Jews are an extremely important ally

March 28

GUEST: Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer now serving as the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, talks about his Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

Human Rights: White House Concessions to Israel Are Notable

Our guest, Philip Giraldi, is a long time counter-terrorism expert who doesn't much like Israel's power over Congress and the executive branch. The Council for the National Interest maintains that it puts America first by opposing our military adventures in the Middle East that seem invariably traced to Israeli influence and money. That is why Giraldi writes so much for the conservative press. The left and the right often come together in opposing U.S. militarism abroad. God knows, the Democrats and Republicans come together year after year to accept millions from the weapons makers, the big oil companies, and the Israel Lobby. Both parties seem to share the same enthusiasm for endless war for endless profit. If anything is going to challenge the militarization of the world, it will be the left and the right combining to rein in the empire.

What didn't sit well was the use of "Jewish" and "Zionist" as interchangeable words. Yes, a high percentage (over 40%) of American Jews support Israel no matter what heinous crimes it happens to be committing on any given day. But about the same percentage of evangelical Christians hold the same view, that Israel can do no wrong. Do we conflate the term "Christian" with "Zionist"?

In fact, Jewish activists are at the forefront of Palestinian rights in the Middle East and Muslim rights in the U.S. Jews are an extremely important ally in achieving a just peace in the Middle East. I think the Council for the National interest must respect the millions of Jews who refuse to condone and protect what we all can see by now is an apartheid state.

Here is a local example of Jewish Voice For Peace's campaign to fight Islamophobia.

Ging way beyond any Constitutional line to suppress dissent

March 21

GUEST: Diala Shamas, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and coauthor of the newly published, New York After 9/11, talks about the surveillance and infiltration of Muslim youth groups in New York City after the World Trade Center attack.

New York After 9-11 Book Launch

I had been unaware of all the damage that spying on a community can cause. We did see the damage inflicted on individuals and groups during the 1960's by the FBI. The FBI's Cointelpro wasn't limited to collecting information. It also encouraged activist groups to fight one another, used blackmail against Martin Luther King, and assisted in the assassination of Fred Hampton. Cointelpro was created to damage social movements. FBI agents even supplied the Black Panthers with guns. No, the FBI had gone way beyond any Constitutional line to suppress dissent during these years.

Diala Shamas shows that the NYPD inflicted pain on the Muslim community in New York in a remarkably similar way. There was the mindlessness of counting how many times each young member of a canoe trip prayed each day, all noted and reported by an NYPD informant. But beyond this mind numbing banality, there was an underlying attack on individuals and groups based on their religion. Infiltrating these groups and pressuring individuals to be informers in fact poisoned the Muslim community, and the results were similar to what Cointelpro accomplished for the oppressive state of the 1960's. 

In times of universal deceit

March 14

GUEST: Dr. Colin S. Cavell, professor of Political Science at Bluefield State College in West Virginia, and former professor at the University of Bahrain, talks about U.S. hegemony and how talk of democracy often camouflages the empire's efforts at regime change and world domination.

The Crooked Bough

Mainstream media in the U.S. never describes the empire in terms of wars for profit and dominance. More sophisticated publications like The New York Times and the New Yorker, always make U.S. invasions more complicated than they really are. It becomes about demonizing foreign leaders and exaggerating the supposed suffering of Third World peoples under their oppression. The more details the better.

What is desperately needed is an unfettered look at what the world's most powerful military has been doing since the Second World War. For the U.S. military, that war never really ended. Nor did the incalculable profits from war making. We have thrown our high tech killing machine into country after country, murdering millions in the process. America's war against the rest of the world started in Korea in 1948, and except for a brief hiatus after Vietnam, continues to this day. Venezuela is next on our list. 

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” - George Orwell

Continuing the extermination of Native Americans

March 7

GUEST: Eli Kassirer, back from the Buffalo Field Campaign protecting the last wild Bison, talks about animal rights, conservation and his adventures protecting the buffalo.

Buffalo Field Campaign

This year, Eli was involved with more than following the migration of buffalo from dawn to dusk. He attended some rallies designed to build momentum for the preservation of the original American bison.

A few miles away one can find herds of hybrid animals raised for meat. But the varieties of these animals do not carry a significant amount of bison DNA to counterbalance the extermination of the bison species.

Ending the hunting of the original bison is the only way that we can insure this species will survive. It is inconceivable that white Americans are still slaughtering the bison, so important to native American culture. Or maybe it is not so surprising. Genocide often is more subtile than the murdering of those who are different. It is often the erasure of their culture and traditions. By erasing the buffalo, we continue the extermination of Native Americans. 

Bleeding in the street or incarcerated in our prison systems

February 28

GUEST: Sabrina Terry, author and researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies, Senior Strategist with the Economic Policy Project at UnidosUS, and former Manager at the NAACP Economic Department, talks about a new report she coauthored, Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide.

 The Racial Divide

My talk with Sabrina Terry was enlightening. I had not realized how great the wealth gap in the U.S. was when it comes to the color of one's skin.

Approaching zero not worth is more than uncomfortable; it is deadly. Black family members die more often than white family members do, from newborns to senior citizens. Every measure of mortality shows us that not being able to afford healthcare is a death sentence for at least some Black family members.

Access to education is another advantage denied Black families. Decent housing is another, as is access to a fair criminal justice system. In fact, the system punishes African Americans in every conceivable way. And because the very rich (and very white) elites have taken so much from the rest of society, Black people, at the bottom already, have lost so much more than poor whites. So is this slavery in another guise? Are the nation's police forces little more than slave catching militias that roamed the countryside in the antebellum south? The results on Blacks seem to be about the same; they lie bleeding in the street or incarcerated in our prison systems.