Peace in the New Year

 

December 23

Voices for peace in the Holy Land, a compilation of discussions and music for the holidays. Hear the views of Noam Chomsky, Yonatan Shapira and others.

During the holidays, stories about our common humanity are particularly appealing. Sometimes soldiers don't fight during war. They come out of their trenches for a very brief time to exchange gifts and play soccer. There is sometimes this unmet need to recognize that we are all sisters and brothers. An urge to embrace one another rather than to kill. 

Perhaps our common bonds will save us in the end. And if we destroy our species through global warming or nuclear Armageddon, then at least we tried. 

Work for peace in the New Year.

Empire and the search for truth

December 16

GUEST: Dr. Harry Targ, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, and a co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, talks about how Koch funded neoliberalism is becoming hegemonic in higher education.

Heartland Radical

Neoliberalism is the concept that everyone has learned to hate. Perhaps we should call it hyper capitalism, the pursuit of profit by impoverishing whole populations, both in the Third World and in the heart of the empire. Conquering education is the next goal in this march to enrich the few in the name of democracy. The current ferocious war to eliminate any notion of the public good is particularly aimed at the nation's colleges and universities. 

Historically, colleges were centers of debate and learning. Students would gather around thinkers like Noam Chomsky to understand and take part in mutual quest for knowledge. The quest was a group effort, a learned pursuit to satisfy one's intellectual curiosity.

How we got to the current university systems, expensive country clubs that all but a few of our richest students will spend their lives paying off loans for, would make an interesting study. Our most prestigious institutions of higher education are bastions of privilege. At Harvard, 40% of students accepted would not have gotten in if it weren't for parental donations, talent in sports, or some other non academic skill. The Ivy League schools have always reeked of family money. 

So maybe it wasn't that hard for the Kochs to warp the educational system further with their filthy billions. Once the very rich start paying for professors, buildings and academic programs all the supposed intellectual basis for gaining knowledge falls by the wayside. Higher education was ripe for further corruption before the Kochs arrived. 

I noticed that Harry and I talked a good deal about the US Empire, and its endless wars. Can a nation have true intellectual freedom when it commits a growing list of war crimes abroad? Quite possibly, the military empire we are all part of spells the end of a university system based on the search for knowledge and truth. 

 

If you love your Uncle Sam

December 9

GUEST: Brian Robinson, criminal justice reform activist, CEO of Equitable Future Inc, and member of the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN), discusses decarceration on the local and state levels.

Coalition takes on mass incarceration

There are all the logical reasons why a society like ours should put fewer people in jail. Our incarceration rate is off the charts when it come to the rest of the world. Over half of those in prison do not present a danger to our society. They may need help ending an addiction or remediating the effects of a mental illness. Prison is just a very expensive waste of taxpayer dollars.

Looked at through another lens, however, our prison system is much worse. A disproportionate number of our prisoners are poor and people of color. Imprisonment is therefore a product of racism and class devision. In a way, our prison system reflects what we as a nation do with our soldiers abroad. Incarceration is the necessary ally of empire. 

But once enough people start to realize the changes that must be made, eager politicians pull out the race card. Suddenly crime is again a problem of the poor rather than a problem of the rich. And Blacks, being the bottom caste of our social system, must pay the worst price. Will young, Black men ever stop ending up in jail? 

There is no justice in empire. Nor was there very much justice during slavery or during Jim Crow. There was no justice to the native peoples who were driven from their land and slaughtered. These United States created a nation on a different model. And our legacy continues as the millions killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the innocent victims who were tortured for 20 years in Guantanamo. 

"If you love your Uncle Sam, bring them home." - Pete Seeger
 

Being honest about what is going on around them

December 2

GUEST: Phillip Pantuso, award-winning journalist, editor of the new weekly magazine, The River, and contributing writer for The Guardian, The New York Times, and Yes! Magazine, talks about publishing local news and articles that break the conservative mold.

Phillip Pantuso

It was interesting to hear the problems of local journalists first hand. Here in the Hudson Valley, we have watched the major papers become thin and brittle versions of their former selves. It is like reading parchment paper, and I feel sorry for all the reporters who no longer ply their trade in empty newsrooms. 

But to tell the truth, local news has always been lame. There was never very much national or international new, and the stores they carried had always been screened by many sieves before they hit the light of day. The recent consolidation of radio, TV stations, newspapers, and magazines, just means that all their stories are vacuous in the same way. Now most articles have become full length advertisements for local businesses.

Just like real history is too interesting to appear in classroom textbooks, real political or personal drama rarely breaks to the surface in local publications. That's why I am hopeful about some new magazines like The River. They carry some stories about racism, police violence, poverty, and social justice. By being honest about what is going on around them, they capture our attention. How do they dare write about this stuff? Will the publication be sustainable if it doesn't trumpet the capitalist class? 

We will see, and the suspense will keep us reading The River.

 

Time to revive Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialist League

November 25

GUEST: Brian Willson, Viet Nam veteran, lawyer, and current resident of Nicaragua, talks about the recent elections there and why the US empire is trying to overthrow President Ortega and the Sandinista Revolution. 

As Nicaragua Resists Regime Change

I was very happy to get Brian as a guest. He lives now in Nicaragua, and is an invaluable source of anti-imperialist opinions. Biden has proven to be just as hawkish as Trump and Obama. No change in pushing for a new cold war with Blinken in charge of the State Department. Why can't either party challenge our huge expenditure on the military? Why is the US still acting aggressively towards any country that tries to be the least bit independent?

It is certainly not to further the cause of democracy in the world. The US sends arms to a vast number of dictators and tyrants, as long as they play nice with our major corporations and allow us to build military bases in their homelands. The motivation is exactly the opposite; the policy of the US is to overthrow governments that try to put their people above US mining, oil, and banking profits. 

Nicaragua has a history of teaching its people to read and giving them access to free healthcare. And that makes the country just too socialist for the kleptocracy class in the US empire. What if those ideas started to spread in the very belly of the beast?

The picture above is Brian right before he was run over by a train, full of mentions that were bound for the Contras. That was another decade, of course. But the US backed terrorists are at it again in Nicaragua, with the full consent and even enthusiasm of The New York Times and Democracy Now. So Brian and others fighting for Nicaragua's freedom are especially important now. Perhaps it is time to revive Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialist League, with its pox on both political parties.  

Destroying the good name of our nation

November 18

GUEST: Anas Amireh, Palestinian American activist and organizer of the Coalition to Boycott Duty Free Americas, talks about how this US company is funding the settler movement, which is forcing Palestinians from their homes and land in the West Bank.

Middlemen sell Jerusalem homes to settlers 

Anas reminded us of the battle raging in America's heartland. Do citizens have a right to boycott a country that routinely violates human rights? The conflict is for the soul of the United States, since our country arms, funds, and protects apartheid Israel. Moreover, Israel is more than a country. It is America's most important colony, willing to do whatever the empire needs to have done, both in the Middle East and in the rest of the world.

Israel's connection to the US is a two way street. Israeli operatives in our government have had an outsized role in instigating our wars of empire. For example, our invasion of Iraq was orchestrated by the following list of Israeli plants working in key areas of our government:

• Richard N. Perle, member of the Defense Policy Board, advisor to the Pentagon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs
• Paul Wolfowitz, protege of Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Dov S. Zakheim, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense
• Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense, member of PNAC who was mentored by Henry Kissinger
• John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor 
• John Hannah, vice president’s Office for National Security Affairs
• Elliott Abrams,  foreign policy adviser for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump

How is it that any of these right wing Zionists, many with dual citizenships, are allowed to influence America's strategic decisions about war and peace? Of course, they are all extreme hawks who have spent their lives pushing for the empire's endless wars abroad. But what country benefits from the destruction of the Middle East? Certainly not the United States. All these influential Zionist have quite openly advanced Israel's interests at the expense of America. Are these men traitors to the United States - a person who commits treason by betraying his or her country? 

Meanwhile, Anas is planning the boycott of Duty Free Americas, the US company that shovels million to the illegal settlers to help them steal land from Palestinians in the West Bank. It is a tough fight because the Israeli Lobby has the money and the influence to make such campaigns extremely difficult. 

Will there ever be a day when ordinary citizens stand up against the Israel Lobby? When we as citizens of the US demand that Israeli war hawks get their icy fingers off the levers of power? Zionist influence has caused a catastrophe in the Middle East. Israeli agents in our government should be purged. They have cost the American public trillions of dollars, while destroying the lives of so many of our nation's young. 

Armed extremist groups supported by the state

We are seeing the coming together of right wing, white nationalist groups and the nation's criminal justice system, including the police. It is a dramatic step in the direction that many of us have feared. 

The Rittenhouse acquittal establishes the right of armed white nationalists to come to demonstrations and kill whoever they consider to be a threat. Moreover, these dangerous white extremists are now openly supported by at least some of our uniformed police, who readily force peaceful demonstrators into areas here they can be ambushed. Finally, we have district judges who are eager to protect white nationalist killers from any kind of justice. 

This is the essence of fascism, armed extremist groups supported by the state, and by one of the two major political parties. Once in power these fascist will sit in the halls of Congress and extend their dominance to all walks of life. We have no time to grieve for the victims. We must organize now to fight back before it is too late.

The 99%, deserve someone better

My disappointment with Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-NY-19) had been limited to his utter lack of interest in human rights. He has been a steady and well paid ally to apartheid Israel, raking in $31,723 from the Israel Lobby in 2021. Just how does that cash square with his talk about overcoming racism?

But his recent cosponsoring of the SALT Deductibility Act shows just what kind of a rich man's Democrat we have voted in. In his own words he supports "bipartisan legislation that would eliminate the harmful cap on state and local tax deductions." Harmful to whom? Why to the very richest of Americans who want even more tax breaks than they have now. According to the Brookings Institute, "Lifting the cap on the SALT deduction would massively favor the rich, with most of the benefit going to the top one percent." 

According to Rep Delgado, all he is doing is, "simplifying the tax code by closing loopholes that serve only the wealthiest Americans." No, Rep. Delgado, you are pushing through a bill that would, again according to Brookings, "give almost three times as much, as a share of the cut, to the top one percent." 

How stupid does he think we are? His recent letter to constituents is full of praise for working families. But Rep. Delgado knows just who is paying his tab: Wall Street, the wealthiest Americans, and the Israel Lobby. Democrats like Delgado are simply worthless to the rest of us. Don't we, the 99%, deserve someone better?

Fred Nagel

We get to hold all the guns and the money

November 11

GUEST: David Vine, professor of political anthropology at American University, and author of the newly published The United States of War, talks about the world history of America's endless conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. 

The United States of War

Dr. David Vine uses meticulous research to bring his readers out of their coma of US exceptionalism. It is a difficult transition for most.

As a draftee in 1967, I was against the Vietnam war, but I thought it was an aberration rather than a blueprint for how my country interacted with the rest of the world. I held the line at the Second World War. I know that we invaded Mexico in the 1800s, and Hawaii, Cuba and the Philippines as well. I knew about the history of Native Americans too, and felt the shame of Slavery and Jim Crow. But it seemed to me that my country had lost its way after defeating Germany and Japan, becoming the empire that was there for the taking.

Since then I have read  Zinn's People's History, as well as Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. But as far back as I was willing to go was the turn of the last century. With the help of Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow, I admitted that the American Empire began a good deal earlier than I had previously thought. 

My life experiences also changed by perspective. I spent a year in Korea in the US Army, and I recommend that experience to anyone who wants a clearer picture of how imperial occupation works. You get to hold all the guns and the money, while pitifully poor supplicants get to trade their dignity or their sisters for a little bit of your power and wealth. 

Traveling in Central America during the 1980s, I got a chance to see what imperialism does to native peoples. We were destroying Nicaragua so that their socialist revolution would not be copied by the rest of Central America. We did it by hiring the Contras, brutal killers who followed the empire's directives. El Salvador had its own killing fields, all paid for and armed by that enemy of freedom, my very own country. So maybe I didn't need books to understand what living in the belly of the beast was like.

Knowledge is a first step. Without it there can't be activism. If we want to change our country we must understand how it became a military behemoth, and a threat in this nuclear age to all of humankind.   

Workers will have a chance when the empire falls

November 4

GUEST: Pete Dolack, activist, writer, poet and author of the book It's Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment, talks about US workers' rights and how badly employees are treated in the land of the free.

It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment

It's what American workers don't know that is most troubling. In short, workers in other developed countries have universal healthcare, paid leave, childcare, a 40 hour week and paid vacations. Workers here have none of these, and the US media works hard to keep them in the dark. 

Instead of benefits, workers in the US get right wing patriotism, militarism and racism. There is really no political party that offers anything else. The Democrats, bloated by millions from the very rich and the corporations, can talk about economic justice, but it is mostly show. We must remember that Barak Obama was elected by a wave of working people who were hoping for something more. Productivity was way up, but salaries and benefits lagged way behind what the rest of the developed world was getting. Early in his administration, he controlled both houses, yet decided to ignore a bill he promised to fight for, the Employee Free Choice Act. And the ever compliant media buried the story.

The way to support workers' rights is probably through education. Other countries have finally overthrown their two party systems by starting a third party devoted to labor. Most of the Scandinavian countries have gone this route, and even waiters there are paid a wage that supports their families. It can be done here, but it would mean overcoming the two party system, forming a separate labor media, and ending this country's dependence on endless wars. In short, workers will have a chance when the empire falls. Until then, working people will continue to suffer at the hands of the military industrial kleptocracy. 

 

Let slip the dogs of war

 

October 28

GUEST: Brian Willson, Viet Nam veteran, lawyer, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, and author of several books including Blood on the Tracks, the story of how he was severely injured while protesting US weapons shipments to Central America, talks at a recent Alliance for Global Justice panel entitled "US Exceptionalism: Its Story in Nicaragua and Beyond."

S. Brian Willson blog
NicaNotes on Nicaragua

Activist Radio had Brian Willson on way back in September, 2012. 

Guest: Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran and long time peace activist, talks about Bo Boudart's new documentary "Paying the Price for Peace," which is based on Brian's life.

As a Vietnam Era veteran, and a supporter of the Nicaraguan revolution during the 1980s, I have always admired Brian for his lifetime of antiwar organizing. The panel discussion I aired this time was just too good to pass up. Here is a person who was in the Vietnam War. He was also in Nicaragua during the CIA Contra Wars. He has seen and felt it first hand. He didn't lose his legs in some Vietnamese attack, but was purposely run over by a train full of munitions bound for Latin America. 

This stops a trainload of bullets,

Destined for Central American hearts.

Now there is blood on the heavy wheels,

And a man gives his legs for peace.

Oh shame for those who stand upright,

And pay for murders out of sight.

I will get around sometime to sending Brian this poem I wrote for him. I also plan to ask him to be on the program again. The Democrats are once again making war noises towards peaceful nations in this hemisphere. Twenty years of war, and people like Secretary of State Blinken will never learn. In fact, it is the ruling class in these United States that perpetually risk a world war just so the Military Industrial Complex can get even richer. For bloodshed is the most profitable business model the US has, and there is no end in sight of Black and brown victims for our war machine.

Or as Shakespeare describes the insanity of empire in Julius Caesar:

"Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war." 

The rainbow sign

October 21

GUEST: Edgar Villanueva, award winning author, activist and expert on issues of race, health and philanthropy, talks about his new book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous wisdom to heal divides and restore balance.

Media and Press

This is certainly a fascinating book. Edgar Villanueva is a young, ambitious political activist, trying to find his way as a Native American in a white world of rich men and women. Much of it is about how the rich use nonprofits to escape paying their fair share of taxes. White philanthropists are also aware that they need a few Blacks and Native Americans around to make thing look a little better. Villanueva finds himself as a well paid window dressing. And when he tries to fight back, he is fired by another token minority.

Ever wonder why the very rich are so into giving? Vllanueva tells it all. It's an ego thing, a way to get even richer while looking like you are doing good work. The book is a peek behind the curtain of the filthy rich class. 

Indigenous wisdom is hard for white people to really believe in. This book will help you. Villanueva is anything but preachy, and my interview with him is very laid back. That's pretty amazing given the fact that our indigenous peoples were slaughtered in one of the worst genocides in history. Native wisdom, however, has survived, and it offers us a way out. Stop consuming the earth; stop trying to own what should be everyone's to share. Can we learn before our planet burns up?

God gave Noah the rainbow sign.

Won't be water, be fire next time.

 

 

 

Good work or normalizing the occupation

October 14

GUESTS: Dr. Andrew Meade, director of the Office of International Services at Vassar College and co-founder of the Vassar Haiti Project, talks about project's goals, both on campus and in the surrounding community. We also have co-founder and executive director of the VHP, Lila Meade.

Vassar Haiti Project

This has been a long term project at Vassar College, both to raise money for Haitian relief and to spread awareness of human rights abuses there. 

We talked about the needs of the Haitian people as well as their history of resisting colonialism. In 1804 the country was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery, and it has been under attack ever since. Haiti became a Black led nation back when US politicians were buying and selling slaves. Even after the Civil War, the US continued its racism through the practices of forced sterilization, Jim Crow, and the study of Eugenics.

I thought that the interview failed when it came to the most recent US interventions in Haiti. I brought up the grifter Clintons, friends of Haitian dictators and neoliberal investors in colonial projects there. The last thirty years have seen some of the worst US interventions there, from the creation of corporate sweat shops to the CIA overthrow of President Aristide, arguably the father of his country. 

Are NGOs that sell Haitian art and fund humanitarian projects doing good work or are they normalizing the occupation? Perhaps a bit of both. I wouldn't have invited Dr. Meade and his wife on if I was going to attack their obvious commitment to the Haitian people. So my questions are oblique. Perhaps my interview is also a bit of both.  

Spotlighting the crimes of corporate America

October 7

GUEST: Jonathan Moore, senior partner in a New York law firm who has been seeking to end stop-and-frisk abuses as well as to hold the US chemical companies liable for the harm caused Vietnamese nationals by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. We talk about some of the cases he has worked on to achieve justice for clients who have been injured or harmed by the police, the FBI or the US military. 

Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign

Jonathan's career has been about representing those who have had no voice. The two examples we talk about were the poisoning of both US veterans and the Vietnamese people by Agent Orange, and the illegal stop and frisk of Blacks in our inner cities. There are many more examples of activist lawyers attempting to restore justice for victims of multinational corporations, the CIA, the FBI and our local, racist police departments. 

In pursuing these types of cases, lawyers like Jonathan Moore also shine a spotlight on the excesses and abuses of our military industrial complex, ever eager to profit from the suffering and exploitation of others. One wonders how long our empire is going to allow lawyers to expose its dirty little secrets. We see how the United States treats journalist Julian Assange, whose major transgression involved the release of a short video clip of US soldiers committing war crimes in Iraq. More recently we find that the CIA and top government officials discussed how to assassinate Assange, an Australian citizen. How soon will our national security state begin murdering other journalists who dare reveal the truth?

And can lawyers be far behind? I am sure that the Pentagon does not want to the public to dwell on the long term poisoning of millions during the occupation of Vietnam. The war machine wants other military campaigns, and the chemical companies stand ready to profit again by sickening another generation of US troops in the field. The prosecution of Steven Donziger is not encouraging. Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador, only to be charged in the US with six charges of criminal contempt of court, all misdemeanors. He has spent a number of years under house arrest and faces six months in prison. It is a fate that both reporters and lawyers could soon face for spotlighting the crimes of corporate America. 

The empire wants to kill him.

 

September 30

GUEST: John Shipton, political activist, citizen of Australia, and the father of Julian Assange, talks about the campaign to free his son from the grips of Belmarsh Prison and the possible extradition to the United States.

Julian Assange’s father and brother 

I have always thought that Julian's crimes began and ended with the exposure of the violence and ugliness of US war crimes in Iraq. But many of the leaks simply exposed the kleptocracy that runs our country and both major parties. Well maybe that's the same thing. We have a well entrenched oligarchy that makes most of its money invading other countries and stealing their resources. The rule of the very richest perhaps brings with it these perpetual war crimes. How else to enlarge the empire? Certainly not by being nice in the Third World. 

However, I have come to discover another of Julian's supposed crimes. Rather than beg for mercy, he has refused to give into an elite class of rulers that that is very used to getting its own way. To see the United States appear in am English court with its bogus claims and World War I Sedition Act mentality sort of tears away at its most important strength, its invincibility. Yes, it is almost comical that a supposedly civilized country would insist on the right to kill people in a foreign land, and then try to do away with the journalist who reports on it. And not even a journalist from the United States. The empire insists on the right to pursue anyone in the world who documents its carnage. The exposing of the video from Iraq is the crime, but so to is the revelation of the empire's hubris. 

If anyone wants to argue that the US empire is any better than the ruthless empires of history, the CIA's plot to assassinate Assange completely undermines that logic. The pretense of legality, of a judge sitting in court and pursuing justice, is destroyed by this look at the machinations of our criminal world dominance. The United States doesn't want to judge Assange; it wants to kill him. 

Not a complete surprise given our history of torture and injustice

 

September 23

GUEST: Murtaza Hussain, reporter at The Intercept who focuses on national security and foreign policy, and has appeared on CNN, BBC, and MSNBC, talks about The Fort Dix Five, and how young Muslim men were entrapped by the FBI.

Murtaza Hussain is a reporter at The Intercept

9/11 brought out the very worst of our corrupted and violent criminal justice system. The FBI ever fixated on its own image, set out to entrap poor and uneducated Muslim men so that the organization would look good to the general public. The plots were depressingly similar. There would be one or two FBI infiltrators  who would make friends with these young people, offering them emotional support and a chance to get rich quick. The FBI "plot" would revolve around a few angry young men talking tough about what they would do, all taped by the informants. When the talk was over, it was time for the bribes. $25,000 for loading up a car and driving across state lines. What was loaded? Well, fake weapons that were supposed to be part of an FBI contrived terrorist attack. 

Why not hire actors? Well then you couldn't arrest them and enhance your career as a crime fighter. Chris Christie made a name for himself with the Fort Dix Five Plot. He went on to become one of the very worst governors New Jersey ever had, a completely corrupted prosecutor following Hunter Thompson's road to success: "In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile."

So September 11 brought out the swine, from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the FBI entrapment of Muslim men in this country. And so much of this was based on a deep seated racism towards Muslims, a key ingredient of the American Empire. There are many people sitting in US prisons who are completely innocent. Not a total surprise given our history of torture and injustice at Guantanamo Bay. 

Defunding police is all about removing white privilege

 

September 16

GUEST: Isis Benitez, community activist with End the New Jim Crow, member of the Healthy Black and Latinx Coalition, and former Liberty Partnership scholarship recipient, talks about why local policing must to be changed and how the community's needs can better be served.

6 reasons why it’s time to defund the police

What works and what doesn't. That would seem to be a simple question when applied to almost any community need. But whose community are we talking about? 

Are we are talking about a poor, inner city community with many Black and Latinx residents? Or are we describing the needs of the surrounding white suburbs that are much more affluent and well represented in local government? Which community gets to define what their needs are, and to decide how monies are spent? If one community has too much power, will their needs supersede the needs of the less affluent and influential? 

When it comes to policing, this difference in power has tremendous consequences. The city of Poughkeepsie has very few minority police officers, and an even fewer number who live in the inner city. How does a police force like that take minority views into account? Moreover, white police officers are much more apt to use force when dealing with people of color. Even when policing the city's public schools, white officers arrest more Black kids than they do white students in the suburbs. White officers do more stop and frisk in the inner city than in the surrounding small towns. Perhaps white police officers are following the priorities of the white suburbs even when patrolling Black neighborhoods in Poughkeepsie. 

So defunding the police is about Black communities getting to plan and implement policing that fits their needs. It is not so much "defunding" as changing where the money gets spent. Maybe the schools could use more social workers, rather than armed police officers whose only response is arresting Black students. Maybe the police should be Black themselves, and live in the communities that they serve. 

Why wouldn't everyone who lives in Dutchess County be for this more equitable structure of community policing? Well, because having an all white police force is a form of white privilege. It is more comforting to be stopped by someone your own race who lives in your own white community. Someone you can trust isn't prejudiced towards you. Someone who won't fear you for the color of your skin, and shoot you when things don't go according to their sense of white entitlement.

Defunding police is all about removing white privilege when it comes to law enforcement. It is about treating communities equally. It is about making Black lives matter when it comes to our criminal justice system.

Taking our place with the peaceful nations of the earth

Larreynaga, Nicaragua

September 9

GUEST: Dr. Arnold Matlin. retired pediatrician and long time political activist in solidarity with the Nicaraguan Revolution since the 1980s, talks about the need to defend Sandinista gains from US imperial interventions.

NicaNotes: Hands off Nicaragua!

Dr. Matlin has made Nicaragua an important part of his life. After visiting Nicaragua in the late 1980s during the Contra Wars, he has returned over 30 times to the sister city his group in Rochester, NY had established in El Sauce, Leon. My brother and I have been to El Sauce too, each of us driving a truck full of medical supplies, bicycles, and schoolbooks. My truck eventually made it to the sister city that my town of Rhinebeck, NY had established. We called our group the Mid Hudson/Larreynaga Sister City Project. 

El Sauce, Nicaragua

Noam Chomsky recently did an article for Jacobin Magazine, and I thought his take on Nicaragua was right on. 

"Of course, the world is somewhat different. One difference is the population. To the extent that today’s wars are more humanitarian, that’s thanks to people like you. It’s coming from people on the ground. The country has become more civilized as a result of the activism of the 1960s. And there’s plenty of evidence for that, though it doesn’t get discussed. It’s not the right story. Take the Central American wars. Horrible atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. There was torture, massacres — everything you can think of.

But there were things the United States couldn’t do. It couldn’t do what John F. Kennedy could do in South Vietnam twenty years earlier. They tried, but they couldn’t do it. There was simply too much opposition here.

When he came into office, Ronald Reagan tried to duplicate what Kennedy had done twenty years earlier. There was an immediate backlash from the population. They weren’t accepting that anymore.

What happened in Central America was something totally new in the entire history of imperialism. It was the first time ever that people in the aggressor country didn’t just protest but went to live with the victims. I visited churches in Middle America where people knew more about Central America than the academics, because they were working there." AN INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY

I am a believer in long term activism. It doesn't always bring our troops home. It often doesn't stop the US Military Industrial Complex's from launching new invasions and occupations. Perhaps Chomsky is right when he describes 250 year of US history. Our country has always had an addiction to expansion, from the extermination of its indigenous peoples, to the continuing economic embargo of Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela. We are the empire, and most of the slaughter and mayhem committed since World War II has "Made in America" stamped on every landmine, smart bomb and drone involved in the bloodshed. But people like Dr. Matlin don't give up. Pete Seeger once told me, "You never know which grain of sand it will be. But one grain will eventually tip the balance." We were standing at a vigil against the invasion of Iraq, which happened anyway. The scale wasn't quite ready to tip. But perhaps one day it will, and our beautiful and multicolored country will learn how to take its place with the peaceful nations of the earth. 

Fascism in the US has been crafted by many elites

September 2

GUEST: Thom Hartmann, top rated progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host, and New York Times bestselling author of over 30 books, talks about his latest work, The Hidden History of American Healthcare, Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich.

The Hidden History of American Healthcare

In an era of Black Lives Matter, we can see the white supremacy basis for denying healthcare. Thom Hartmann spells it out for us in this very informative and readable history of America's shame, the denial of the human right for universal healthcare. 

Read how the early campaign for healthcare denial was based on reducing the number of Black people in our society. As an "inferior race," they couldn't be allowed to multiply. It was Nazi thinking well before the Third Reich was even conceived. And it was supported by Prudential Insurance, seeking another source of vast revenue. 

Read about how FDR and Churchill and met secretly to insure that after World War II, Europe would not succumb to fascism again. The answer that both men agreed upon was a social security plan and universal healthcare. Unless nations were able to make their citizen's lives better, the population would be vulnerable to fascism. Or so their thinking went. England adopted both social security and state supported healthcare when the war ended. But US corporations fanned the flames of white supremacy and universal healthcare never passed. 

In fact, fascism is never mentioned in the healthcare debate in our country. Nor is racism. But remember that our media is owned by the same class of people who have so effectively bought off our politicians. There is no end of elected officials on the take from our insurance and healthcare industry, from Reagan to Joe Lieberman and Obama. Fascism in the US has been crafted by many elites. And the death toll over the last century has been staggering. 

 

When will we ever learn?

 

August 26

GUEST: Dr. Jerry Lembcke, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the College of Holy Cross, researcher on media and myth-making, and co-author of the new book, Dissenting POWs, From Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison to America Today.

Monthly Review, An Independent Socialist Magazine

How does a country lose wars time and time again, squandering its national treasure and good name for nothing at all? The Vietnam War (called the American War by the country that freed itself) was particularly bloody, with up to 3 million Vietnamese killed. And then there was the loss of US lives, over 58,000 soldiers who came home in body bags. Looking back, the insanity of this campaign leaves any reasonable explanation of it in the dust of history. 

There were those who showed immense bravery and opposed this war from the start. Some were celebrities like Jane Fonda, who traveled to Hanoi to talk to US prisoners of war. She is in Dr. Lembcke's book, as are the captured soldiers who felt the same way she did about the war. In fact, the war was finally ended because the war mongers in power as well as the generals had stopped trusting their own troops. There was an unexpected rebellion from within the ranks, from soldiers who at last refused to be part of the carnage.

I did my part in a small way to frustrate the US war machine from within. It was self preservation first, and some GIs did so much more. But I was a terrible soldier from start to the finish, leaving the military at exactly the same rank as I had entered, that of an E-1. It had taken me several field grade Article 15s to get there. My colonel told me, if we were in Vietnam, he would simply shoot me with his pistol. I told him that if we were in Vietnam, he would be dead already. And he would have been; he was such a bastard. 

So Dr. Lembcke's book is not about me. His goal is to educate the American public about how the Vietnam War was resisted from within, even in the prisoner of war camps in Hanoi. We have had so many catastrophic military adventures since then. When will we ever learn?

Removing the US knee from Haiti's neck

August 19

GUEST: Robert Roth, activist in the Central America solidarity movement, organizer for various campaigns to free political prisoners in the US, and co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, talks about colonialism and how our media covers it up.

Haiti Action Committee

Like Jim Crow in the US, racism towards the country of Haiti has gone on for generations. And it has mostly been invisible to the majority of white Americans.

Part of that racism can't be understood unless one looks at the history of Haiti, and its overlord, the US Empire. The perpetual invasion, coups and private interventions are airbrushed out of our ever compliant media. Stories about Haiti are always like stories about our inner city ghettos. Blacks are perpetually described as shiftless, rebellious, and incapable of creating a workable society. 

What isn't referred to is the millions of dollars being taken from Blacks in the form of wage theft, resource robbery, and ethnic cleansing. Many US corporations and their grossly overpaid CEOs thrive on exploiting Blacks, both in the US and in Haiti.

Slavery itself, that most obvious of exploitive institutions, persisted for hundreds of years in the US. Jim Crow and Sundown Towns lasted well over a century. The imperial injustices visited on Haiti's Black population go way back as well. Haiti is really an oppressed colony of the US, and since colonialism ultimately depends on racism to survive, the treatment of this supposed independent nation has been particularly bloody. 

Take a look at the Haiti Action Committee above. Freedom for Haiti means removing the US knee from this island's neck. 

Obama's 11 million dollar mansion for all the homeless people

August 12

GUEST: Dr. Larry Wittner, early civil rights and anti-apartheid activist, author of several books, and Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany, talks about his new article in Counterpunch, "Nationalism on the Decline."

Nationalism on the Decline

We have had Dr. Larry Wittner on Activist Radio before. This time we talk about nationalism and about why it is suddenly in decline after seemingly peaking in the Trump era. Larry points to the failure of authoritarians to solve the major problems of the day from climate collapse to COVID. In essence, he outlines the futility of using race hatred and violence to solve national crises. Eventually people want relief rather than scapegoats. 

What we do need in the US is a conversation about how fascism arises in the first place. Obama can't be ignored, that huckster of hope and change we can believe in. The Democrats have been lying to the public for decades, promising our citizens so much, only to be rob them again and again. Trump's new way of thinking appealed to so many who have finally figured out this two party scam of the American public. 

Obama will have all his billionaire friends at his 6,892-square-foot Martha's Vineyard mansion this weekend. He has served them well, and like the grifter Clintons, he can now wallow in all his unjust rewards.

One of those rewards is fascism, a time when ordinary people decide that they will try anything to get rid of the current cleptocracy. I hope that instead of fascism, we try socialism next time. Perhaps one of the first things that the 99% will do is to offer Obama's 11 million dollar mansion to all the homeless people he helped create. 

A nation that continues year after year...

August 5

GUESTS: Yohana Beyene, organizer for Horn of Africa Pan-Africanists for Liberation and Solidarity, and Tunde Osazua, Coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace's U.S. Out of Africa Network, talk about the sordid history of US involvement in Somalia and Ethiopia. 

Horn of Africa - Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity

It's a powerful combination: US military aggression and the ignorance of the American people. The aggression part has been around since the end of the WW II, when government "leaders" decided to expand US hegemony to include the rest of the world. And that has been the underlying motivation of the CIA, created during the war to destroy fascist armies, but now transitioned to attack any country that strays from the US neoliberal agenda.

This has been especially damaging to emerging democracies in the Third World. In places like Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and many newly formed countries in Africa, Somehow, the US sees itself as above the law when it comes to subverting elected leaders or assassinating critics of the empire.

The CIA has made the transition from fighting the Nazi SS to becoming its United States equivalent. This agency should have been shut down after the war was won and our troops came home. Only our troops never came home from all the countries that our military liberated. And the CIA was vastly expanded so ensure that our bases multiplied and stayed forever. In that way, the US became the Third Reich, determined to last a thousand years, despite the yearnings of tens of millions to be free. 

If the US empire ever falls, we will be left with the baggage of its war crimes: tens of millions killed and dozens of governments overthrown. The US will have spent all its vast treasures on war, with little to show for it besides a burning planet and the hundreds of billionaires who talk of escaping to outer space. 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Room for all God's miscreants

The new Supreme Court has significantly expanded the rights of religions over the good of all citizens. For this court, the First Amendment "free exercise" clause includes just about anything a religious group chooses to do, no matter how detrimental that might be to the common good. Want to have hundreds at a wedding during a deadly pandemic? Now religious groups have the right to be super spreaders of COVID 19.

That is probably good news for the 40,000 fundamentalist Mormons whose practices of polygamy may now be protected. Other religions groups also have reason to be spiritually joyous. Take the Catholic Church, where the sexual abuse of children has become so commonplace that it is almost part of the religious experience. Thousands of priests have abused children for decades, and their actions have been protected right up to the Vatican. Why couldn't the church now claim that pedophilia is a part of its religious tradition, and as such is protected from criminal prosecution?

Zionists have reasons to celebrate as well. Israel is an important part of the Jewish and Evangelical Christian religions, so wouldn't the apartheid treatment of five million Palestinian now be protected by the Supreme Court? In fact shooting Palestinians, bulldozing their homes and walling them into fetid ghettos has been part of both religions for over a century. Why not celebrate it, along with bigamist Mormons and child molesting Catholics? The new religious freedoms enshrined by the Supreme Court have room for all God's miscreants.

Apple podcasts are now fixed

Searches of Apple Podcasts are now showing Activist Radio episodes. We had some down time, but working with Apple support fixed the issue. Thanks for being patient. If you have trouble finding or playing past episodes of Activist Radio, please let me know. My email is right on https://www.classwars.org

To the North is the empire

July 29

GUEST: Dr. Robin Broad, Professor of International Development at American University and co-author of the new book, The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed, talks about taking on giant mining companies and winning.

The Water Defenders - Beacon Press

Sometimes we lose good leftists because they don't think we can win. There is a huge gap between what people know, and what people dare to work for. Many Americans know about Central America, and about the centuries old will of its people to chose how their countries are run. But odds of having Third World peoples actually choosing their own government are mind-numbingly small. To the North is the empire, whose corporations make most of the decisions about domestic as well as foreign policy. 

“The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.” 

-- Simon Bolivar

The Water Defenders is a story about the community activists who defeated an international gold mining corporation, intent on destroying the drinking water of El Salvador. There are lessons to be learned, not only about how to organize, but also how to be a valuable ally to indigenous activists. And sometimes what works is so improbable that it would have been crossed off by all but the most intent and committed. 

Like in Palestine, I believe in working for human rights and human dignity even when things look hopeless. But this book urges us to try harder, because winning often demands more. Thanks to Robin and John for this valuable story of achieving justice. 

Killing grounds for unvaccinated American fools

Ignorance has its price when it comes to COVID. The areas of the country that steadfastly believe that masks are a government plot and that the virus is a hoax are becoming the killing grounds for unvaccinated American fools. How did such a large number of people decide to put themselves and their families at risk? And how does a responsible society try to undo all this damage? As Mark Twain lamented, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again."

But before we congratulate ourselves for not falling pray to poorly thought out conspiracy theories and cretin logic, let's look at our own assumptions. Sure, there are backward areas of our country where lots of people will end up dead. A tragedy, but not our problem.

These hotspots, however, also serve as breeding grounds for the virus, allowing it to continually evolve into something possibly more dangerous. Eventually even those who are vaccinated may fall pray to a newer, more deadly strain. It is no surprise that the Delta variant of the virus emerged from India, a country with a vast underclass that can't afford COVID protection. 

It's like global warming; we will all end up paying for the beliefs of the gullible and poorly informed who still think that our burning planet has nothing to do with oil. Perhaps that will be the reason why our species eventually fails, our inability to work together for the common good.

Fred

What we historically have suffered

July 22

GUEST: Dr. Alice Rothchild, physician, award winning filmmaker and author of several books on Palestine, talks about the intersection between her Jewish background, her career at Harvard Medical School, and her work for Palestinian rights.

We Are Not Numbers

We had a very interesting discussion about how a Jewish person in the US decides to become an advocate of Palestinian rights. It isn't easy. Even as a well respected gynecologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Alice faced daunting hurdles in bringing up the subject of medical rights for Arabs under Israeli occupation. 

It was such a compelling story that I didn't get to the organization that I had intended to talk about, We Are Not Numbers. Alice is on the board of directors for this group, and also serves as a mentor to its young writers. The Palestinian stories are quite fascinating, and provide a window of understanding for those who have never been to the West Bank or Gaza. Good storytelling helps us walk in someone else's shoes. In this case reading helps us understand life in an apartheid state. 

https://wearenotnumbers.org/home/Stories

I think the interview did explore the variety of way that Alice has devoted her life to the concept of "never again." As she describes it, "never again" belongs to the whole world and is not owned by one religion or ethnicity. The Holocaust is a teaching moment for the entire human race, and not an excuse to treat others the way Jews were treated in the Third Reich. 

"We will have to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive. And that in its creation and expansion we as Jews, have caused what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora."  Martin Buber 1949

 

Discovering the huge underclass of Black people in our society

July 15

GUEST: Dale Kretz, Assistant Professor African American History, Civil War and Reconstruction, Race and Slavery, Health and Medicine at Texas Tech University, talks about his recent article in Jacobin Magazine, "Juneteenth Is About Freedom."

Juneteenth Is About Freedom

Dale loves to talk about the historical facts about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. It is a complicated story of subjugation and resistance, and of racism and redemption. It is mostly a story that white America does not know.

We have our own story, of course. It has been carefully crafted to let us off the hook for slavery, possibly the most defining event in our nation's coming of age. For slavery doesn't have an aftermath. The effects of slavery are still very much with us, and the proof is the huge underclass of Black people in our society. 

Activist Radio was fortunately able to get Richard Rothstein as a guest last year. His book, The Color of Law - A forgotten History of How Our government Segregated America, informs white people of our government's historic mistreatment of Blacks in America. Rothstein's book is full of surprises, and destroys much of the mythology of white thought on race and equality. 

So maybe having white people researching and presenting the sordid history of Black subjugation in our country is not such a bad thing. For it is whites who don't know about our country's racism. And it is whites, who in their ignorance, often justify further repression. 

Salvation in a troubled time

July 8

GUEST: Jane Hirschmann, author, psychotherapist, and co-founder of Jews Say No, talks about her work as co-chair of the Freedom2Boycott NYS Coalition.

Jane Hirschmann in Truthout

It was a pleasure talking with Jane Hirschmann about her life and her devotion to human rights. "Never again" to Jane means that society should never again allow what was done to Jews during the Nazi era. That means putting human rights first, above religion or national identity. It is simply the belief that all people should be valued, not such a radical concept in a world now dependent on peace for its very survival. Or as Pete Seeger sang it, "We will love or we will parish." 

That's not to say that we should erase our identities. Quite the opposite. But we should try to cherish the humanity in all of us. We seem naturally able to do that with babies. We love them because we can identify with almost every one of their emotions, from delight to screaming rage. And loving a baby fills our bodies with that sweetest of all nectar, the feeling of loving another. 

The fight for human rights offers a similar gratification. Love of all humanity can be a salvation in a troubled time. People like Jane Hirschmann, can show us the way. 

A unique book. Thanks, Lillian, for letting people know about this fine work.

Thank you for all you do. Hope to have a chance to see you soon again.

I wonder if  you could advertise my book. I want it to be read more. I believe it is well worth reading as well as a fast read over the summer.

Survival and Conscience: From the Shadows of Nazi  Germany to the Jewish Boat to Gaza.

A prologue can be read on my website and it can be ordered from there.

Link:     lillianrosengarten.com

With love and hopes for peace.

Lillian

“Her memoir is a cry from the heart, a call for the centrality of human rights for all... her life-long search for justice and spiritual peace is both moving and inspiring.”       – ALICE ROTHCHILD, Author, On the Brink