Philip Weiss and his amazing website

December 17

GUEST: Philip Weiss, founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss, a website devoted to all the developments in Israel and Palestine, author of The World the Settlers Made and co-editor of The Goldstone Report, gives a prerecorded talk on "How police and vigilantes operate to attack and undermine minority groups and progressive movements in the U.S. and Palestine.”

Mondoweiss

Philip did a Zoom panel discussion for a number of local groups in the Hudson Valley: Jewish Voice For Peace - Hudson Valley, Middle East Crisis Response, NYC Veterans For Peace, US Boats to Gaza, and Women in Black - New Paltz. 

Speakers explored how we can support local and national movements in overcoming racism and political repression to achieve basic human rights for all. The panel included a Kingston, NY BLM activist (Anne Ames), the editor of mondoweiss.net (Philip Weiss), and a radical feminist, revolutionary member of Black Alliance for Peace (Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture).

Watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/Wh_elSbf348

Mondoweiss is a website that tells the truth about racism, both in America and in the Middle East. If our mainstream media could wean itself away from corporate cash, we wouldn't need websites like Philip Weiss'. But in a world dominated by the Pentagon and neoliberalism, we must learn to cherish and protect the resources we have. 

That said, Mondoweiss is a joy to read, full of the unexpected insights and historical analyses that have been airbrushed away by conventional liberal thought. Make Philip's website part of your daily reading. 

 

Loosen the grip of our empire on the minds of its people

 

December 10

GUEST: Matthew Hoh, US Marine veteran with two deployments to Iraq, former Department of Defense and State Department war analyst, and writer for the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, talks about the empire and how veterans suffer as a result of our endless wars abroad. 

About Me - Matt Hoh

This picture of Matt Hoh says it all (he is the Marine on the left). With several tours in Iraq, and then a war analyst job with the State Department and the Department of Defense, Matt knows the empire from the inside out.

We talked a lot about how the American empire works. Why do the citizens of this country put up with its endless wars, especially since they are designed to make the billionaires richer and the rest of us poorer? How do parents send their sons and daughters to die making profits for Big Oil?

Matt refers to what he calls the "myth of redemptive violence." Our patriotic narratives are all about using aggression to solve moral problems. Hollywood is the Pentagon's most effective propaganda device. Our nation's movies and TV shows are literally written and financed by the war industry. Is it any wonder that Americans shoot each other at such an astounding rate? Or that we spend such an obscene amount of money on weaponry and foreign occupations? At some point, nations always have to choose between their democracies and their war machines. 

Matt's journey from a Marine to an activist and writer for peace and social justice holds a lesson for us all. We collectively can begin to loosen the grip of our empire on the minds of its people. 

Shaking this empire to its rotten core

December 3

GUEST: Sunsara Taylor, former co-host of the weekly WBAI-FM radio show Equal Time for Free Thought, political writer (Revolution and Truthdig), and frequent guest on Fox New (The O'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, and the Sean Hannity Show), talks about her current work as part of the organization Refuse Fascism. 

In the Name of Humanity We Refuse To Accept a Fascist America

Sunsara has stories to tell. While so many liberals hope that there will be opposition to the white nationalists in the nation's streets, Sunsara and the Revolutionary Communist Party are there. When liberals change the station before Tucker Carlson comes on, Sunsara is lining up to debate him on the air. What makes people like Sunsara Taylor? And why can't we have more of them?

Our stifled media is one reason we can't. Corporate media defines the scope and boundaries or our national discourse. Now that the Democrats have won the presidency, the story of social justice and reform is over. In this narrow discourse, all change means either voting in a Republican or a Democrat. After that, our media focuses on such things as the Russian hacking of government computers. The Russians are coming, again! No proof needed on tabloid stories like this.

Sunsara focuses her media efforts on real issues like racism, economic disparities, and US militarism abroad. That is exactly what our mainstream media does its best to avoid. Even AOC's fight to change the direction of the corporatized Democratic Party is of little interest to influential media like The New York Times. 

Do we have to join a revolutionary party to take leave of the corporate controlled, two party duopoly? Yes, we probably do. Few of us will be able to match Sunsara's energy and kick ass mentality. But talking to her gives one the impression that there is a whole new world of resistance ready to shake this empire to its rotten core. 

What the empire is doing to us

November 26

GUEST: Todd Miller, independent journalist and writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, In These Times and Al Jazeera, talks about his most recent book, Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Borders Around the World. 

The Majority Report with Todd Miller

We are lucky that journalists and writers like Todd Miller go out into the field with nothing more than an idea for a good story. Todd's story, however, is so much better than good. He reveals the US Empire in the countryside of Guatemala.

Todd's writing takes us on a traveler's journey of occupied nations. The troops are the same, young men from the US outfitted with the empire's most expensive weaponry. Their mission is the same as well, to set up boarders so that the poor of the world can't get in the way of the neoliberal robbery of natural resources and anything else of value. They are the empire's bag men, fighting wars in every part of the globe to make profits for giant multinational corporations. 

The fact that most Americans don't even know about the empire that ends up costing them so much, is a study in the effectiveness of our national propaganda. We learn US exceptionalism in our schools and colleges. We are taught to admire the "high minded" principals behind all our many wars. We feel good about US foreign policy without understanding what it is doing to the rest of the world. And what it is doing to us. 

The rich vain of hatred

November 19

GUEST: Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and author of five books, including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, talks about the Trump presidency and the threat it poses to American democracy.

Pandemic offers Trump a dangerous opportunity to seize power

Like slaves to the tabloids, we can't stop following the fool that we elected four years ago. And almost elected again. If it were up to white people, Trump would be off starting new wars by now. 57% of white voters pulled the lever for Trump this time, and if it wasn't for voters of color, he would be planning his next four (or maybe twenty four) years right now.

What does it mean when the majority of whites people vote for a candidate that they know is a racist? Not a hidden racist either. Trump is a full blown, violent hate-monger, and the only people who are still unaware are the ones lying in the morgues and refrigerator trucks, the victims of his deadly lack of concern about COVID.

I don't know what I would do as a Black person. It wasn't ignorance that led to Trump's 57% of the white vote. It was that a majority of white are basically racist. No wonder the polls were so for off. It is one thing to vote in secret, and quite another to let your racism be seen in the light of day. These are the folks who used to wear those pointy white hats at night. And they are the majority of whites in America. That must have been what the Jews felt as Hitler tightened his grip. It wasn't just Hitler; he had discovered a rich vain of hatred in the German people, and had mined it all the way to the top.  

If we want a real democracy, white America must come to terms with its centuries old fear and hatred of Blacks. Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works shows us the way it has been done before. Can we the people, both Black and white, save ourselves from the fate of the Germans?

Stopping the empire's blood lust

November 12

GUEST: Rory Fanning, US Army ranger with two tours in Afghanistan, peace activist and author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of The Military and Across America, talks about Pat Tillman, Army recruiters, and his support for Israeli refuseniks.

Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger's Journey

Rory is a bright, sensitive person who discovered morals in Afghanistan. He, of course, had morals before. He joined the US Army willing to risk his ownlife for the privilege of serving his country. It's just that once in Afghanistan, he realized that he was terrorizing and killing people for being in the wrong house at the wrong time. The troops he served with realized this too, but what was to be done? They all had become killing machines, in the service of god knows what. Or, as Kathy Kelley puts it, in the service of "the most powerful warlord" in that devastated country, the US military.

His friend, Pat Tillman, was killed by "friendly fire" for his consistently speaking out against how the occupation was unfolding. What is another US soldier's death in the grand scheme of things? We have troops all over the world, spending America's treasure on subjugating or killing native peoples. And killing a lot of them. Two or three million in Vietnam. Another million or so in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Korean War cost at least two million lives. And those are the big wars, not the mini invasions and occupations that are too numerous to mention. 

Rory discovered his country in the Middle East, and he discovered himself. Never more would he serve the empire. Or maybe he would serve it in a different way, by going to high schools and telling seniors not to enlist. He is also serving his country by exposing the billions made by weapon makers, huge corporations that live off the jugular vain of the Third World. Why would they ever stop the empire's blood lust?

Quote from Activist Radio guest, Dr. Monica Gandhi

In a report updated Tuesday, the CDC says that is still the primary intention of wearing masks. But it also cites growing evidence that even cloth masks can also reduce the amount of infectious droplets inhaled by the wearer.

"This messaging is key to increase adherence and interest in mask wearing. I am thrilled!" Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician with the University of California, San Francisco, said in a tweet Tuesday.

Ghandi argued in a recently published paper that wearing masks can reduce the severity of illness with COVID-19, even if the wearer does become infected.

Buying and selling every inch of the track

November 5

GUEST: Tiokasin Ghosthorse: a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota, international speaker on Peace, Indigenous and Mother Earth perspectives, and host of "First Voices Radio," talks about the lessons of Standing Rock and the way forward for indigenous peoples.

Living With Relativity

It was an honor having Tiokasin Ghosthorse on Activist Radio. His program, "First Voices Radio," is syndicated to at least seventy stations in the US and Canada. 

His is also a master musician who has performed worldwide and has been featured at the the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United Nations. I will be playing some of his music in the coming weeks.

Tiokasin is unassuming in person. He talks easily and openly about indigenous wisdom, something so missing in our neoliberal world. Everything in our society must have a price tag, and we grow up being able to estimate the "value" of objects without reading their little white tags. Even our environmental efforts must be turned into "pollution credits" to be bought and sold in the public market. 

Tiokasin tells us about the laws passed by the US in years past that demanded that all tribal land be individually owned, so it could be bought up by whites. Indigenous people have a history of being forced off their lands again and again. 

First Voices Indigenous Radio comes at a time when many of us look at the growing climate catastrophe and think about a better way. Can we connect to the land fast enough to save our species? Or must we go over the edge, buying and selling every inch of the track?

Nobody cared when they piled on board

And the doors snapped shut and the engines roared

They pushed to the front

Some fell to the back

Buyin and sellin every inch of the track

Deep in the engines fire in the hole

Dark skinned workers shovelin coal

All singin their sad refrain

We'll never get off this runaway train

Runaway Train by Eliza Gilkyson

 

Relying on a Democratic Party more enamored with corporate cash

October 29

GUEST: Margaret Poydock, Policy Associate for the Economic Policy Institute, and member of the policy team that focuses on initiatives for building a more just economy, talks about Trump's dangerous attacks on workers' safety, wages, and rights. 

The Economic Policy Institute’s mission

This interview was done right before the election. And this is the most obscene cartoon I could find. We have been through four years of Trump's vileness, and I think we all feel slimed.

It is just the right time to talk about unions too. If the nation had strong unions, Trump never would have captured the white working class. Unions focus workers' attention on what is going to improve their lives, rather than on racial hatreds and tinsel patriotism, the spewings of vile demagogues like Trump. 

We will be here again if we rely on a Democratic Party more enamored with corporate cash than public good. In four more years of Hillary/Obama sellout of the working class, we could well be seeing another fascist movement, but this time so much stronger.

The players are all there. Let's remember that the majority of white voters went for Trump by as much as 57%. It was people of color that made the difference, and succeeded in putting Biden in the White House. All the subsequent talk about not defunding the police might just lose the only thing the Democratic Party has going for it. 

So rather than helping centrist Democrats, we should be forming unions, the only way to win back enough white voters to really change the neoliberal system. 

 

Crossing the Rubicon

October 22

GUEST: Joe Allen, author of "The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS" and writer of numerous articles published in Jacobin Magazine, talks about unions, workers' rights and the key issues that the socialist movement faces in the United States.

A threshold has been crossed – Tempest

We are waiting around for what could be our last election in a while. It has happened in so many countries. What makes us think it won't happen in ours? And we have all the trappings: armed rightest groups supported by much of the nation's police forces; an assault on voting rights to deny people of color access to the ballot; special militaried forces like ICE that are controlled by the president; and finally an obscene gap between the very richest and the rest of this nation's working people. 

Joe Allen takes us through how we got here, and I think it takes a socialist like Joe to reveal the underlying problems of our supposed democracy. For the last forty years the very wealthy have used every trick in the book to strip wealth from the vast majority. Now that we are at the peak of deprivation and anger, the elites need a demagogue like Trump to blame our economic malaise on immigrants and minority groups. Of course, we have seen it all before as fascist leaders took over Europe in the 1930s. 

In fact we have seen it in so many empires that have started out with some form of democracy. With wars in numerous countries and our national treasure spent on weaponry, our empire may be making that same transition itself. Will this election be the crossing the Rubicon, when Caesar brought his Roman armies into the homeland? Perhaps the "die is cast," as Caesar is supposed to have said as he watched his army cross this famous river. 

Crazy thinking, and irresponsible too in an epidemic

October 15

GUEST: Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital, talks about the paramount need to wear masks, socially distance and track the contagious if we hope to stop the Pandemic.

Dr. Gandhi on Democracy Now

We were privileged to have Dr. Gandhi on Activist Radio to talk about COVID and the battle to contain the virus in this country. The science is there, of course. Wearing masks, socially distancing and tracing are the way to contain the pandemic. It is just that the Trump White House has so politicized the disease and lied about its dangers that millions of Fox News followers think that COVID is a hoax. It is no wonder that America is number one when it comes to COVID deaths, despite the fact that we spend so much more on our healthcare than other countries do. 

But it is not just right wingers who refuse to wear masks. There are any number of conspiracy addled folks who think that Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and international financiers are somehow behind efforts to make people wear them in public. They tout the joyous "freedom" to gather together and socialize without worrying about masks or social distancing. They urge others to resist the "deep state" tyranny by attending rallies that turn out to be superspreading events. The freedom to not only die of COVID, but to infect all your freedom loving friends. 

I thought I would share what some listeners have written in about Activist Radio's COVID coverage. One listener claimed that masks make it easier to catch the virus, and included a medical study to prove her point. Here is my response:

Lynda,

The abstract you sent me is typical. The study in question reviews the "difference between medical masks and cloth masks," and obviously, medical masks are more effective. But the study never says that cloth masks in themselves are harmful to the wearer. It speculates that masks worn "on every shift for 4 consecutive weeks" might harbor virus. Rates of infection were higher with cloth masks, but there is no control group that didn't wear masks at all. Who would be that stupid not to wear some kind of mask working around infected patients?

That study looks like it was published in 2015. There have been hundreds of studies since then that have measured the efficacy of wearing some type of cloth face mask, especially since COVID 19.

The study was done in Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam has been one of the best countries in the world when it comes to controlling the pandemic. Have you looked at a picture of Vietnam during the last several months? Everyone is wearing a mask.

When challenged for some sort of proof that masks, social distancing and tracing don't work, the response has always been the same. I have watched my share of flaky videos, with dubious white coated "experts" applying their tortured logic to completely unfounded theories (please don't send us any more). 

Is our neoliberal system corrupt? Are some doctors and pharmaceutical companies willing to kill people for profit? Will they distort their own science to make money? There are so many examples of this that I don't know where to start. Maybe I do. Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was caught failing to disclose: "millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet (NYT Sept. 8, 2018)." That is how our current kleptocracy works.

That doesn't mean all doctors are on the take. Nor does it justify believing that there is some international conspiracy to rob the American people of "freedom" by making them wear face masks. That is just crazy thinking, and irresponsible too in an epidemic as dangerous as COVID 19. 

 

 

Make Pillsbury the first step

October 8

GUEST: Dalit Baum, Ph.D., Director of Economic Activism for the American Friends Service Committee, and co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation as well as the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, talks about what boycott means and why it is being applied to companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine.

Who Profits from the Occupation of Palestine

Dalit combines a researcher's passion with a strong moral commitment to human rights for all people. She is able to easily go from exploring the intricacies of business relationships to profoundly rejecting racist cruelty and Israeli apartheid. 

In the US, we are apt to condemn large corporations for their eagerness to make money despite the harm they do to our nation's citizens. In the West Bank, large corporations are making money by supporting the land theft and cultural genocide that is at the heart of all Israeli settlements. 

The UN has taken a huge step in exposing those businesses that are violating international law. This UN declaration, combined with the research available from Who Profits from the Occupation, is all you need to start doing the right thing when it comes to making out your grocery lists. Make Pillsbury the first step in bringing human rights to the Middle East!

How the Germans lived with themselves

October 1

GUEST: Eric Draitser, independent political analyst, writer, and host of Counter Punch Radio, talks about the Obama-Biden-Clinton criminal conspiracy to overthrow Gaddafi and destroy Libya.

The Plot Against Libya

Was it just oil? Or was it a combination of politicians eager to make a name for themselves? Was it the recolonization of Africa by getting rid of the country that was the most successful bulwark against US and EU imperialism? 

Eric Draitser has been researching war crimes in Africa for a number of years, and he spins an interesting tale of just how such disasters occur. And it doesn't seem to matter which party in the US is in charge at the moment. Yes, the targets might be different, but the overarching use of military force is just the same. 

And the results of such military invasions? The US is responsible for a string of human disasters going back 70 years. It is almost like our country caught perpetual war from the German and Japanese empires. It wasn't long before we were slaughtering millions in Korea. The came the massive bloodletting in Vietnam. 

At times in US recent history, we have depended on coups and assassinations instead of military invasion. Guatemala is an example of a US backed coup that overthrew an elected president, and then went on to slaughter at least 200,000. The same thing happened in Indonesia, with kill lists supplied by the CIA. The American Century will one day be seen as a time of unimaginable mass killings around the world. How is it that the American people are so unaware?

Ever wonder how the Germans lived with themselves during the Holocaust? Consider how little the citizens of our own country think about the millions of people their military has murdered since World War II. 

So much less wisdom than the average citizen

 

September 24

GUEST: Mike Monetta, National Director of Wolf-PAC, an organization dedicated to working across the states to stop corruption at the federal level and in Congress, talks about ways to end the wholesale buying of politicians by the major corporations.

Wolf-PAC, the organization

As the nation loses confidence in the two party system, what will take its place? As we enter a new election cycle, many of us doubt that either the Republicans or the Democrats really care about what's best for the vast majority of America's working people. 

Will it be a Trump inspired fascism, a fateful alliance of the very rich, the very racist, and the religious right? And how will we be delivered into that new and oppressive political system? Electoral fraud? Armed white nationalists terrorizing election workers? A newly created, far right Supreme Court?

It seems like something will happen this time around. With Sleepy Joe and Demented Donald, we seem to have been propelled back into the late stages of the Roman Empire, when crazed leaders had so much less wisdom than the average citizen. 

Wolf-PAC is an idea that works its way around the disfunction that is the two party, corporate controlled state. It's a grassroots movement to take big money out of our elections, and it has already gained a lot of traction. The goal is to have states pass this type of radical election reform, effectively throwing the kleptocracy out. 

Wolf-PAC hasn't been bought out by the rich elite and their giant corporations yet. It seem like a logical place to begin a restoration of our democracy. 

A credible champion of human rights?

September 17

GUEST: Emmaia Gelman, writer, researcher and PhD candidate at the NYU American Studies Program, describes her recent findings about the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), and how it has funded right wing movements in the US.

Open letter to progressives: The ADL is not an ally

Emmaia has done the research necessary to expose the Anti-Defamation League as a cleverly disguised, Israeli funded propaganda organization. It has a hidden history of attacking all sorts of social justice movements led by Blacks, queer people, immigrants, and Muslims. In fact, the ADL has often come down on the side of the police, right wing fanatics, and perpetrators of racist violence. 

The ADL has also been traced to movements that attack Black Lives Matter, Palestinian rights groups, and  Congressional Rep. Ilhan Omar. Other specifics are equally troubling. The ADL advised police on ways to infiltrate and videotape marchers at the August 2017 Black Lives Matter rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The International Jewish Ant-Zionist Network has traced over 40 locations around the world where the ADL has worked with state authorities to suppress legitimate dissent. 

The history of the ADL is similarly troubling. The group supported South African Apartheid, the House on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy Era, and the surveillance of Martin Luther King. The ADL also investigated Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the Civil Liberties Union, and the American Indian Movement. 

More recently, the ADL has organized attacks on college students who advocate for Palestinian rights on campus, and attempted to brand all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. 

Emmaia is an articulate and courageous reformer, and her work is so important. Groups like the ADL are closely allied with Israel, and ever willing to protect Israel's right to commit racist violence by doing favors for the rich and powerful in America. The ADL is a big Trump supporter. Could it also be a credible champion of human rights?

And then join them in the streets

September 10

GUEST: Angela Walker, US veteran and working class activist with decades of experience advocating for racial and economic justice in social movements and unions, talks about her socialist beliefs and how she became Howie Hawkins’ running mate on the Green Party line.

About Angela Walker

How refreshing it is to interview a politician who is exactly what she seems to be. Angela has been a Black activist her whole life, and a working person devoted to union rights. She is the real thing when it comes to expressing her political beliefs. The system is broken, the super rich control most of our politicians, and we need a dramatic change if the American people are to share in our great wealth. 

Angela has been a leader in many grassroots uprisings against neoliberal policies. She brought her union into the Occupy Wisconsin and Occupy the Hood movements. She is unabashed about her support of socialism, and points proudly at the number of left leaning parties that have endorsed the Hawkins/Walker ticket. A substitute teacher and truck driver, Angela is what democracy looks like. 

The "lesser of two evils" is getting dragged into center stage again. Supposedly we must vote for Joe Biden so that we don't fall into fascism. Trump is certainly a white nationalist, intent on using racial violence to stay in power. But the lesser of two evils is how we got to Trump in the first place. Must we now must choose between this madman in the White House and this thoroughly corrupted corporate stooge who is running against him? 

Maybe the voting process itself has to be changed, including the gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the voter suppression aimed at people of color, and the unlimited funds that get poured into each election cycle. Too afraid to call for a real revolution in our political system? Willing to go over the cliff for Sleepy Joe? There are other ways to attain equality and justice. Try voting for candidates you can believe in. And then join them in the streets, were all change happens. 

I played "Revolution" by Nina Simone

September 3

GUEST: Chuck Collins, writer and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and coauthor of a new study entitled "Gilded Giving 2020: How Wealth Inequality Distorts Philanthropy and Imperils Democracy," talks about the institute's plan to reform what charity giving can be deducted for those at the top of the income scale.

White Supremacy is the Pre-existing Condition

Giving is complicated if you have a lot of money. It is a great way to avoid millions in taxes, robbing the poor in the process. When the rich give, it is often not really handing their money to anyone. Donner advised funds let these billionaires hire their friends and relatives, pursue right wing causes, and influence elections. All they need is good accountants and lawyers to set things up. Chuck Collins reveals this giving scam in "Gilded Giving 2020," a depressing exploration of how billions of dollars in wealth keep going to the very richest.

He doesn't avoid the confluence of race and class when it comes to thievery. Our system of racial disparities always robs the poor the most. And usually these poor people are Black. Readers don't have to follow the math to get the idea. Phony "giving" is just one more tool for robbing everyone, especially the most vulnerable.

Of course Trump is king when it comes to shady deals and seedy frauds. But Biden has been on the take from the rich and powerful much longer than our demented President. So no matter who wins the election, the very rich will reap the greatest rewards. And Black people will continue to fight for their very survival in the lowest caste that our great land of liberty has deposited them.

I played "Revolution" by Nina Simone during the break. 

Just a dream some of us had

August 27

GUEST: Thom Hartmann, top rated progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host and New York Times bestselling author of twenty-six books, talks about his recently published work, The Hidden History of Monopolies - How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream.

The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series

We were honored to have Thom Hartmann on Activist Radio. His latest book, The Hidden History of Monopolies is a fascinating exploration of how big corporations become even bigger, and in the process came to dominate our public discourse. It has all happened before, during the Gilded Age and  the Roaring Twenties. In each case the apex of corporate power was followed by a catastrophic economic collapse, and then the public demand for regulation and reform. Like always it was the working people who experienced the most devastation.

One question got Thom talking about socialism. According to him, socialism has never worked, although he did make some exception for the socialist oriented democracies of Scandinavia. According to Thom, the lending of capital is always necessary if businesses are to flourish. He gave an example of a travel business he had started at one time. By borrowing capital, he had turned it into a very successful business, and one that he sold for several million dollars.

No, capitalism is something to be reformed, not done away with. His Hidden History series is blueprint for reform aimed at the common man (and woman too). Read them and you will simply know more about the evils that have plagued our democracy for the last hundred years. And we are well past the time when the giant corporation and trusts should have been busted up.

The future of reform doesn't look too promising either. We pay exorbitant prices for everything, making the billionaires at the top richer than even they can imagine. Meanwhile wages have stagnated for so long that the American Dream has taken its place next to the Holy Ghost. Was it "just a dream some of us had," like Joan Mitchell's lament for peace?

I want a dyke for president

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.
Zoe Leonard
-Thanks to Colin for this poem.

Subjugated peoples have always had the courage and persistence to demand equality

August 20

GUEST: Sijal Nasralla, Campaign Director of the MPower Change, an organization that promotes human rights for Muslims both in the US and around the world, talks about growing up in Palestine and trying to change the racist narrative about Muslim immigrants living in our country.

You Can't Reform Haram

Muslims in the US face racism because it comes from the top. Trump, like most destructive tyrants, uses racial hatreds to gain power. Republicans have been dong that for decades to win elections. Democrats have a more subtile racism, as practiced by the grifter Clintons. Bill and Hillary used phrases like "super predator" when they wanted to play the race card.

But subjugated peoples have always had the courage and persistence to demand equality. Sometimes this courage ends in genocide, as with America's indigenous peoples. Muslims are torn between these two extremes: stay safe and internalize the hatred around them, or speak out and demand to be a full citizen of this supposed democracy.

MPower Change is all about having the courage to be a Muslim in a toxic society. Toxic because the US has killed millions in the Middle East, occupied land through illegal invasions, and stolen the oil and natural resources that belong to the peoples who live there. We are a predatory state, a privateer enterprise and only the American people don't know. Muslims living the US, however, do know. Like Blacks, they realize the viscousness of a state run by neoliberal madmen, intent on enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else in the world.

Like Black people, Muslims are figuring out how to preserve their identity and resist.

Neoliberalism is coming after your standard of living next

August 13

GUEST: Van, local antifa activist and member of the Hudson Valley Antifascist Network, talks about white supremacy violence and the collective efforts to expose and publicly shame racists, homophobes, and right wing fascists.
Hudson Valley Antifascist Network - Facebook

Van and I hit it off. I understand why it is so important to oppose racists and white nationalists in the streets. Without a battle in the streets, these white fascists take over communities, especially in these times of unbridled corruption in high places. Had the Blackshirts or the Brownshirts been beaten in Italy or Germany, there would have been no Second World War.

The US media, almost completely owned by the corporate elite, does not want this basic truth to get out. The media wants you to think that voting is the most important thing a mistreated and frustrated citizen can do. But as Howard Zinn taught us, movements come first, before election victories. If there is no movement, the corrupt bastards who we elect just serve the Billionaires, like Obama did for eight years.

Without movements against racism, fascism, and corruption of the very rich, nothing will change. In fact, things have gotten worse for the average worker over the last 40 years. Get off your ass you white liberals, and take to the streets. Neoliberalism is coming after your standard of living next. 

The corporations want us to focus on racist police

August 6

GUEST: Christian Perenti, author of "Radical Hamilton," and Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College CUNY, talks about his latest article, "The Surprising Geography of Police Killings" and how race and region determine who gets murdered by the men in blue.

The Surprising Geography of Police Killings

Christian has done the research. Police in the North kill more Black people than police in the South. When one looks at the ratio of Blacks in each state, the most dramatic killing rates are not in Alabama but in Massachusetts.

How could that be? It is just possible that police kill a higher percentage of poor people. Large numbers of whites are poor in the South, making them more apt to be murdered by the cops. Whites in the North are better off, so the killings of Black people make up a higher percentage if the population.

So is the problem of Black killings related to their rates of poverty? Blacks make up a larger number of poor people in the North. Being poor and Black in Massachusetts is a risk to your life.

Are racism and class competing narratives? Not necessarily. But to avoid talking about poverty and police killings is maybe to miss the larger point. MLK was working on the Poor People's March when he was murdered. Had he come to realize that poverty was the real enemy of poor people, whether they are Black or white?

And do the corporations want us to focus on racist police, rather than risk a true, multicolored movement for fair pay and economic justice?

Throwing the neoliberal money makers out from the start

July 30

GUEST: Ed Haffmans, local peace and environmental activist who has spent decades living well without fossil fuels, talks about the growing consensus for renewable energy, and Michael Moore's new documentary, Planet of the Humans.

SUNY New Paltz did not make the cut for greenest campuses

The only thing ‘green’ about nuclear power

Ed has been around the Hudson Valley for a long time. I remember him from the 1980s selling buttons about US imperialism in Central America. The buttons were right on; our government was lying through its teeth.

I had not really known about the local wars for environmental justice, so Ed was a source of some good stories. The turnaround of SUNY New Paltz was sort of a shocker. The college had gone from environmental innovation to a board of trustees filled with oil and banking executives. The college had even torn down its environmental center.

The story about Indian Point nuclear power plant is even more troubling. How did a few investors prevail over the safety of millions of people up and down the Hudson River? The NY Times was certainly part of it, with never a discouraging word about nuclear power.

Indian Point is still with us, of course. As is global warming. Profit making from the environment creates an ever larger dead zone. Indian Point can never really be deactivated because there is no place to send the spent fuel. It will sit there forever like a huge undetonated bomb, waiting for a time when the cooling tanks plug up or shut down.

I put the picture of a wind farm up because there were better answers all along, if we could have thrown the neoliberal money makers out of the equation from the start. 

Were our government made up of Laurette Giardinos

July 23

GUEST: Laurette Giardino, human rights activist and 2020 Democratic candidate running for New York State Assembly of the 105th district, talks about why she supports the NY Healthcare Act, green jobs, alternative energy, criminal justice reform, and getting the rich to pay their fair share of taxes.

Laurette Giardino for NY State Assembly 105th District

Harckham Honors Two District LGBTQ Leaders for Pride Month

Laurette was a joy to interview. She has strong beliefs in justice, equality, and personal freedom. She is even willing to run on that platform for the NYS Assembly. She wants universal healthcare, and hasn't been bought off by the big insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. She is for the Green New Deal, and hasn't taken any money from Big Oil. She is for racial justice and not afraid to talk about what changes need to be made.

In short, she is putting forth a people's agenda, free from the dominance of the nation's billionaires. How is this even possible in a society so inundated with the filthy money of the privileged few?

I think it comes down to Barnie and the progressive movement in this country that just never stopped saying what should be said. That the very rich incite racial hatreds as a way to maintain their power and money. That working people can stand together and make the rich pay their fair share if they expect to enjoy the benefits and protections of our society.

Were our government made up of Laurette Giardinos. 

Recovering some of our lost humanity by being honest

July 16

GUEST: Kwame Holmes, PhD, Scholar in Residence, Human Rights Program, Bard College, and author of numerous articles about race and LGBTQ rights, talks about Black Lives Matter and how local actions can create lasting change.

Why Abolish the Police? - Chronogram

Scholar in Residence, Human Rights

Kwame is a delightful guest. He is able to keep his sense of humor as he talks about the prevailing racism that has plagued our society since way before the US Constitution. Ours is a nation built on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples as well as the importation of millions of Black slaves. As a white person, what does one do? What reparations will ever make those wrongs less of a curse on our national pride? Why do whites have national pride?

Discussing all this with a Black person willing to talk about race can be anxiety producing. Am I saying racist things because my society has been awash in racist sentiments for my whole life? Or am I simply a racist because my standard of living and virtual freedom from police killings has always made my life easier. Ok, much easier. I have been a member of the chosen people in a country perpetually stained by its continued assault on people of color.

So humor makes things easier. It allows me to express my support for human rights without thinking of what I should have been doing all along. Humor makes me laugh about racist assumptions too. Assumptions that are simply stupid and small minded, like our president. But is it enough to condemn Trump? What is enough for a white man in our society?

It is a question that the Germans have asked since the Holocaust. Did they know what was going on as Jews were disappearing? Were they in the German Army, defending a state that was committing genocide? And when can Germans expect to rejoin the human race?

I don't know about white people being "fragile," the conclusion of "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism." The book is well worth reading, of course. But why not say that like the Germans who lived through World War II, white people in America are simply guilty in some degree, and that we can recover some of our lost humanity by simply being honest?

PANOPTICON August 4, 2020 - Raphaelle

PANOPTICON August 4, 2020

Ever since the first day of the lock down, people around the world have had one burning question: how do we get out of lockdown and back to our former lives?  

Two widely touted ways we are told we will regain our freedom are either a vaccine and failing that - or incorporating that - some kind of “papers-please” pass containing our personal health data as it relates to COVID19.

And of course given how much money is swirling around all things COVID related, oligarchs are jumping on both of these challenges.  I’ll leave the vaccine conversation for another program, (here’s where Fred breathes a sigh of relief!!) and focus in today’s episode of Panopticon on some of the tracking apps which we are being told will be a big part of our future new normal.

And just on a personal note, as a child of apartheid in South Africa, growing up watching people being pulled off the streets into police vans because their papers weren’t in order, it is particularly painful for me to talk about this.  

So first up is a Swedish company called Sidehide that say they are testing their biometric ID product in Miami hotels this summer.   Sidehide uses a QR code embedded with a selfie and your government issued ID to provide faster authentication during hotel check ins and could in the future include your covid19 test results and your vaccine status.

Delta and Heathrow Airport have both expressed interest in this product – which leads me to another early entrant in this space, Onfido, which raised a hundred million dollars in venture capital in April, including from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund.  Like Sidehide, Onfido uses a QR code embedded with your government ID, a selfie and AI to authenticate you.

Onfido recently submitted a proposal to Britain’s parliamentary Science and Technology committee, so I suspect we will be hearing more from Onfido in the future.

And finally I want to talk about COVI-Pass which uses a VCode—similar to a QR code—that flashes green if a person has tested negative for the virus, red if tests show that they have the virus or don’t have antibodies, or if their test result has expired and yellow when it’s time to be retested. The app can “geo-fence” an entrance, prohibiting visitors with a red light from entering a building, stadium or school. 

The COO of COVI-Pass, Adam Palmer, believes all governments will move toward a global health passport, and they will be as common as carrying a driver’s license or a passport.  The company says they are shipping passes to both the private sector and governments in over fifteen countries, including Italy, France, India, and the United States.

So how close are we to having these products rolled out?

Well the sticking point at the moment is not getting governments and corporations to jump all over this, but the inconvenient fact that science simply can’t match the ambitions of the people who want to control us.

Let’s start with the basics.  What constitutes a positive COVID19 test?  I’m not going to delve into the controversy about the accuracy of swab tests, but even a positive COVID19 antibody test is potentially meaningless.  According to the CDC, antibody tests don’t test specifically for COVID19 so a positive antibody test could just mean you’ve been exposed to a similar corona virus in the past.  (And we will provide a CDC link in the show notes)

A second sticking point is that scientists are coming to understand the limitations of antibody testing, because immunity to corona virus infections is coded on what are called T-cells.  Testing for T-cell immunity to COVID19 is possible – but it’s hard to scale.  The other problem with testing for COVID19 immunity on T-cells is scientists are finding that large percentages of the US population already have T-cell immunity to COVID19, based on prior exposure to corona viruses (and again, we will be posting those research papers in the show notes).

But using these immunity passes to track test results could become moot once governments start rolling out warp speed vaccines.  These immunity passes could then be used to record our vaccination history - and Mastercard will likely have a jump start on their competitors in this space.  In a joint venture with the Bill Gates-backed GAVI vaccine alliance and the AI-powered “identity authentication” company Trust Stamp, Mastercard is rolling out the “Wellness Pass” in “low-income, remote communities” in West Africa.  The Wellness Pass is a digital vaccination record and identity platform linked to Mastercard’s payment system.

Trust Stamp uses biometric identity data and the company says their system can operate in areas of the world without internet or cellular connectivity. And because it uses biometric data, it doesn’t need a person’s legal name or identity to function.

So is the Wellness Pass a super awesome, cool little app that enables you to roll up to the check in desk, show your face, be greeted by name, and then step onto a plane safe in the knowledge that everyone onboard is as up to date with their vaccines as you are?

How comfortable are we with a payment system that’s linked to our personal health information?

What happens if we fall behind with our vaccines?  Or find out we react badly to them.  Will we find ourselves being locked out of our payment system?  Or other systems?  Will our pass prevent us from boarding planes and trains - or even entering supermarkets - because it’s flashing red instead of green?

Are these apps the beginning of a western style social credit system?

Is this a Brave New World?  And if it is, are you brave enough to stand up to it?  

Or are you going to roll up your sleeve and roll over? 

CDC Guidance on Positive Tests:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html

Research Papers on Widespread T-cell Immunity

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1?fbclid=IwAR16SL_8tMopFfQGvA-cRttcah-Q9wd8exWZfENiYILrUzwrO_8m1nJDJYA

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf

Articles and Blogs on T-cell Immunity

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/new-data-on-t-cells-and-the-coronavirus

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-immunity-test-t-cell-antibody-community-a9625811.html

Trained as killers in American colonies abroad

July 9

GUEST: Stuart Schrader, research scientist in sociology at Johns Hopkins University, Associate Director of the Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship, and author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing, talks about the racist connections between foreign and domestic policy when it comes to law enforcement.

Badges Without Borders

I know many reformers are hesitant to go beyond immediate problems. They have good, liberal instincts, but worry about diluting their causes by looking at other societies or countries. Finding the common threads between the racist police in Baltimore and the racist IDF soldiers in the West Bank is simply off the table.

Of course, both probably received the same training. The Baltimore police even traveled to Israel to study tactics, in a country where racist brutality is reserved for the underclass of Palestinians. Are there further connections between racist cops and US foreign policy? Our country has invaded and occupied any number of countries since the World War II. Did we learn a racist viciousness killing Koreans in the 1950s, or Vietnamese in the 1960s? We certainly killed enough to learn all the tricks of subjugation and repression. The young men and women who were lucky enough to come home often enrolled in police departments, to turn their service experiences into careers. The same is true for our endless wars in the Middle East. Shooting "ragtops" in Iraq and Afghanistan is as good training as they could get in punishing people of color in the US.

So is reform the answer? Or is the question broader than that? What does American militarism in the rest of the world do to our own country's standards of social justice? Trained as killers in American colonies abroad, and sent to Israel for additional skills, what other type of policing are these new recruits capable of providing to US citizens who happen to be Black.

Our leaders and our mainstream media will never connect these dots for us. We have to work it out for ourselves, with the help of writers like Stuart Schrader.