Jeremy Scahill's Blog, page 9

Bonus Intercepted Podcast: Mat Johnson Talks “Incognegro,” Guns, “Black Panther,” and Growing Up in Philadelphia

In 1958, a Virginia couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, married in the District of Columbia. About four months after their marriage, the Virginia county they lived in issued a criminal indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. Mildred was black and Richard was white. “The night we were arrested, I guess it was about 2 a.m. and I saw these lights,” Mildred recalled. “And I woke up and it was a policeman standing beside the bed. And he told us...

Bonus Intercepted Podcast: Mat Johnson Talks “Incognegro,” Guns, Black Panther, and Growing Up in Philadelphia

In 1958, a Virginia couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, married in the District of Columbia. About four months after their marriage, the Virginia county they lived in issued a criminal indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. Mildred was black and Richard was white. “The night we were arrested, I guess it was about 2 a.m. and I saw these lights,” Mildred recalled. “And I woke up and it was a policeman standing beside the bed. And he told us...

Bonus Intercepted Podcast: The Laundering of American Empire

The Trump presidency is itself a provocation. Trump is a billionaire, a reality TV star, a congenital liar who is seemingly addicted to a social media app which he uses to live-tweet his responses to a morning television show. The public is often bombarded with the phenomenon of his inner thoughts being pushed to mobile devices, not only by Twitter, but by pretty much every news outlet on the planet. And with good reason. He controls an arsenal of nuclear weapons, authorizes covert action, an...

Revolutionary Musical Artist Seun Kuti Carries Fela’s Afrobeat Torch Into a New Era

Nigerian musical artist Seun Kuti is the youngest son of the legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Like his father, Seun describes himself as a revolutionary and he is a fierce critic of the corruption of Nigeria’s rulers and the U.S. and transnational corporations that prop them up and exploit the country’s vast natural resources. Nigeria is a country also targeted in Donald Trump’s racist rants. Last month, according to the New York Times, Trump said that Nigerians in the U.S. would never “...

Leading Marxist Scholar David Harvey on Trump, Wall Street, and Debt Peonage

For the past year, we have all experienced an intense sort of political vertigo. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that Donald Trump is president and constantly scoops the story of the latest outrage about himself by performing yet another outrage just as we start discussing the previous one.

When we are constantly on the run, it is very difficult to take stock of where we are and where we have been. To take a good look at the big picture becomes a luxury no one seems able to afford....

Trump White House Weighing Plans for Private Spies to Counter “Deep State” Enemies

The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have...

Moscow Mueller: What the Indictments and Plea Agreements Mean for Donald Trump

This week, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller revealed the opening blows in his investigation into potential collusion between members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and operatives working for or on behalf of Russia. On Monday, things kicked off with Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort turning himself in to the Justice Department after being indicted on 12 counts stemming from his financial dealings, including with pro-Russian Ukrainian entities. While the indictments allege...

Ta-Nehisi Coates Unplugged

Donald Trump responds to the suffering of black and brown people in a radically different way than he does to that of white people. Puerto Ricans, in his mind, should have been grateful to him, and any Puerto Rican who complains is dirt. He can call John McCain a loser for getting shot down in Vietnam, but black athletes can’t exercise their First Amendment rights. Black athletes are sons of bitches, but the white shooter in Las Vegas is probably smart, according to Trump. This is a pattern t...

The Sanitizing of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks

A lot of the debate around black NFL players kneeling to protest police killings and racism seems to take place in a historical vacuum. The history of athletes and protest is seldom mentioned and, what’s worse, the reason why Colin Kaepernick and his comrades began protesting during the national anthem has been drowned out in the shouting. On #MAGA twitter, flooded in recent weeks with angry mobs calling for a boycott of the NFL, various images have been making the rounds depicting Martin Lut...

A Sick Country Filled With Guns

We live in a sick country. A country where it’s legal for someone to purchase 30 assault weapons and unlimited ammunition, weapons that really only have one purpose: to hunt and kill other human beings. A country where a cabal of high-powered lobbyists, bought-off politicians, and gun manufacturers profits off of massacres, where the meaning of the Second Amendment has been twisted so intensely that it no longer matters why it was written or what it was actually intended for.

The leaders of t...