Classwars Blog: February 2024

GUEST: Rahul Kumar, high school activist and founder of Poughkeepsie 4 Palestine, talks about how his generation is organizing local rallies and public speak outs against the genocide in Gaza, and the warmongering of our political elites.

Rally in Poughkeepsie, NY

Marxist intellectual and historian Vijay Prashad came to Vassar College yesterday, the guest of the college's Students for Justice in Palestine. Before we started, the packed house gave a hand to Rahul in the audience, thanking him for his community work in pushing our House representative Pat Ryan to at least say the world "ceasefire."

It was a moment of inter generational connection. There were members of Women in Black - New Paltz, Mideast Crisis https://mideastcrisis.org/ and Jewish Voice for Peace, many in their 70s and 80s. There were many Vassar students, some faculty, and then there was Rahul who is 14 years old.

But you don't have to be of a certain age to see what our country has become: the number one bully of the world. We love "human rights" and "democracy," while butchering and starving children in Gaza. You would think that this gross hypocrisy would eventually kill us, and it will. Our "sweet land of liberty" will drag the whole world down with some deadly combination of nuclear war, global warming catastrophe, and AI. Our planet's Armageddon will have a familiar phrase burned into its remains: "Made in America."

How we might some day break free

February 8

GUEST: Michael Zweig, author of the newly published book, Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism, talks about the uprisings against the wealthy elites who run our state.

Class, Race, and Gender

Michael's new book takes you through the labyrinth of hidden passions and motivations in our society. They are hidden because they are so powerful, and potentially so destructive to our supposedly democratic society. Have you ever doubted the mainstream narrative of why we give tax breaks to the billionaires, or why we keep going to war? Michael Zweig explains what's missing.

Once I decided to read Michael's new book, I found it quite compelling. Soon it became what I did when I had 15 minutes to spare. Of course class has always been interesting to me. ClassWars.org is built around what Americans don't know about their own society. Would we be better citizens of Mother Earth if we were more self aware? And would a world run by the very rich and their bloated corporations ever allow such subversive notions?

Activist Radio is just a tiny thorn in the bland facade of corporate America. A tiny annoyance to our rulers, who steal most of our money and send our young off to endless wars. Why waste your time with all these AI generated conspiracy theories? Why spin your wheels on fantasy? Class, Race and Gender explains how we became enslaved, and how we might some day break free.

Write my name on my leg, Mama

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Use the black permanent marker
with the ink that doesn’t bleed
if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt
if it’s exposed to heat

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Make the lines thick and clear
Add your special flourishes
so I can take comfort in seeing
my mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep

Write my name on my leg, Mama
and on the legs of my sisters and brothers
This way we will belong together
This way we will be known
as your children

Write my name on my leg, Mama
and please write your name
and Baba’s name on your legs, too
so we will be remembered
as a family

Write my name on my leg, Mama
Don’t add any numbers
like when I was born or the address of our home
I don’t want the world to list me as a number
I have a name and I am not a number

Write my name on my leg, Mama
When the bomb hits our house
When the walls crush our skulls and bones
our legs will tell our story, how
there was nowhere for us to run

By zeina azzam

Genocide is just another acceptable tactic

We often think of our elected officials as ordinary people, caught up in the spirit of public service. They certainly try to be like the rest of us, with families and favorite teams to cheer for. It's true, they are often a bit more patriotic than the average citizen. Not so carried away, however, as to ever fight America's endless wars in the Third World.

But when the Senate voted today for more aid to Israel, my confidence in our elected leaders faltered. We can see it on every computer screen, the genocide of 2 million at the hands of a rabid and racist Israeli army. Netanyahu's Israel behaves like the Third Reich, and our elected leaders behave like this is what normal people do.

But normal people want a ceasefire, not another shipment of bombs and missiles to Israel. Normal people are horrified at the prospect of tens of thousands of children being starved to death. Not our political leaders, however. Now that Israel has two million Palestinian civilians hopelessly crowded into southern Gaza, the "final solution" can begin. And to that rarified world of the US Senate, that's just fine.

The startling amorality of our ruling class, however, is a teaching moment. Our government is not a democracy, and its two party system is nothing more than a sham. The system is so monstrous that we have to take notice. Our late American empire is a killing machine, and genocide is just another acceptable tactic.

Fred Nagel

We are not monsters

February 1

GUEST: Shahd, young Palestinian activist and political writer living with her family in Gaza, is now missing and perhaps one of the tens of thousands murdered by the Israeli state.

UPDATE: Shahd is still alive and reporting on Gaza!

We Are Not Numbers

The long walk to Palestine’s freedom

I was so relieved to learn that Shahd has survived the Israeli genocide. She is now in the south of Gaza, but still writing about the trauma being endured by her people. The interview I did with her about a year ago is still so moving; I am glad I got a chance to air it again.

Shahd pushes us to consider individuals and not the of thousands of body bags being created. Thinking about how our country is enabling this genocide makes you hate our murderous leaders, who care so little when their demented foreign policy requires the killing of Palestinian 12,000 children. Has our ruling class no morality at all? And has our experiment in democracy finally come to an end? For a nation that provides bombs and planes to expedite a genocide, could not be a government of the people, by the people, or for the people. We are not monsters, like the two party, pro war leaders who rule us.

UPDATE: Shahd will be interviewed live from Gaza this Thursday! Gaza Unfiltered: Voices from the Ground. You can register through this link: https://natakallam.com/gaza-unfiltered-voices-from-the-ground/

Charnel grounds in its wake

January 25

GUEST: Raz, Jordanian/ Palestinian researcher and artist, talks about being part of the diaspora, and how views about the US and its commitment to human rights are changing in light of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Urge ICJ to invite journalists covering the war in Gaza

Raz and her family escaped the very worst periods of Israeli apartheid. But the oppression lives with her, especially when she considers the role of her new country in supporting Israel's human rights abuses. How can a country that talks endlessly about human rights be a willing participant in the Gaza genocide? Does the United States have a split personality? One side extols freedom and the other widespread butchery?

Perhaps the rulers of our supposedly democratic state are just liars. Their lives revolve around corporate profits and the expansion of the American Empire. Palestinians are just another people to be sacrificed to their gods of greed and war. For the empire leaves nothing but charnel grounds in its wake.

The First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099

White, Christian countries in the West are showing the rest of the world how real charity works. When two million Muslims in Gaza face starvation, these good Christens decide to cut off all food aid to the open air prison. These same countries don't plan to stop selling bombs and rockets to Israel, the perpetrator of this genocide. God no, goodwill has its limits.

It's nothing personal. Israel claims that some aid workers were helping Hamas. These good Christian countries don't need any proof of that. Why would a country committing genocide lie to them?

Maybe these countries have forgotten what Jesus taught: Love, Generosity, and Peace. "The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor." (Proverbs 22:9). It could be that this proverb doesn't apply to Muslim children who are starving. Perhaps they are a shade too brown for lily white tastes.

To be truthful, these white, Christian countries have spread butchery far and wide in the Third World for the last thousand years. Their sordid "colonies" have killed millions, and sold millions more into slavery. It seams that their actual religion is the exact opposite of what their God has supposedly told them. Maybe Jesus on the cross is not a promise of salvation, but a warning to the rest of the world of the genocides yet to come.

The First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099 and then massacred most of its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants. Onward Christian soldiers!

Fred Nagel

Never again, to any people!

The current images coming from the genocide of the Palestinian people are hard to take. For starvation leaves such telltale signs. Often groups of children carry empty pots, looking for anything to put in them. They are much too thin, and sometimes their legs and stomach are bloated. They are listless and confused. Towards the end, they don't even cry.

But before you turn away in horror, consider that the people running our government are orchestrating this starvation directed at millions of indigenous people. The Palestinians happen to live in the country that England and the US have given to the Zionists. Its nothing personal, of course. Israel is our military assassin, our paid killer in the oil rich Middle East. The deal is Israel will do our bidding as long as we look the other way as it creates a theocracy bathed in Arab blood.

The genocide is so obvious that Representatives like Pat Ryan and Senators like Chuck Schumer know that they have to keep talking about Israel's right to "protect itself." Fat with Israel Lobby money, they are more than willing to starve Palestinian children if that's what it takes.

For this genocide is the Holocaust of our lifetime, although some of the roles have changed. The victims of the first Holocaust are the killers this time around. The proud nation that was so instrumental in vanquishing the Nazis, now supplies and provides cover for the murderous war criminals.

We must come together to insist: Never again, to any people!

Fred Nagel

Vote for a socialist

January 18

GUEST: Peter Dolack, writer for the Systemic Disorder Blog and author of "It's Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment" talks about COP28 and how Big Oil will bring us all down.

Thanks for all the hamburgers

COP 28 was a joke. Funded by the countries that are the biggest oil producers, the pageantry was much ado about nothing. So why bother reporting on something that is a world wide fraud?

Peter unhesitatingly describes the end result of such a fraud. The world will collapse, with millions of people as refugees. Global warming will eventually turn every country into a tinderbox. Farmland will disappear, as will housing. People will starve.

All this is clear to our leaders, who will do nothing to change the system. They will all have their pictures taken at the conference, and hurry home for their next Big Oil check. It's a thoroughly corrupt system of the big corporations edging out the needs of people.

Do we call it Capitalism? Or is it "savage" Capitalism, as described by the Pope. At the end, there will no public good, because there will be no public. Vote for a socialist next time, if we are going to have any chance at all.