Leid Stories

Leid Stories listeners debate the hot-button issue of immigration, examining the root causes for the mass movement of people, how world powers regulate it, and the benefits and downsides to immigration, especially in a constantly evolving though rigidly controlled world.

Nine months after Hurricane Maria ripped through and ripped apart Puerto Rico with its forceful winds and torrential rain that knocked out the island’s power grid and wiped out much of its infrastructure and crops, the island still struggles with monumental impediments to recovery. Elisa Llenza, a Puerto Rican citizen-journalist and activist, provides an on-the-ground report on how the island is trying to weather the social, political and economic storms that now beset the island.

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, yesterday released a 568-page report on how officials in the DOJ and the FBI handled investigations into   former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a secret email server she had installed in the basement of her Chappaqua, N.Y., home. At the time the server was discovered, Clinton claimed it was merely for convenience. But allegations immediately surfaced that Clinton’s private server allowed her to conduct personal business outside of government knowledge or oversight. So, the long-awaited report, 17 months in the making, is in. Why does it not address key questions? Charles Ortel—a retired Wall Street banker turned forensic financial investigator and anti-charity-fraud crusader—helps Leid Stories dissect the Horowitz report, particularly in light of the unique relationships between key figures in the DOJ/FBI probes and Hillary and Bill Clinton and their eponymous foundation.  

The much-anticipated report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation probes into how Hillary Clinton handled classified information when she was secretary of state in the Obama administration is to be released today, The report would have been the subject of our program today, but it won’t be released until 3 p.m. and is rather lengthy. Leid Stories is scheduling “Free Your Mind Friday” today, and will discuss the Horowitz report tomorrow. Let’s hear what’s on your mind today. Call 888-874-4888 and share your information, opinions and ideas

President Donald J. Trump has made quick work of sidelining and silencing the opposition. There have been massive protests and a great deal of public agitation about his administration’s policies, but not nearly enough to suggest in Washington and in state and city legislatures a shared urgency about facing down Trump’s open contempt for democratic rule. Leid Stories says that in the absence of real resistance—with political parties moving aggressively beyond their parochial interests to champion a people’s agenda—Trump won’t have to worry about impediments to his maniacal policies and plans.

President Donald Trump can now check off two items on his to-do list. He attended the annual summit of G-7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) held this year in Quebec, and cut short his time there to meet one-on-one in Singapore with Kim Jong-un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Trump left the G-7 summit in a huff, claiming afterwards on Twitter a conspiracy, especially by Canada and France, to hammer U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. He refused to sign a document representing the G-7 nations’ commitment to work together to solve major issues. His  mood was far more optimistic in Singapore, where closed-door talks with Kim Jong-un yielded a promise for continued bilateral negotiations. Leid Stories listeners offer their impressions of Trump’s tumultuous, history-making week abroad.

Making good on an election-year promise to the coal mining and nuclear energy industries and a smackdown for environmentalists, President Donald Trump last week ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take “immediate steps” to ensure continued operations of coal mines and nuclear power plants across the country. This means that the administration is committed to continuing massive, and even fatal, assaults on the environment and on the people working in and living near such projects. Investigative journalist Paul DeRienzo has filed several reports on Leid Stories about the sketchy state of the nation’s nuclear power plants, the government’s gross mismanagement of nuclear waste, and the health and environmental problems they cause nearby populations. DeRienzo is joined by Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, a group seeking the proper disposal of nuclear waste at the decommissioned Hanford Site in Washington state and at all other plants. They explain why the Department of Energy’s new rules on nuclear waste will create environmental and health hazards that will last forever.

Speak your own truth to power on Leid Stories’ “Free Your Mind Friday,” the best on-air open forum on the planet. Share your take on issues in the news, topics we’ve covered on the program, or whatever you think merits further discussion or debate. Join us for a mind-freeing hour of great radio. Call 888-874-4888 and talk what you walk!

The City of Detroit for years now has been on a terrifying mission. The Depression-era miseries that affected the city after the collapse of the auto industry made the once-thriving city into a wasteland, with the remnants of political leadership hanging on mostly to pick the city’s bones dry. The city went way down, but it wasn’t out. There were vast tracts of available land, real estate interests appreciated the city’s excellent location and its “good bones,” and it was ripe for “reimagining.” One requirement: A totally clean slate. The people, mostly people of color, have to go. They won’t fit into what’s being planned for “new” Detroit. Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African News Wire and a Detroit organizer for the Workers World Party and Moratorium Now!, has been reporting on the aggressive plan to retake Detroit and the devastating consequences and havoc it continues to cause. He tells Leid Stories today that the contagion has spread to other predominantly Black cities.

Yesterday was The Big Primary Show—the midterm races for the U.S. House and Senate seats, and for governorships, that in turn will shape the 2020 presidential election and the political fortunes of the Democratic and Republican parties. State-by-state results are still being finalized, but what political analysts are keenly interested in is measuring whether President Donald Trump is helping to grow Republican strongholds or, conversely, whether Democrats are increasing their voter appeal. Where does that leave those who oppose the duopoly? Whatever the final tally, it should be no surprise that non-duopolists will have little in the way of midterm victories to celebrate. Leid Stories returns once again to the question of the future of independent politics.  

Gina Haspel, the President Donald Trump-backed acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, appears very likely to get the top job. After a week of hearings, the Senate Intelligence Committee takes a preliminary closed-session vote on her appointment today, with the full Senate then taking a final confirmation vote by week’s end. Since May 9, when the Senate Intelligence Committee began questioning Haspel, it was clear that “national security” concerns would not allow Haspel to be specific about her CIA career and her key role in running secret prisons (called “black sites”) in several locations that specialized in “enhanced interrogation” of alleged terrorists. Leid Stories discusses the flimsy pretend hearing that will result in Haspel’s appointment as CIA director.

Today is a great day of irony and contrast in Israel—the way it’s been since 1948. The decimated Palestinian population somberly commemorates Yawm an-Nakba, the Day of the Catastrophe, marking the anniversary of this day in 1948 when more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and forced to flee their ancestral land. It also is a festive day, for the nation today called Israel—Palestine, up until 70 years ago—was born out of war. Today’s observances take place against a backdrop of blood and brutality, as Palestinians bury their dead—58 of them, including children, according to reports—who through protest were calling attention to the decades of suffering they have endured under apartheid Israeli rule and control. Gilbert Mercier is the founding editor in chief of News Junkie Post. He also is an international journalist, photojournalist and filmmaker, and author of The Orwellian Empire, about the ravages of corporatism. He joins Leid Stories to discuss the larger picture of yesterday’s government-directed massacre.

Gina Haspel, the President Donald Trump-backed acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, appears very likely to get the job. Since May 9, when the Senate Intelligence Committee began questioning her, it was embarrassingly clear that “national security” concerns would not allow her to be specific about her key role in running secret prisons (called “black sites”) in several locations all over the world that specialized in torturing alleged terrorists. Leid Stories discusses Haspel successfully diverted attention away from her role in the torture program. On May 7, Leid Stories did a commentary titled, “The Always-Lying President Just Keeps On Lying,” noting: “He lies about big things and small. He lies to make himself look good, and others bad. He even lies about lying. There is no hope, it seems, that the lying will stop, but President Trump’s lies are quite consequential; his lying ways have caught on in his administration.” Well, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ran with the theme in a commencement speech he delivered at Rice University on May 12. Without calling any names, he talked about the “epidemic of dishonesty” that has entrenched itself in American politics and society, and warned that, left unchecked and unchallenged, it will destroy democracy.

Here you are at the end of a very trying week. You’ve triumphed over the conspiracy to drive you mad with a torrent of “news” and “information” designed to confuse you, throw you off kilter, and dumb you down. Disassemble the mishmash we’ve been fed all week and tell us what we really ought to know. Call 888-874-4888 and help us free our minds.

Historian and prolific author Gerald Horne, Ph.D., looks at a few contemporary issues and events, domestic and global, through the lens of history. Horne, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, regularly decodes complex social, political and economic issues on Leid Stories. He has written more than 30 books and 100 scholarly papers on global struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism. Most recently: The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox (2017); Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Struggle for the Right to Fly (2017); Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity (2018); and The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in Seventeenth Century North America and the Caribbean (2018).