The Democratic Party was never serious about woman's rights

July 21

Guest: Emma Kaplan, organizer for Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, member of NYC Revolution Club, and follower of Bob Avakian and the new communism, talks about the Democratic Party and cowardice in a Post-Roe world.

Democrats’ Cowardice and Complicity in the Post-Roe World

Emma put down some challenges for the women's movement. Tying abortion rights to the Supreme Court was a mistake from the very beginning. The result was a false sense of security that eventually withered the women's movement. And now, there is nothing left besides some self serving politicians eager to use abortion rights in their campaigns. 

It is not like the Democratic Party was ever serious about a woman's right to control her own body. Rich, white women are exempt from most of this anti-abortion madness. They can travel, and they have money to pay for the procedure. It would have taken an alliance between Black and white women to really make abortion a right for all.

Of course, that is the only way to assure women's rights in America. It must be an alliance that crosses the tracks to organize. It must be an alliance that is in the streets, blocking business as usual all over the country. It took women risking jail to get the right to vote. They stood outside the White House for months, and nothing President Wilson had to say was enough. And when they were beaten in prison, they didn't change their minds. 

Their treatment aroused the country, and Wilson backed down. That's what Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights is advocating. Sure, they love Bob Avakian, and he is a Communist. Isn't it time we freed ourselves from the 1950s?

Talking about peace when the nuclear winter is upon us

July 14

GUEST: Michael Knox, Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, Chair of the US Peace Memorial Foundation, and Editor of the US Peace Registry, talks about achieving peace through honoring our nation's peacemakers.

World Beyond War

The idea of peacemaking has not reached the major media in the US. The NYT fills its pages with Ukraine horror stories, praising the "resistance" and urging more weapons to be sent. There is nothing at all about the US role in overthrowing an elected leader in Ukraine, and steering that country to war rather then to compromise. 

The dangers of nuclear war are also forgotten in this rush towards a military solution. With the chances of nuclear confrontation growing larger every day, our newspaper of record has decided to eliminate such worries. Of course, the NYT has been for about every war the US has fought for the last seventy years. But this seems different, and the worry I have is that the NYT is merely reflecting a Pentagon, hell bent to take its chances against Russia and China. 

A hot war would boost the prospects for Democrats in the short term. But at what a monumental cost to our earth and to our species. We need a peacemaker, like JFK was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Someone who can free us from the collusion of weapons makers, the Pentagon and Congress. And will save talking about peace for when the nuclear winter is already upon us?

Nowhere to go in that nuclear winter

July 7

GUEST: Lawrence Wilkerson, retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, talks about NATO, US military bases and our current dangerous drift towards war. 

Overseas Bases

If one starts with the facts about NATO, and then looks at its expansion over the last several decades, there is only one answer for achieving peace with Russia. We have to stop threatening our archrival with NATO bases.

That would be the sensible thing to do. What isn't sensible is turning Eastern Europe into a NATO stronghold with missiles pointed at Moscow. In fact, that expansion of NATO is insane, given the fact that either the US or Russia could end life on earth with a single missile launching. Why risk our planet and our species on empire building?

But the facts are all there, and empire building is what our country is doing in Eastern Europe. In fact, the US is building its empire all over the world, and spending all our money on 800 or more military bases abroad. That brings us to the next fairly obviously conclusion, that US foreign policy is fashioned to make billions for our highly monopolized and hugely profitable war industry. Ukraine is being turned into a giant killing field, all to profit those who are billionaires already.

It is not a system run amok; it is system that is suicidal. Risking nuclear war again and again is like playing Russian roulette until one has a hole in the head. Billionaires, like the rest of us, will have nowhere to go in that nuclear winter they will have created. Our leaders are simply criminally insane. 

 

 

The greatest threat to world peace in our lifetime

June 30

GUEST: Sudip Bhattacharya, Political Education Committee of the NJ Democratic Socialists of America, and political writer for CounterPunch, New Politics, Reappropriate (Asian American LGBTQIA+ identity) and The Aerogram, talks about the US left and empire.

The U.S. Left and Empire

Growing up in a dysfunctional family has its advantages. Whatever happens to you as a child, you think it's normal. It is only later that mistreatment takes its toll, when you realize that other kids were not treated that way. 

My country is also a family of sorts. What American citizens thought was acceptable behavior was not condoned by the rest of the world. Our periodic wars seemed regrettable, and they certainly were dangerous to a young man fresh out of college. But they seemed familiar and even comfortable to us, even when we were being shipped out to war. 

Later, those who survived their military "service" would learn so much more. It was only the US that was bombing and invading other countries. It was only our very own homeland that was assassinating elected leaders in other countries and replacing them with the worst of tyrants. My "God Bless America" nation was making life on the planet a living hell, especially if you were poor, Black or from the Third World. 

PTSD, that catchall label that individualizes group suffering and guilt, is always there to comfort us with its blanket of normalcy. Perhaps that is how US veterans can come back from staring into the abyss of havoc. Screw normalcy; the US is a brutal empire, and has been that way since the end of World War II. It is now, and has always been the greatest threat to world peace in our lifetime. 

There is work to be done, and US veterans are the right people to do it. We should use our blind praise from the US public to tell civilians what the truth is. For the rise of universal truth telling can bring empires to their knees.