WZBC 90.3 FM Newton

After Latest School Massacre, Students Organize to Challenge NRA's Power; Opponents Challenge Trump Plan to Open 90 Percent of U.S. Coastline to Oil and Gas Drilling; Popular Social Movements Through History Needed Hope to Succeed; Under-reported news summary.

If Americans really want to stop being “the only country where this happens,” which keeps officially claiming there’s “no way to prevent” it, it will require not just deep examination of the multiple roots of mass violence of this sort, but also an approach to political processes that keeps its eye on the prize of real change.

Independent journalist John Pilger exposes the hypocrisy of the news media--and how they further the aims of Established Power by producing a barrage of propaganda. The examples he cites are striking--such as the media INVENTING a child-prostitution scandal among Australia's indigenous people (thus furthering a land-grab by the government). Then there's the press's "propaganda of silence": NOT reporting facts and stories that contradict the claims of the powerful.

In this edition we again visit with Dr. Terry Allen Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist and the author of “Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It." In this second of our two part series, Dr. Kupers shares stories of prisoners held in solitary confinement and what he believes is necessary to achieve meaningful rehabilitation for people who have committed crimes and sentenced to prison.

Amidst the searing drama of the last week, many heroes have arisen: Those extraordinary Parkland kids with their eloquent fury who have been steadfastly organizing, marching, speaking out, confronting the slimy greed of lawmakers like Rubio... The ghouls have crawled out too. Heinously standing out among the wingnut cynics and twisted opportunists is our Grifter-In-Chief, who "only hears the NRA," maybe 'cause they gave him $30 million. Thus at his surreal "listening session" did he need to clutch a cheat sheet ...