center intensely follows U.S. policy in Latin America. Mark Weisbrot hit on a novel way to critique U.S. behavior in Latin America since the turn of the 21 st century. He wrote a totally fictional letter in which Thomas Shannon, a long term U.S. diplomat in Latin America, gives advice to Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s Secretary of State. Weisbrot’s fictitious ambassador Shannon tells Pompeo that President’s Bush and Clinton carried out remarkably similar policies to undermine leftist governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and elsewhere – and with much success.

The so-called White Helmets are hailed as heroes in the U.S. and Britain, but Syrians say the White Helmets are actually part of the Al Nusra Front, the Al Qaida terrorists in Syria, and are not in the business of rescuing anybody. Vanessa Beeley is a crusading journalist, one of few westerners that actually cover the war in Syria. Beeley has done more than any other reporter to expose the Helmets as a fraud. Now that the Syrian Army is closing in on Al Qaida and the other western-backed jihadists in Syria, Israel is lobbying to allow hundreds of jihadists to escape, through its territory or through Jordan, including those claiming to belong to the White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley was interviewed by Phil Taylor, on his radio program in Toronto, Canada.

The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, has reviewed a book on Black Communists in Alabama, during the Great Depression.