After our empire crumbles into dust

What can one do when our government provides the bombs and the bullets for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people? The current slaughter in Gaza is much worse than the Nakba of 1948, when Israel killed a few thousand while pushing three quarters of a million Palestinians from their ancestral homeland. In Gaza, Israel is just murdering as many Palestinians as it can. It is just an extermination.

Perhaps this slaughter is occurring because the US has encouraged such bloodletting in the past. Our country has always been there to support the worst of Israeli excesses. So machine gunning a long line of starving Palestinians waiting for food trucks is just another step in the moral depravity that our country has learned to live with.

Israel is the wayward child of the American Empire. It is the serial killer that the US has always coddled and protected, no matter what the body count has been. The horror of exterminating 12,000 children makes us all despair. Our country's parenting has created this killing machine, and all we can do is watch the children be bombed, shot and starved to death.

We can point to villains, of course. Like Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, who have grown rich from supporting Israel. We can embarrass Representative Pat Ryan for his huge, pro-Israel bribes. But that is not enough to save our souls. We are the enablers of another holocaust, and the mark of Cain will remain, even after our empire crumbles into dust.

Free, Free Palestine!

 

February 29

 

GUEST: Yakov Pipman, long time Israeli citizen who fought as an IDF soldier for three wars, talks about winning Palestinian human rights and the history of Matzpen, the revolutionary socialist movement in Israel.  

Matzpen, Israeli peace movement

Perhaps Israel could have been different. It could have been that shelter from the storm that this persecuted people most richly deserved, after the genocide of the Third Reich.

But somehow Israel got tangled up with imperialist powers, the United States and England. These victors of World War II never really stopped fighting. They plotted how to gain control over the entire oil rich Middle East, and Israel was to be their linchpin. 

But imperialist powers are always based on racism, and Israel soon learned how to abuse and punish the indigenous people of Palestine. The Nakba of 1948 is one terrible example. Three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced off their land, so that the state of Israel could become a theocracy. To get the Palestinians to move, the new state of Israel slaughtered various villages, a precursor of things to come. 

Today's genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza shows the direction of Israel from some limited form of democracy to a full blown fascist state. And for every step of the way, the US has been there to furnish the ammunition and provide the international cover in the UN. Matzpen is the history of some more progressive Jews who resisted the bloody theocracy. That resistance is now flourishing on campuses as well is in community resistance organizations like Jewish Voices For Peace. 

Join the resistance! Free, Free Palestine!

Poorly disguised kleptocracy

February 22

 

GUEST: Ann Larson, antipoverty activist and contributor to the anthology, Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World's Richest Country, talks about how the poorly paid get by in a country designed for the billionaire class.

Ann Larson: The Cashier Philosopher

The poorly paid don't really get by. They cut corners and don't buy what their families really need. Sometimes that is healthcare and education. Sometimes it is just peace of mind.

A nation's money is a zero net gain amount. If one interest group takes more, other groups get less. If half the nation's tax proceeds go to making weaponry, why there is only half left for education, housing, medical care, daycare, etc. If large corporations get tax breaks, why the poor and middle class have to pay more. When a nation has 756 billionaires, why 50% of Americans have to live from paycheck to paycheck. 

And when the nation's working class pushes back, why the plutocracy will often support a fascist, who will keep wages low and punish dissenters. Trump didn't come out of nowhere. 

Nor did our two pro-war parties. We have troops abroad in about half the world, while our working class is the poorest of all in the industrialized nations. War and occupations abroad benefit the very rich, and penalize the very poor. Our system is not a democracy, but a poorly disguised kleptocracy, the rule by the corrupt few.

Made in America

Rep. Pat Ryan's Office

February 15

 

GUEST: Rahul Kumar, high school activist and founder of Poughkeepsie 4 Palestine, talks about how his generation is organizing local rallies and public speak outs against the genocide in Gaza, and the warmongering of our political elites.

Rally in Poughkeepsie, NY

Marxist intellectual and historian Vijay Prashad came to Vassar College yesterday, the guest of the college's Students for Justice in Palestine. Before we started, the packed house gave a hand to Rahul in the audience, thanking him for his community work in pushing our House representative Pat Ryan to at least say the world "ceasefire."

It was a moment of inter generational connection. There were members of Women in Black - New Paltz, Mideast Crisis https://mideastcrisis.org/ and Jewish Voice for Peace, many in their 70s and 80s. There were many Vassar students, some faculty, and then there was Rahul who is 14 years old. 

But you don't have to be of a certain age to see what our country has become: the number one bully of the world. We love "human rights" and "democracy," while butchering and starving children in Gaza. You would think that this gross hypocrisy would eventually kill us, and it will. Our "sweet land of liberty" will drag the whole world down with some deadly combination of nuclear war, global warming catastrophe, and AI. Our planet's Armageddon will have a familiar phrase burned into its remains: "Made in America."

How we might some day break free

February 8

 

GUEST: Michael Zweig, author of the newly published book, Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism, talks about the uprisings against the wealthy elites who run our state.

Class, Race, and Gender

Michael's new book takes you through the labyrinth of hidden passions and motivations in our society. They are hidden because they are so powerful, and potentially so destructive to our supposedly democratic society. Have you ever doubted the mainstream narrative of why we give tax breaks to the billionaires, or why we keep going to war? Michael Zweig explains what's missing.

Once I decided to read Michael's new book, I found it quite compelling. Soon it became what I did when I had 15 minutes to spare. Of course class has always been interesting to me. ClassWars.org is built around what Americans don't know about their own society. Would we be better citizens of Mother Earth if we were more self aware? And would a world run by the very rich and their bloated corporations ever allow such subversive notions?  

Activist Radio is just a tiny thorn in the bland facade of corporate America. A tiny annoyance to our rulers, who steal most of our money and send our young off to endless wars. Why waste your time with all these AI generated conspiracy theories? Why spin your wheels on fantasy? Class, Race and Gender explains how we became enslaved, and how we might some day break free.

Write my name on my leg, Mama

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Use the black permanent marker
with the ink that doesn’t bleed
if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt
if it’s exposed to heat

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Make the lines thick and clear
Add your special flourishes
so I can take comfort in seeing
my mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep

Write my name on my leg, Mama
and on the legs of my sisters and brothers
This way we will belong together
This way we will be known
as your children

Write my name on my leg, Mama
and please write your name
and Baba’s name on your legs, too
so we will be remembered
as a family

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Don’t add any numbers
like when I was born or the address of our home
I don’t want the world to list me as a number
I have a name and I am not a number

Write my name on my leg, Mama
When the bomb hits our house
When the walls crush our skulls and bones
our legs will tell our story, how
there was nowhere for us to run
 
By zeina azzam

Genocide is just another acceptable tactic

We often think of our elected officials as ordinary people, caught up in the spirit of public service. They certainly try to be like the rest of us, with families and favorite teams to cheer for. It's true, they are often a bit more patriotic than the average citizen. Not so carried away, however, as to ever fight America's endless wars in the Third World.

But when the Senate voted today for more aid to Israel, my confidence in our elected leaders faltered. We can see it on every computer screen, the genocide of 2 million at the hands of a rabid and racist Israeli army. Netanyahu's Israel behaves like the Third Reich, and our elected leaders behave like this is what normal people do.

But normal people want a ceasefire, not another shipment of bombs and missiles to Israel. Normal people are horrified at the prospect of tens of thousands of children being starved to death. Not our political leaders, however. Now that Israel has two million Palestinian civilians hopelessly crowded into southern Gaza, the "final solution" can begin. And to that rarified world of the US Senate, that's just fine.

The startling amorality of our ruling class, however, is a teaching moment. Our government is not a democracy, and its two party system is nothing more than a sham. The system is so monstrous that we have to take notice. Our late American empire is a killing machine, and genocide is just another acceptable tactic.

Fred Nagel