We get to hold all the guns and the money

November 11

GUEST: David Vine, professor of political anthropology at American University, and author of the newly published The United States of War, talks about the world history of America's endless conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. 

The United States of War

Dr. David Vine uses meticulous research to bring his readers out of their coma of US exceptionalism. It is a difficult transition for most.

As a draftee in 1967, I was against the Vietnam war, but I thought it was an aberration rather than a blueprint for how my country interacted with the rest of the world. I held the line at the Second World War. I know that we invaded Mexico in the 1800s, and Hawaii, Cuba and the Philippines as well. I knew about the history of Native Americans too, and felt the shame of Slavery and Jim Crow. But it seemed to me that my country had lost its way after defeating Germany and Japan, becoming the empire that was there for the taking.

Since then I have read  Zinn's People's History, as well as Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. But as far back as I was willing to go was the turn of the last century. With the help of Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow, I admitted that the American Empire began a good deal earlier than I had previously thought. 

My life experiences also changed by perspective. I spent a year in Korea in the US Army, and I recommend that experience to anyone who wants a clearer picture of how imperial occupation works. You get to hold all the guns and the money, while pitifully poor supplicants get to trade their dignity or their sisters for a little bit of your power and wealth. 

Traveling in Central America during the 1980s, I got a chance to see what imperialism does to native peoples. We were destroying Nicaragua so that their socialist revolution would not be copied by the rest of Central America. We did it by hiring the Contras, brutal killers who followed the empire's directives. El Salvador had its own killing fields, all paid for and armed by that enemy of freedom, my very own country. So maybe I didn't need books to understand what living in the belly of the beast was like.

Knowledge is a first step. Without it there can't be activism. If we want to change our country we must understand how it became a military behemoth, and a threat in this nuclear age to all of humankind.   

Workers will have a chance when the empire falls

November 4

GUEST: Pete Dolack, activist, writer, poet and author of the book It's Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment, talks about US workers' rights and how badly employees are treated in the land of the free.

It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment

It's what American workers don't know that is most troubling. In short, workers in other developed countries have universal healthcare, paid leave, childcare, a 40 hour week and paid vacations. Workers here have none of these, and the US media works hard to keep them in the dark. 

Instead of benefits, workers in the US get right wing patriotism, militarism and racism. There is really no political party that offers anything else. The Democrats, bloated by millions from the very rich and the corporations, can talk about economic justice, but it is mostly show. We must remember that Barak Obama was elected by a wave of working people who were hoping for something more. Productivity was way up, but salaries and benefits lagged way behind what the rest of the developed world was getting. Early in his administration, he controlled both houses, yet decided to ignore a bill he promised to fight for, the Employee Free Choice Act. And the ever compliant media buried the story.

The way to support workers' rights is probably through education. Other countries have finally overthrown their two party systems by starting a third party devoted to labor. Most of the Scandinavian countries have gone this route, and even waiters there are paid a wage that supports their families. It can be done here, but it would mean overcoming the two party system, forming a separate labor media, and ending this country's dependence on endless wars. In short, workers will have a chance when the empire falls. Until then, working people will continue to suffer at the hands of the military industrial kleptocracy. 

 

Let slip the dogs of war

 

October 28

GUEST: Brian Willson, Viet Nam veteran, lawyer, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, and author of several books including Blood on the Tracks, the story of how he was severely injured while protesting US weapons shipments to Central America, talks at a recent Alliance for Global Justice panel entitled "US Exceptionalism: Its Story in Nicaragua and Beyond."

S. Brian Willson blog
NicaNotes on Nicaragua

Activist Radio had Brian Willson on way back in September, 2012. 

Guest: Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran and long time peace activist, talks about Bo Boudart's new documentary "Paying the Price for Peace," which is based on Brian's life.

As a Vietnam Era veteran, and a supporter of the Nicaraguan revolution during the 1980s, I have always admired Brian for his lifetime of antiwar organizing. The panel discussion I aired this time was just too good to pass up. Here is a person who was in the Vietnam War. He was also in Nicaragua during the CIA Contra Wars. He has seen and felt it first hand. He didn't lose his legs in some Vietnamese attack, but was purposely run over by a train full of munitions bound for Latin America. 

This stops a trainload of bullets,

Destined for Central American hearts.

Now there is blood on the heavy wheels,

And a man gives his legs for peace.

Oh shame for those who stand upright,

And pay for murders out of sight.

I will get around sometime to sending Brian this poem I wrote for him. I also plan to ask him to be on the program again. The Democrats are once again making war noises towards peaceful nations in this hemisphere. Twenty years of war, and people like Secretary of State Blinken will never learn. In fact, it is the ruling class in these United States that perpetually risk a world war just so the Military Industrial Complex can get even richer. For bloodshed is the most profitable business model the US has, and there is no end in sight of Black and brown victims for our war machine.

Or as Shakespeare describes the insanity of empire in Julius Caesar:

"Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war." 

The rainbow sign

October 21

GUEST: Edgar Villanueva, award winning author, activist and expert on issues of race, health and philanthropy, talks about his new book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous wisdom to heal divides and restore balance.

Media and Press

This is certainly a fascinating book. Edgar Villanueva is a young, ambitious political activist, trying to find his way as a Native American in a white world of rich men and women. Much of it is about how the rich use nonprofits to escape paying their fair share of taxes. White philanthropists are also aware that they need a few Blacks and Native Americans around to make thing look a little better. Villanueva finds himself as a well paid window dressing. And when he tries to fight back, he is fired by another token minority.

Ever wonder why the very rich are so into giving? Vllanueva tells it all. It's an ego thing, a way to get even richer while looking like you are doing good work. The book is a peek behind the curtain of the filthy rich class. 

Indigenous wisdom is hard for white people to really believe in. This book will help you. Villanueva is anything but preachy, and my interview with him is very laid back. That's pretty amazing given the fact that our indigenous peoples were slaughtered in one of the worst genocides in history. Native wisdom, however, has survived, and it offers us a way out. Stop consuming the earth; stop trying to own what should be everyone's to share. Can we learn before our planet burns up?

God gave Noah the rainbow sign.

Won't be water, be fire next time.

 

 

 

Good work or normalizing the occupation

October 14

GUESTS: Dr. Andrew Meade, director of the Office of International Services at Vassar College and co-founder of the Vassar Haiti Project, talks about project's goals, both on campus and in the surrounding community. We also have co-founder and executive director of the VHP, Lila Meade.

Vassar Haiti Project

This has been a long term project at Vassar College, both to raise money for Haitian relief and to spread awareness of human rights abuses there. 

We talked about the needs of the Haitian people as well as their history of resisting colonialism. In 1804 the country was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery, and it has been under attack ever since. Haiti became a Black led nation back when US politicians were buying and selling slaves. Even after the Civil War, the US continued its racism through the practices of forced sterilization, Jim Crow, and the study of Eugenics.

I thought that the interview failed when it came to the most recent US interventions in Haiti. I brought up the grifter Clintons, friends of Haitian dictators and neoliberal investors in colonial projects there. The last thirty years have seen some of the worst US interventions there, from the creation of corporate sweat shops to the CIA overthrow of President Aristide, arguably the father of his country. 

Are NGOs that sell Haitian art and fund humanitarian projects doing good work or are they normalizing the occupation? Perhaps a bit of both. I wouldn't have invited Dr. Meade and his wife on if I was going to attack their obvious commitment to the Haitian people. So my questions are oblique. Perhaps my interview is also a bit of both.  

Spotlighting the crimes of corporate America

October 7

GUEST: Jonathan Moore, senior partner in a New York law firm who has been seeking to end stop-and-frisk abuses as well as to hold the US chemical companies liable for the harm caused Vietnamese nationals by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. We talk about some of the cases he has worked on to achieve justice for clients who have been injured or harmed by the police, the FBI or the US military. 

Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign

Jonathan's career has been about representing those who have had no voice. The two examples we talk about were the poisoning of both US veterans and the Vietnamese people by Agent Orange, and the illegal stop and frisk of Blacks in our inner cities. There are many more examples of activist lawyers attempting to restore justice for victims of multinational corporations, the CIA, the FBI and our local, racist police departments. 

In pursuing these types of cases, lawyers like Jonathan Moore also shine a spotlight on the excesses and abuses of our military industrial complex, ever eager to profit from the suffering and exploitation of others. One wonders how long our empire is going to allow lawyers to expose its dirty little secrets. We see how the United States treats journalist Julian Assange, whose major transgression involved the release of a short video clip of US soldiers committing war crimes in Iraq. More recently we find that the CIA and top government officials discussed how to assassinate Assange, an Australian citizen. How soon will our national security state begin murdering other journalists who dare reveal the truth?

And can lawyers be far behind? I am sure that the Pentagon does not want to the public to dwell on the long term poisoning of millions during the occupation of Vietnam. The war machine wants other military campaigns, and the chemical companies stand ready to profit again by sickening another generation of US troops in the field. The prosecution of Steven Donziger is not encouraging. Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador, only to be charged in the US with six charges of criminal contempt of court, all misdemeanors. He has spent a number of years under house arrest and faces six months in prison. It is a fate that both reporters and lawyers could soon face for spotlighting the crimes of corporate America. 

The empire wants to kill him.

 

September 30

GUEST: John Shipton, political activist, citizen of Australia, and the father of Julian Assange, talks about the campaign to free his son from the grips of Belmarsh Prison and the possible extradition to the United States.

Julian Assange’s father and brother 

I have always thought that Julian's crimes began and ended with the exposure of the violence and ugliness of US war crimes in Iraq. But many of the leaks simply exposed the kleptocracy that runs our country and both major parties. Well maybe that's the same thing. We have a well entrenched oligarchy that makes most of its money invading other countries and stealing their resources. The rule of the very richest perhaps brings with it these perpetual war crimes. How else to enlarge the empire? Certainly not by being nice in the Third World. 

However, I have come to discover another of Julian's supposed crimes. Rather than beg for mercy, he has refused to give into an elite class of rulers that that is very used to getting its own way. To see the United States appear in am English court with its bogus claims and World War I Sedition Act mentality sort of tears away at its most important strength, its invincibility. Yes, it is almost comical that a supposedly civilized country would insist on the right to kill people in a foreign land, and then try to do away with the journalist who reports on it. And not even a journalist from the United States. The empire insists on the right to pursue anyone in the world who documents its carnage. The exposing of the video from Iraq is the crime, but so to is the revelation of the empire's hubris. 

If anyone wants to argue that the US empire is any better than the ruthless empires of history, the CIA's plot to assassinate Assange completely undermines that logic. The pretense of legality, of a judge sitting in court and pursuing justice, is destroyed by this look at the machinations of our criminal world dominance. The United States doesn't want to judge Assange; it wants to kill him.