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.