Why would the empire stop at our shores?

May 26

GUEST: Jim Lafferty, Executive Director Emeritus of the National Lawyers Guild in LA, member of the Governing Board of the Southern California ACLU, and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on LA’s Pacifica Radio station, KPFK, talks about the continuing shame of the US in Guantanamo. 

The continuing shame of Guantánamo

The words "HONOR BOUND" are inscribed on the cement pillars guarding the US prison at Guantanamo, Cuba.

"Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen are much more than that. Yes, they are highly trained in their craft, but they also are imbued with core values and a duty under the law to conduct war professionally, ethically, and to the maximum extent possible, humanely." - Captain Thomas R. Beall

This is one of those Orwellian moments when the exact opposite is true. We have Captain Beall, writing for the US Navel Institute, extolling the ethics and humanity of Guantanamo. It is more than just a lie. It is the complete reversal of what is actually happening behind those barbed wire walls.

Our country excels in such irony. Most Americans believe that our many wars since WW II were fought for the right reasons. Yet, almost all of the "reasons" have turned out to be fabrications. We killed three million Vietnamese trying to "bring democracy" to its people. We have murdered millions more in Iraq and Afghanistan, all based on crude lies about "weapons of mass destruction," and retribution for 9/11. We have a CIA that kills people with impunity around the world, and doesn't stop because the victims are US citizens. Yet the citizenry of our country still believe that our all encompassing US military empire somehow cares about justice.

So it shouldn't be surprising that the United Staters set up a prison in a foreign country so that we could torture and kill hundreds of Muslims without due process or any semblance of human rights. We didn't know what they had done when we brought them in, some as young as 13 years old. We had no evidence and no proof. Proof of what you may ask; what crimes were committed? No one in authority knew or cared.

Habeas corpus ("show me the body" in Latin) is the Constitutional right for personal freedom unless there is some proof of wrongdoing. A Supreme Court ruling in 2006 (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) found that holding prisoners at Guantanamo without charges was invalid. Moreover, the court held that these detentions violated the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of detainees. Congress, in all its wisdom, then passed the Military Commissions Act later that year, essentially overriding our Constitution as well as international laws. Another step in the "Honor Bound" treatment of Muslim prisoners.

So the country that continually talks about morality and human rights, punished over 779 men over the course of twenty years. And not only punished them, but tortured them as well. Locked them in boxes, temporarily drowned them, and anally raped them. Yes, all this behavior seems to be part of the "core values" so important to the citizens of the empire.

Perhaps shooting children in schools is part of our great American values as well. We certainly let the gun manufactures control the debate with their money and their right wing agenda. We sit back, wring our hands and cry. But the empire has no morality. What is done to our children is what we have done to children in so many parts of the world. Why would the empire stop at our shores?

Resistance is what peoples do

May 19

GUEST: Rachel Meeropol, Senior Staff Attorney and Associate Director of Legal Training and Education at the Center for Constitutional Rights, talks about winning justice for the indigenous Lenape people. 

Lenape Nation and the Center for Constitutional Rights

It must be so rewarding to win justice for indigenous peoples. And this case involved the most privileged of white groups, the Ramapo Hunt & Polo Club homeowners. They wanted to end centuries of Lenape religious gatherings because they needed a spot play polo. How that reeks of monied entitlement.

Lawyers don't always win, of course. There are so many injustices involved in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, that most will never be identified, much less remedied. But for many people working for justice and human rights, resistance is both a civic and a personal duty. And sometimes the odds are staggering. Take the decades of support for Israel in the US, that comes from Jewish and right wing Christian groups as well as neoliberal billionaires in high places. Most activists don't fight because victory is around the corner. 

Recently, I helped organize a Zoom panel featuring  Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity, and Sleydo, First Nation spokesperson for a resistance encampment of the  Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia. Despite their efforts being foiled by short term roadblocks, their long term goals are still there. As Mazin put it, resistance is what peoples do when being pushed out of their homelands. 

So whether we are learning about Rachel Meeropol, or listening to Mazin and Sleydo, the eventual goals are enough for now. And as Mazin reminds us, some peoples eventually do gain their freedom.

Why don't you listen to their words?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX9UN7h7fc8

Guns and swords and uniforms were scattered on the ground

May 12

GUEST: Cora Weiss, President of The Hague Appeal for Peace and long time activist for disarmament, women's liberation, and civil rights, talks about her leadership roles in our nation's movements for disarmament and international peace. 

About Cora Weiss

Peace Action invite to 40th anniversary of NYC million person march (May 19) 

I was very happy to have Cora Weiss on Activist Radio. We talked about that glorious day 40 years ago, when the world seemed about to turn against militarism and mutual destruction.

And for a time our leaders paid attention. Even Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union to cut back nuclear weapons. It was late in his presidency, and perhaps he had forgotten all the ways to talk about peace while preparing for war. It was a nasty surprise for his aids, who were horrified at what he was doing in Reykjavik, Iceland. 

If it weren't for space weaponry that Reagan held so dear, why both leaders might have given up nuclear weapons all together. 

And the people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round  
And guns and swords and uniforms  
Were scattered on the ground   

 

Last night I had the strangest dream  

I ever dreamed before  

I dreamed the world had all agreed  

To put an end to war

How to begin putting pressure on our leaders to wage peace instead of war? Well, first we have to organize a resistance by getting rid of warmongers like Biden and Blinken. In fact, it is time to ditch both parties and build a peace movement that has clout. In the process, we might just reclaim our democracy. 

The empire has no cloths

May 5

GUEST: Mary Anne Mercer, former director for prevention of HIV/AIDS in Africa University, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, and contributing writer for Huffpost, talks about the dangerous famine in Yemen and what Western nations must do now to avert a catastrophe.

Mary Anne Mercer - Contributor Huffpost

Yemen and Palestine are the two most oppressed peoples in the world. Bomb fragments tell the real story. They are always made in the USA!

Not only that, they are paid for by the billions the US gives to Saudi Arabia and Israel each year. The famine and slaughter can easily be traced back to a system that puts profits above any sense of morality. Perhaps that that what capitalism is best at: separating morality from our business plans. People just can't be considered if the elites want to turn their millions into billions. 

All this takes some covering up. But our corporate media is so very good at doing that. We get endless "People Magazine" stories about the personalities of our day. Our news is rife with soap opera plots, and what the stars use to keep thin. The suffering of children in Yemen and Palestine just never makes it into the nation's living room. It's simply bad for advertising. 

So aid workers like Mary Anne Mercer are the truth tellers for our time of empire. They are never given much print space. But once one notices the suffering of children, there is a chance that the rest of the empire's propaganda can be peeled back. The empire has no cloths; all we have to do is open our eyes.  
 

Spiritual doom

April 28

GUEST: Ben Burgis, author, Jacobin columnist, and philosophy professor at Morehouse College, talks about his recent article "Left-Wing Opponents of War Aren’t Isolationists."

No, Left-Wing Opponents of War Aren’t Isolationists

It seems like war talk is all we hear on our media. No one seems to question the assumption that Russia is trying to take over the world, and that Putin is the most dangerous man on the planet. 

What isn't said is probably the most important. The Pentagon has had a long term goal of backing Russia into a corner and eliminating one of the few remaining countries not under the thumb of the American Empire. That's what Obama's "pivot to Asia" was all about. It was a military pivot to undermine our strongest rival in the Far East.

Since world dominance has been the strategy for so many decades, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are only following Pentagon orders. But they are doing it with a righteous abandon, like everyone else in power. Even Alan Chartock, that sniveling voice of liberal America on NPR, is finding his balls by talking tough about Putin. It is a bad sign. A very bad sign.

Pushing Russia towards war with the US is gambling with the future of our species, the same gamble that burning more fossil fuels will eventually be. As the richest nation on Earth, with the strongest military, the US will be the one to push us over the line. Will this digital message to the future ever be read by what comes after? And will that being reading this message ever understand how we did this to ourselves, through our greed and militarism?

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