Leid Stories

Leid Stories - Eyes on Gaza - 11/19/12

The Israeli-Palestinian airstrike conflict in its sixth day, Netanhayu threatens to unleash a full-scale ground war against Hamas. Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and an expert in Middle East affairs, puts the current crisis in political and historical perspective.  Peace activist Miko Peled, whose father, Matti Peled, was an Israeli army general who helped orchestrate the attack on Arab armies in the Six Day War of 1967 -- which led Israel to claim the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and the Sinai -- condemns calculated provocations and violence of the Zionist state.

Leid Stories - Open Forum - 11/16/12

Utrice explains why "Now Is The Time" to get serious about organizing political alternatives. And listeners offer their analyses and opinions about major issues in the news.

Leid Stories - U.S. Expansionism's Dead End - 11/15/12

Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations and history at Boston University, contends that America's severe economic woes are rooted in doomed expansionist foreign policies that continue to devour human, capital and strategic resources but yield only an illusion of world domination. Plus, listeners chime in with their takes on current issues.

Leid Stories - The Oblique Angle - 11/14/12

Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review, discusses contemporary political issues -- including party politics, President Obama and his administration, the paradox of left-of-center movements, and the need to move quickly on reassembling coalitions to deal with the onslaught to come.

Leid Stories - Statehood for Puerto Rico? - 11/12/12

In a referendum that coincided with U.S. general elections, Puerto Ricans strongly favored changing their island's status as a commonwealth to becoming America's 51st state.  The issue is among a list of high-priority items on the Latino political agenda, now reinforced by a strong showing at the polls by Latino voters that proved pivotal to the re-election of President Obama and his Democratic administration. Dr. Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a researcher at the Manhattan-based Center for Puerto Rican Studies, assesses the impact of the referendum in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora, and its legislative fate in a lame-duck, tumultuous U.S. Congress.

Leid Stories - The New Voting Bloc to Obama: "Andale!" - 11/09/12

Among the precedents set in the 2012 election is the definitive emergence of a Latino voting bloc that played a pivotal role in the re-election of President Barack Obama. Louis DiSipio, a political scientist and professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of California-Irvine, discusses the coalition of heretofore disparate Spanish-speaking constituencies, their formation as a new electorate, and the impact this voting sector is likely to have on of U.S. politics and in the theater of hemispheric affairs.

Leid Stories - Obama's Victory: Shattering America's Race-Based Power Equation - 11/08/12

President Barack Obama's victory at the polls Nov. 6 is a definitive line of demarcation and departure, not just in American politics, but in the deeply entrenched racist narrative that governs practically all aspects of life in the United States.  "Experts" wax philosophic and scientific about why he won, but won't go so far as to unmask the real reason.  In a no-nonsense analysis Utrice Leid deconstructs the magic political moment we're experiencing as a nation, and precisely frames Obama's victory within the context of America's age-old -- and all-too-familiar -- construct of race.  Obama's first-term run and second-term victory, she contends, are "trial balloons" for beneficiaries -- especially white women and white "ethnics" -- who in the heat of battle steered comfortably clear of helping to build the political base he established nationwide, but, as with the civil-rights struggle and others before it, are eager to reap their unearned reward.

Leid Stories - Race and The Race - 10/29/12

Leid Stories - Bring It On! - 10/26/12

It's free-form Friday on Leid Stories!  Listeners give their take on major stories of the week.

Leid Stories - Up Against An Unholy Alliance - 10/25/12

The Catholic Church and the U.S. government have blood on their hands for continuing to support murderous right-wing regimes in Central and South America, says a former U.S. Navy officer and Purple Heart recipient who became a Maryknoll priest and peace activist 44 years ago. Father Roy Bourgeois takes on the Vatican for cooperating with repressive regimes in targeting liberation theologists in the region. And he is committed more than ever, he says, to shutting down the Fort Benning, Ga.-based U.S. Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation-WHINSEC) that, since 1946, has been training the military of many developing countries in what he calls "the fine art of repression and terrorism."