Overlooking apartheid for all that cash

What can $32,488 buy? Maybe we should be asking our former House Representative Antonio Delgado that question. According to OpenSecrets.org, that is the amount the Israel Lobby paid to House Member Delgado in 2022.  

There are several problems with this "generosity." The Israel Lobby considers itself immune to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires the reporting of money coming from Israel, and an accounting of what that money is used for. More recently, the Lobby has been going into primaries, spending 24 million last year on pro-Israel candidates.

One of the Lobby's recent targets was Rep. Andy Levin, who told an MSNBC reporter that he was: “a really Jewish candidate whose positions on Israel represent the mainstream…I’m not just Jewish, I’m one of two former synagogue presidents in Congress, along with Sen. Jackie Rosen…But AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there’s no way to have a secure home for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights for the Palestinians.” The Israel Lobby spent big and defeated Levin in his primary.

The Lobby whitewashes one of the most brutal and persistent of the world's apartheid states. These bribes to members of Congress keep their mouths shut when it comes to Palestinian rights.     

Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader, was paid $440,400 by the Israel Lobby last year. Let's see how much apartheid he overlooks for all that cash.

Elites don't read poetry or think about their grandchildren

Joe Biden may well put us over the top. From the vast oil fields of Alaska now open for business, to the tanks, planes and warships making their way to Ukraine and Taiwan, these assaults on reason threaten the very survival of our species.

We know that the world must drastically reduce its use of fossil fuel, but some greedy billionaires are willing to risk it all for a few more zeros after their net worth. If that weren't enough, we are challenging the other two nuclear superpowers of the world to a game of chicken. It seems as if the empire has lost its head.

Must the people of our planet choose between burning up from climate change or freezing to death from a nuclear winter? "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice." Robert Frost seems to have foreseen our fate back in 1920.

So is it death by Joe Biden, or by that fascist crook who would rule us through ignorance. racism and greed? Isn't a democracy about having better choices? But of course, ours is a plutocracy, the rule of the very rich. Elites don't read poetry or think about their grandchildren. They accumulate money in some of the most despicable ways, by cheating workers, starving poor children, and perpetuating our present system of mutual and guaranteed military annihilation. Let the ruling class fly away in their rocket ships, so that the rest of us don't have to debase ourselves by wringing their necks.  

Free speech is often seen as an impediment to large cash gifts

March 16

GUESTS: Two members of Vassar College's Students for Justice in Palestine talk about some of the challenges of advocating for human rights on campus, especially when calling for a boycott of apartheid Israel.

The National Students for Justice in Palestine

Perhaps Students For Justice in Palestine will lead to an evolution in colleges and universities. At the present, many institutions of higher learning are as bought off as most members of our US Congress. There should be an OpenSecrets.org website to track the money that the Israel Lobby pours into higher ed.

Rich and influential alums, who support Israel despite its apartheid tendencies, serve as the watchdogs of political activism on various campuses. When things get out of hand (a Palestinian speaker is brought to campus or a professor publishes an anti Zionist book), the threatening calls begin. Sometimes these calls are made to alumni offices, and sometimes right to college presidents. And just to make sure that campuses are not open to pro-Palestinian ideas, the national media is sometimes brought in. For example, take a look at "Majoring in Anti-Semitism at Vassar," an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal. The two writers of this hit piece have long histories of supporting of Zionism, and condemning students or professors who would dare refer to Israel as an apartheid state. 

As a graduate of Fordham University, I am ashamed of my university's lack of moral conviction. When it comes to choosing between human rights for Palestinians and contributions from wealthy alumni, Fordham holds its nose and takes the cash. Like so many institutions of higher learning, Fordham is run like a neoliberal enterprise rather than a purveyor of knowledge. 

Let us celebrate the fact that we still have organizations like Students For Justice in Palestine. They stand for what is right in an often hostile college campus. They also expose the hypocrisy of how these institutions of higher education are run. Free speech is often seen as an impediment to large cash gifts and lucrative corporate sponsorships. Most US colleges actively support the seventy years of Palestinian oppression in the Holy Land.

Our dying planet

 

March 9

GUEST: Eric Epstein, environmental activist and former Chairman of the Three Mile Island Alert Inc., talks about how communities can document and protect themselves from nuclear waste.

Eric Epstein on the Three Mile Island 40th Anniversary

It doesn't take a scientist to expose the fraudulent nuclear power industry. It just takes guts and persistence. Eric Epstein has that in spades, and his story about the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is a lesson in what we all could do.

Eric reminds us that he is part of the community threatened by the plant, as well as its dangerous decommission. He has lived in the community for much of his life, and was a trusted spokesperson for a newly awakened population. 

But the question remains. How could the nuclear power industry risk so many people's lives? There was obviously money to be made, and Wall Street was all over this supposedly revolutionary way to make electricity. In fact, The New York Times was one of the industry's champions, rarely printing a story that questioned the industry's hype and exaggerations. The newspaper even removed a reporter covering Long Island, simply because she was pointing out some of the inconsistencies in what was being promised to the public. 

Far from learning from its mistakes, The New York Times is off again, promoting the nuclear fusion "breakthrough" that will supposedly free our world from its carbon catastrophe. Maybe all this false publicity is actually disinformation from Big Oil, which wants to burn carbon fuel until our dying planet breaths its last breath.     

Fracturing our society for their bottom line

 

March 2

GUEST: Arielle Reid, supervising attorney of the Decarceration Project at The Legal Aid Society, the largest and most influential social justice law firm in New York City, talks about fighting to keep what is left of bail reform.

Albany must keep bail reform

Arielle Reid pointed out the absolute fairness of bail reform. Originally a process that gave all the benefits to wealthy, white defendants, bail was refocused to allow even poor Blacks to get a fair shake in our criminal justice system. The assault on these simple reforms says more about our society than about protecting our neighborhoods from crime.

Racism is deeply ingrained in our society, making its manifestations almost invisible, at least to white people. Racism still exists because it is useful in suppressing worker rights, selling newspapers and winning elections. Why else would our media put out news articles about Walmart stores closing down in Black sections of our cities? 

Check out this Fox News story to get a sense how easy it is to create fear and hatred. I love how a gun products advertisement comes before the red meat of Blacks carrying stolen TVs from stores.   

https://youtu.be/gM1TU_pP-pM

So this is how African Americans are kept in the lowest caste in our supposedly free society. We allow merchants of hate like Fox News to openly cultivate racial discord in our body politic. We could start challenging news like this with some basic questions. Is theft really why some stores are closing down in Black areas? Or is that a convenient lie for whites looking to stoke up their rage? Could you go to a white area of town and  make a video of all white thieves stealing items? Of course you could. But Fox News thrives on stirring the pot of racial mistrust. It's viewers come for their daily dose of ignorance and hate. 

Let's fight back against the enemies of criminal justice reform. And let's call them by what they are, hatemongers willing to fracture our society for their bottom line. 

Surviving their next assault

February 23

GUEST: Craig Johnson, writer for the Jacobin and podcaster (Fifteen Minutes of Fascism), talks about the global rise of the radical right and its base in religion.

Lula Is Giving a Lesson in How to Respond

Craig Johnson issued a wake up call to the United States. He talked about Lula's response to the far right in Brazil. Those who tried to overthrow the government there were dealt with harshly, with most sent to jail after the first day. In the US, things moved much more slowly, with analysis and judgements still coming out two years later. Our country's response to the January 6 uprising has been a slow motion dance. 

In fact, Brazil and the US ended up in very different places after their far right rebellions. Brazil has been very effective in going after the people high up in their political system: the very rich and some of their corporations. Both coups had large networks of supporters, but the US criminal justice system left those elites alone.  

As a result, the American people may never find out why the National Guard wasn't sent in immediately. We may never discover why the Capital Police were so woefully under prepared. There are glimpses, course. Why didn't the FBI's warnings ever reach those in charge? It is no wonder that our country is awash in conspiracy theories. We never get a straight answer on who funded, planned and implemented the most dangerous right wing coup in our nation's history. 

These failures may lead us to our next right wing uprising. Countries that do nothing when their governments are invaded by armed and violent insurgents, are often doomed to repeat the experience. Both Mussolini and Hitler led armed rebellions before they finally destroyed their democracies. Mussolini was arrested for collecting arms to overthrow his government, and released the next day. Hitler was convicted of treason after his first coup, only to be released after nine months. 

The higher ups who planned our January 6th uprising are still walking the halls of power. Will our democracy survive their next assault?