Why no rage?

April 29

GUEST: Michael Mark Cohen, Associate Teaching Professor of American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, author of The Conspiracy of Capital: Law, Violence and American Popular Radicalism in the Age of Monopoly," and the creator of a website  about cartooning capitalism, talks about the role of political cartoons in exposing our kleptocracy.

Cartooning Capitalism
Michael Mark Cohen

There is an honesty in historical cartoons that is perhaps missing today. There was a time when Uncle Sam was characterized as a bloodthirsty killer or a vile seducer of Lady Liberty. The capitalist barons were hugely fat gluttons sitting at a table overflowing with food while hungry children looked on. Maybe our current media has no stomach for this type of blatant class warfare. 

And get how else to portray Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, who spends his time trying to cheat his hourly workers out of their pay and benefits? Bezos has escaped from a Dickinson novel to plague the twenty first century. He is the personification of gluttony and avarice; why can't our media portray him this way?

So the in-your-face cartoons of the Gilded Age have an appeal in our current era of class blindness. We don't demonize the filthy rich, no matter how many children are hungry as a result of their plundering of the working people. Our government officials are often proverbial pigs at the trough, grunting and pushing for those corporate dollars. Why no cartoons showing their detestable appetite for plundering the poor?

Perhaps we are blind to this tyranny of the wealthy, much the same way as we are blind to racism while living in a society drowning in it. We have billionaires who play at sending rockets to the moon while over fifty percent of Americans have no savings at all. Who are one paycheck away from disaster. Why no rage?  

 

When the empire "cares" for other countries

April 22

GUEST: Nick Alexandrov, teacher, activist and author of articles in Counerpunch Magazine, Asia Times, History News Network, Pakistan Today, Truthout and CovertAction Magazine, talks about the recent history of Somalia with a focus on US bombings and invasions.

Covert Action Magazine

Nick and I explored the history of Somalia, with a focus on US invasions, bombings and drone assassinations. Not a pretty picture, and certainly not one presented to the American public by its media.

There are the genocidal policies of General Barre in the 1980s, all supported by the CIA. Then came the US invasion of 25,000 troops. After that there were catastrophic US special forces invasion that were always deadly when the "collateral damage" was measured. One such military adventure turned bloody for US troops as well, killing 18 soldiers and wounding hundreds of civilians. The made for Pentagon propaganda movie "Black Hawk Down" presents the empire's point of view quite well. How could those Africans attack US special forces that were sent in to help the Somali people. Those barbarians!

Pictures of the more recent US drone strikes tall another story of suffering and devastation. We talked about the oil, which is probably why the US cares about Somalia at all. But when the empire "cares" for another country, there is always carnage, especially when that country is in the Third World and its people are brown. 

 

Wrong in South Africa, Wrong in Palestine

April 15

GUEST: Felice Gelman, human rights activist with Middle East Crisis Response, JVP - Hudson Valley, and board member of the US Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, talks the Freedom2Boycott NYS Coalition, and the fight to maintain freedom of speech when it comes to boycotting apartheid Israel.

BDS List - Facebook

Every year there is a worry that Albany will pass a law making boycotting Israel an illegal act. As if refusing to buy a product made in an illegal settlement is somehow immoral or antisemitic. 

The arguments against a law like this are many. The law would be blatantly unconstitutional since it would destroy protections citizens have for freedom of speech. The law would also go against two centuries of boycotts in the United States, beginning with the boycott of English tea before the Revolutionary War. 

But just because a law is unconstitutional doesn't mean that it will never be passed. The "Red Scare" was another assault on freedom of speech, and it destroyed people's lives for a decade. It started with the big lie that Communists had taken over our government and had to be exposed and fired from their jobs. Years later these scare tactics look amateurish and even foolish. Yet the Red Scare was able to overthrow our freedom of speech, something that no country has been able to do since our nation was created.

Charges of "antisemitism" can be seen as the new McCarthyism. With a deft slight of hand, the state of Israel has wrapped itself in the Holocaust and proclaimed that is immune to all criticism because of the suffering of the Jewish people. Meanwhile, this same nation in the Middle East treats its Arab population very much like the Third Reich treated the Jews. 

The irony is that the extermination of six million Jews is being used to justify the horrendous treatment of millions of Palestinians. It is like Nazi racism is alive and well in Israel, and the US is its single largest supporter. 

Dozens of groups throughout New York State have come out to support a citizen's right to boycott Israel. Many of these groups simply support the US Constitution, and don't want another country defining the limits to our freedom of speech. But many see boycotting as America's moral issue. Our country did very little to stop the Nazi Holocaust. Now our country seems to be supporting the very same type of nationalist racism and violence in the Holy Land. Never again!

 

As dangerous to white nationalists in the US

April 8

GUEST: Nada El-Eryan, board member for the DC Palestinian Film & Arts Festival and Managing Director of Eyewitness Palestine, a nonprofit that provides educational tours of the Holy Land, talks about Palestinian feminism and the emerging concept of human rights for all people.

Eyewitness Palestine: Journeys for Justice 

Nada does virtual tours of the West Bank now, using the ubiquitous Zoom platform. I wonder if this method will bring these visits to the occupied territory open to many more people. 

And that would be a very good thing because the training one gets with Eyewitness is so important to understanding what Nada calls the "collective" campaign for human rights. Progressives can't be for human rights in one nation or geographical area and against human rights for another. The best known example of that would be PEP (progressive except for Palestine). Some Americans are all for Black liberation from racism and violence, but then find themselves making excuses for Israel's apartheid system of oppression in the Holy Land.

Eyewitness isn't an "in your face" type of organization. It reminds me of what I have read about the early Freedom Riders in the South. They weren't radicals, but their ideas were, that all people deserve fairness and justice. And that they shouldn't be kept off busses for the color of their skin. 

There is a moral force in that stance that is as dangerous to white Christian nationalists in the US as it is to Jewish nationalists in the Holy Land. This concept separates what is best in the human experience from what is worst. There is no contest. 

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  MLK

Change when most leaders are on the take

April 1

GUEST: Rebecca Bailin, activist, community organizer and Campaign Manager for the Invest In Our New York Campaign, talks about raising billions for education, jobs, housing and healthcare by taxing the very richest of New Yorkers. 

Pass the Invest in Our New York Act

Sometimes a popular movement does result in change. Not because someone voted for a candidate who promises new things. Obama, that consummate faker of progressive values, set progressives back a generation and even paved the way for Trump. No, I mean when enough people want something and our media starts to report their demands. When there is enough momentum for an issue, all bets are off. 

Taxing the rich has been popular for decades, of course. It is not a new idea. But now it is talked about throughout our society, and not just at an Occupy meeting. The Occupy Movement articulated what most American already knew. So did Burnie's two campaigns. Taxing the rich became an idea that was not crazy or even Socialist. It just came down to basic fairness; half the country was broke and the billionaires lived in palaces counting their money. We the people finally woke up.

Now it is so satisfying to see Governor Cuomo, another charlatan who talks about equality while protecting the filthy rich, have to back down and maybe tax Wall Street titans five cents for each stock trade. There are activists like Rebecca Bailin who have made these changes possible. They have done the organizing and heavy lifting to give the majority of New Yorkers their own voice when it comes to income distribution in a free society. 

These changes won't go far enough. We will have to fight this battle another day. But I hope that we remember that popular movements can make change despite the fact that so many of our elected leaders are simply on the take. 

 

Free from the propaganda of empire

March 25

GUEST: Alex Lubin, Penn State professor of African American studies and former Director of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut, talks about his latest book, The Never Ending War on Terror.

Penn State African American Studies

The more we learn, the more skeptical we become. That may be true for many belief system, but when it comes to US foreign policy, one's perceptions can change dramatically. 

I had been drafted in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. Or was that during the "American War" as the conflict is referred to in Vietnam? All our our major media during that time were for the war, including The New York Times. Supposedly, we were being sent to stop the Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. But our government had lied about the Communist threat in the US during the McCarthy Era. I remember wondering if I was being lied to again. 

My year at a military base in Korea changed my outlook. We used to call the 40 year old Korean man who washed our cloths "boy" rather than by his actual name. We treated the Korean women worse. Slowly, I learned what my place was in an occupied country. I was simply the replacement for the Japanese soldiers who had occupied Korea for decades. The whole town was set up that way. We called the prostitutes by the same name that the Japanese had called them. The contracts were the same too, whether is was a one nights stand or for the month. 

The US occupation of the Third World is mostly all like this. We aren't there for anyone's freedom, and most of the countries don't even have a working democracy. In fact, democracy was mostly thwarted in South Korea by the CIA, backed up by the US military. 

Professor Lubin can take us much further in understanding the role of the US military machine in the rest of the world. Reading the facts about colonialism frees one's mind to consider the full weight of our country's empire building. I was especially interested in the links between Black Lives Matter and Western colonization in Africa. 

To understand our role in this oppression, we must open our minds to how the world really works. The truth will set us free from the propaganda of empire.

 

Ridding ourselves of hypocrisy

March 18

GUEST: Jen Marlowe, award-winning author, documentary filmmaker and playwright, talks about her most recent film, "There Is a Field," and how Black actors help audiences understand the links between Black Lives Matter and Palestinian liberation.

Director’s Statement

Jen came to Vassar with her play several years ago. The performance was scheduled to build support for a vote by the student body on boycotting Israeli products. It was a cold and snowy night, but the actors and the audience came together in our understanding of why Palestinian rights are so important. 

The vote came several weeks later. The president of the college warned students that she would take control of all spending on student activities if the vote was for boycotting. The story going around was that some very influential alums had pressured her into making these crude threats. It was shameful to see how a prestigious college, known for its "liberal" campus environment, could stoop so low. The boycott initiative lost by a very few votes. 

So I have alway linked the play to outing the establishment. Colleges are run for money in the US, and not for intellectual growth of students. Countries like the US that protect and condone apartheid in the Holy Land are run for power and greed, and not for liberty or justice. Art has this transforming power to help us rethink false narratives, and rid ourselves of hypocrisy. That's why the play and now the movie are so powerful.