Being honest about what is going on around them

December 2

GUEST: Phillip Pantuso, award-winning journalist, editor of the new weekly magazine, The River, and contributing writer for The Guardian, The New York Times, and Yes! Magazine, talks about publishing local news and articles that break the conservative mold.

Phillip Pantuso

It was interesting to hear the problems of local journalists first hand. Here in the Hudson Valley, we have watched the major papers become thin and brittle versions of their former selves. It is like reading parchment paper, and I feel sorry for all the reporters who no longer ply their trade in empty newsrooms. 

But to tell the truth, local news has always been lame. There was never very much national or international new, and the stores they carried had always been screened by many sieves before they hit the light of day. The recent consolidation of radio, TV stations, newspapers, and magazines, just means that all their stories are vacuous in the same way. Now most articles have become full length advertisements for local businesses.

Just like real history is too interesting to appear in classroom textbooks, real political or personal drama rarely breaks to the surface in local publications. That's why I am hopeful about some new magazines like The River. They carry some stories about racism, police violence, poverty, and social justice. By being honest about what is going on around them, they capture our attention. How do they dare write about this stuff? Will the publication be sustainable if it doesn't trumpet the capitalist class? 

We will see, and the suspense will keep us reading The River.

 

Time to revive Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialist League

November 25

GUEST: Brian Willson, Viet Nam veteran, lawyer, and current resident of Nicaragua, talks about the recent elections there and why the US empire is trying to overthrow President Ortega and the Sandinista Revolution. 

As Nicaragua Resists Regime Change

I was very happy to get Brian as a guest. He lives now in Nicaragua, and is an invaluable source of anti-imperialist opinions. Biden has proven to be just as hawkish as Trump and Obama. No change in pushing for a new cold war with Blinken in charge of the State Department. Why can't either party challenge our huge expenditure on the military? Why is the US still acting aggressively towards any country that tries to be the least bit independent?

It is certainly not to further the cause of democracy in the world. The US sends arms to a vast number of dictators and tyrants, as long as they play nice with our major corporations and allow us to build military bases in their homelands. The motivation is exactly the opposite; the policy of the US is to overthrow governments that try to put their people above US mining, oil, and banking profits. 

Nicaragua has a history of teaching its people to read and giving them access to free healthcare. And that makes the country just too socialist for the kleptocracy class in the US empire. What if those ideas started to spread in the very belly of the beast?

The picture above is Brian right before he was run over by a train, full of mentions that were bound for the Contras. That was another decade, of course. But the US backed terrorists are at it again in Nicaragua, with the full consent and even enthusiasm of The New York Times and Democracy Now. So Brian and others fighting for Nicaragua's freedom are especially important now. Perhaps it is time to revive Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialist League, with its pox on both political parties.  

Destroying the good name of our nation

November 18

GUEST: Anas Amireh, Palestinian American activist and organizer of the Coalition to Boycott Duty Free Americas, talks about how this US company is funding the settler movement, which is forcing Palestinians from their homes and land in the West Bank.

Middlemen sell Jerusalem homes to settlers 

Anas reminded us of the battle raging in America's heartland. Do citizens have a right to boycott a country that routinely violates human rights? The conflict is for the soul of the United States, since our country arms, funds, and protects apartheid Israel. Moreover, Israel is more than a country. It is America's most important colony, willing to do whatever the empire needs to have done, both in the Middle East and in the rest of the world.

Israel's connection to the US is a two way street. Israeli operatives in our government have had an outsized role in instigating our wars of empire. For example, our invasion of Iraq was orchestrated by the following list of Israeli plants working in key areas of our government:

• Richard N. Perle, member of the Defense Policy Board, advisor to the Pentagon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs
• Paul Wolfowitz, protege of Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Dov S. Zakheim, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense
• Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense, member of PNAC who was mentored by Henry Kissinger
• John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor 
• John Hannah, vice president’s Office for National Security Affairs
• Elliott Abrams,  foreign policy adviser for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump

How is it that any of these right wing Zionists, many with dual citizenships, are allowed to influence America's strategic decisions about war and peace? Of course, they are all extreme hawks who have spent their lives pushing for the empire's endless wars abroad. But what country benefits from the destruction of the Middle East? Certainly not the United States. All these influential Zionist have quite openly advanced Israel's interests at the expense of America. Are these men traitors to the United States - a person who commits treason by betraying his or her country? 

Meanwhile, Anas is planning the boycott of Duty Free Americas, the US company that shovels million to the illegal settlers to help them steal land from Palestinians in the West Bank. It is a tough fight because the Israeli Lobby has the money and the influence to make such campaigns extremely difficult. 

Will there ever be a day when ordinary citizens stand up against the Israel Lobby? When we as citizens of the US demand that Israeli war hawks get their icy fingers off the levers of power? Zionist influence has caused a catastrophe in the Middle East. Israeli agents in our government should be purged. They have cost the American public trillions of dollars, while destroying the lives of so many of our nation's young. 

Armed extremist groups supported by the state

We are seeing the coming together of right wing, white nationalist groups and the nation's criminal justice system, including the police. It is a dramatic step in the direction that many of us have feared. 

The Rittenhouse acquittal establishes the right of armed white nationalists to come to demonstrations and kill whoever they consider to be a threat. Moreover, these dangerous white extremists are now openly supported by at least some of our uniformed police, who readily force peaceful demonstrators into areas here they can be ambushed. Finally, we have district judges who are eager to protect white nationalist killers from any kind of justice. 

This is the essence of fascism, armed extremist groups supported by the state, and by one of the two major political parties. Once in power these fascist will sit in the halls of Congress and extend their dominance to all walks of life. We have no time to grieve for the victims. We must organize now to fight back before it is too late.

The 99%, deserve someone better

My disappointment with Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-NY-19) had been limited to his utter lack of interest in human rights. He has been a steady and well paid ally to apartheid Israel, raking in $31,723 from the Israel Lobby in 2021. Just how does that cash square with his talk about overcoming racism?

But his recent cosponsoring of the SALT Deductibility Act shows just what kind of a rich man's Democrat we have voted in. In his own words he supports "bipartisan legislation that would eliminate the harmful cap on state and local tax deductions." Harmful to whom? Why to the very richest of Americans who want even more tax breaks than they have now. According to the Brookings Institute, "Lifting the cap on the SALT deduction would massively favor the rich, with most of the benefit going to the top one percent." 

According to Rep Delgado, all he is doing is, "simplifying the tax code by closing loopholes that serve only the wealthiest Americans." No, Rep. Delgado, you are pushing through a bill that would, again according to Brookings, "give almost three times as much, as a share of the cut, to the top one percent." 

How stupid does he think we are? His recent letter to constituents is full of praise for working families. But Rep. Delgado knows just who is paying his tab: Wall Street, the wealthiest Americans, and the Israel Lobby. Democrats like Delgado are simply worthless to the rest of us. Don't we, the 99%, deserve someone better?

Fred Nagel

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.