Glen Ford on America’s Ignored Imperial Wars

Many people uncritically assume that the current Western war on Libya, which includes Canadian warriors, is aimed at bringing freedom.

No doubt, the Libyan people have suffered under the Qadhdhaafi dictatorship (a dictatorship that used executions as surely and as wickedly as do Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, and the USA)… but they were suffering under the last seven years of the Western courtship with Libya.

And innocent people also suffer under numerous Western-backed dictatorships or occupations, as in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Israeli-occupied Palestine, and many other countries.

It’s absurd to assume that countries would spend literally billions of dollars to “bring freedom,” when those same countries spend billions to suppress freedom elsewhere.

Countries spend billions in order to get billions.

If you understand that and nothing else, you’ll understand more about how the world works than someone who knows everything but that. 

Libya possesses trillions of dollars of oil reserves. The Democratic Republic of Congo possesses trillions of dollars of mineral reserves. And both of those countries are targets of direct or indirect Western military destabilisation or attack.

Addressing those assaults tonight is Glen Ford. A journalist and editor, he co-founded of the online magazine The Black Commentator, and is a founding editor of the online magazine The Black Agenda Report. His career in news and broadcasting started early. Ford was only 11 years old when started reading newswire copy on air in Columbus, Georgia, and by 1970, was working as a broadcaster at a radio station owned by James Brown.

Ford later created Black World Report, a syndicated half-hour weekly news magazine, and in 1974 worked for the 88-station Mutual Black Network for which he was the Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent.

In 1977, Ford co-created, produced and hosted America’s Black Forum, commercial televisions’ first nationally syndicated African-American news interview program, generating international headlines and commanding the attention of White news services such as AP, UPI, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Tass.

Ford's many successes include the cultural broadcasting of his Black Agenda Reports, Rap It Up (the hip hop show he founded in 1987 which was the first nationally-syndicated show of its kind in the US), and three national hip hop conventions.

Ford’s been an editor and report for three newspapers, the author of the book The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion, and a national political columnist. In 2006, Ford and his writing team left Black Commentator.com to found BlackAgendaReport.com, an influential online political analysis magazine.

Glen Ford and Black Agenda Report have been at the forefront of analysing what Ford calls Obama-mania. Recognising the historical significance of the Obama candidacy, Ford has refused to be blinded by image and instead to engage substance. For his rigor, Obama’s boosters have vilified him.

On March 26, 2011, Glen Ford spoke in Washington, DC at the Black is Back Conference for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, at a forum addressing U.S. imperial wars on Haiti, Congo, Libya, Colombia and other targets historically ignored by most of the Euro-American Left.