AOC and Shrestha are the vanguards

February 16

GUEST: Sarahana Shrestha, climate organizer, DSA candidate, and now member of the NY State Assembly as well as the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus, talks about taxing the wealthy for the public good.

Shrestha bill to raise $9 billion with tax on wealthy corporations

Assemblywoman Shrestha has what it takes to be a progressive force for change. Or maybe she doesn't have the monetary backing that would make her work impossible. She doesn't take corporate contributions. 

Wouldn't that be a different world? Our government is so corporatized that the last thing most government representatives care about is us. More than that, every governmental agency is packed with corporate stooges. Any breaks will be given to companies over workers, polluters over victims, and weapons makers over the general public that pleads for an end to our endless wars. Corporations are the ultimate in unfeeling power. The only thing they care about is making a profit. They would make hamburgers out of our grandparents if it was profitable. 

Are we worried about AI taking over the human race? Could computers eventually be taking orders from other machines, and might those machines eventually get sick of our pesky, aggressive little selves? Well, think again about Capitalism. The system is run by machines that continually balance which course of action creates the most profit. Then policy decisions are made by those same machines. Finally, humans are hired to put in place their often barbaric policies. That is why our society poisons you with chemicals, sends you up in poorly designed planes, or runs bomb trains through your towns. The artificial Intelligence of Capitalism is already here. 

Let's do our best to elect representatives who don't take orders from corporations. There is a brave new world coming that hearkens back to human intelligence. AOC and Shrestha are the vanguards.

Poking about in our history of slavery

February 9

GUEST: Penny Hess, long time activist, organizer and chairperson of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, talks about how whites can support the struggles for national liberation being waged by African and other oppressed peoples.

Burning Spear - African People's Socialist Party

Did you ever wonder why abolitionists always get a bad name? In the racist movie "Birth of a Nation," the KKK are the heroes and abolitionists the villains. And in the much more recent movie "Amistad" by Steven Spielberg, the abolitionists are almost as evil. 

In high school we learned that some abolitionists were just crazy (John Brown), and some were in it for the money. I remember a picture from one of my textbooks: the cartoon of a sneaky looking white man carrying a large "carpet" bag. We learned that abolitionists became carpetbaggers, who went to the South after the war and robbed white people.

Some of this racism has always been with us. As a young man, I remember digging ditches on my father's farm, along with a Black man whose name was "Silent Bill." He simply didn't talk and I never knew why. That afternoon after the sun went down, my father took us both to a local bar. I ordered a drink for Bill, and he acknowledged the beer with a smile and a one fingered salute. 

Beside me was a very old white women, nursing her drink. She smiled at me and then leaned over to tell me something. Pulling herself close to my ear, she whispered "N... lover."

Has the disease of enslavement always been part of our national psyche? We don't think about abolitionists as the heroes they really were. We don't revere the Freedom Riders who risks there lives to end segregation in the Deep South. We are suspicious of Blacks who talk about US imperialism in Africa and in other parts of the world. Can America be an empire without the racism that justifies exploitation and oppression? 

So Ron DeSantis doesn't want us poking about in our history of ethnic cleansing and slavery. But if we want a country that we all can be proud of, that's exactly what we should be doing. We shall overcome...

Collapse of our corrupted two party system

Political parties in the United States change over time. Sometimes the issues are so monumental that old parties die and new ones are born. The abolition of slavery is one example. The Whig Party disappeared before the Civil War and the Republican Party emerged.

We have overarching issues of the day in 2023. There is the enormous gap between the very rich and the rest of us that has plagued our nation for the last 40 years. Rich people buy politicians of both parties to make sure that our laws favor only the obscenely wealthy. Working people haven't had a break since Jimmy Carter.

Another issue is war. Both parties are enthusiastic supporters of our endless wars abroad. Both parties mouth the same platitudes about fighting for democracy, freedom and human rights, all the while shoveling enormous profits to the nation's major weapons makers. We have over 800 military bases around the world, and our soldiers and advisors are involved in wars in Africa, the Middle East, and now Eastern Europe. Both parties are fine with that, despite the fact that we are risking a nuclear annihilation.

A third issue is our unending support for tyrants and genocidal states. From Saudi Arabia to apartheid Israel, we reward the worst of human rights abuser, and both parties seem to like it that way, as long as the bribes keep coming. Most of our Congress is paid off by the Israel Lobby.

May the New Year bring the collapse of our corrupted two party system.

Fred Nagel

Paul Dunbar

During the Harlem Renaissance, literary critic James Johnson wrote that Paul Dunbar "was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form."

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
       We wear the mask! 

Sticks and stones

February 2

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 article in LA Progressive, "Imperialist Wars—and What Could Be Done About Them."

Imperialist Wars—and What Could Be Done About Them

The specifics of World War III are hard to imagine. And it's hard to even try. The end of everything is about as hard to think about as one's own death. Nuclear war is even more difficult because it is death by suicide. 

And yet, without the fear, what will motivate the world's populations to take to the streets and demand an end to nuclear weapons? Will it be a moral argument that convinces religious radicals that life on Earth is worth saving? Will it be an enlightened political leader who risks all for peace? Or will it be a political party that takes up the mantel of ending all wars?

King Leopold II above is an example of an emperor who thought nothing of killing up to 15 million in the Belgium Congo. He ran the colony as his private estate, using every imaginable combination of torture, slavery and execution to increase his profits. Military prowess and the profit motive often results in empires becoming killing machines. The history of our own country, from being the largest slave holding nation in the world, to dropping the first atomic bomb, surely cements America's place in this hall of shame.

When imperial empires confront one another, we call it a world war. Russia and the US have opposed each other's political and military influence since World War II. China is our most recent adversary, and all three countries are armed to the teeth with nuclear warheads. Are we looking at World War III?

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.     -Albert Einstein

Whether Albert Einstein actually said this is not the point. He spoke out strongly about the dangers of our nuclear age, as we the living must do now for life on Earth to survive.