Exposing the savagery of the few

December 5

GUEST: Dr. Nancy Murray, former director of education at the ACLU of Massachusetts, author of the book Palestinians: Life Under Occupation, and co-founder of the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, talks about her over 20 trips to the West Bank and Gaza, and her evolving sense of what justice for Palestinians means. 

Water Justice in Palestine

Dr. Murray gave us the background story. Zionist leaders had long planned to seize and control water resources in the Holy Land. Using the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, and the various invasions of the West Bank since then, Israel has been able to control all the water, giving it freely to five million Jewish citizens while severely limiting it to five million Palestinians.

Of course, the Palestinians can't really grow crops with their restricted access to water. It's all part of the plan. Palestinians in Gaza hardly get any potable water at all, thanks to Israel's invasions and destruction of infrastructure. Half of the apartheid state is thirsty every day. The other half gets an unlimited supply for their pools and manicured lawns.

How does anyone not recognize the monstrosity such treatment? The occupation of Palestine is really a slow genocide, as are most imperialist colonies. The English colonized India and oversaw four major famines that killed over 50 million. The French colonized Algeria and starved large numbers of its native inhabitants. The Germans did the same in Namibia, and the Dutch had a long history of genocide in Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast and South Africa.

The colony of Israel is not an aberration, but only the latest in a long line of European bloodletting for profit. Someday, the occupation of Palestine will be over and the survivors will explore how Western civilization allowed such barbarism to thrive. As Gandhi suggested, Western civilization  would have been a "good idea."

What is left for the rest of us who are not profiting from butchering people in the Third World? We can expose the savagery of the few and demand change. Palestine will be free.

Vigilantes on a dying planet

November 21

GUEST: Jon Bowermaster, writer, long time National Geographic filmmaker, and host of the Green Radio Hour, talks about the climate crisis and other environmental issues impacting the Hudson Valley and beyond.

Oceans 8 Films

Jon's documentaries are moving and believable. He has a knack for finding the right people with a story to tell.

The stories are about an environment under threat from the monied elite and their oil and gas industries. Then there are the facilitators like Obama who talk about climate disaster but keep their activism to catchy phrases and hype. Both Hillary and Obama were in love with fracked gas, the source of much of their campaign funds. They were both frauds, and both managed to damage the system enough to elect a madman as president.

I say all this because Jon really doesn't. He doesn't look for villains in the destruction of the planet. He shows how it is happening, but doesn't personalize. He moves his viewers to become more active, but not to become hateful.

It is almost impossible to predict if any tactic can stop the crazy elite and their drive to destroy the world for profit. In years to come, will vigilantes on a dying planet seek out and murder the CEOs of Big Oil? I hope someone is left to make the documentary. 

In the hands of a pathological madman

November 14

GUEST: Tom Midgley, long time activist and former president of the Alliance@IBM workers' group, talks about how IBM has dealt with its workers over the past several decades, putting profits over the interests of its American employees.

IBM cuts nearly 700 jobs in Dutchess County

We have all seen the shift from workers being valued to corporate kleptocracy. There was a time when IBM employees felt proud of their company and secure in their plans for healthcare and retirement. In the late 1970s all that changed. Those at the top abandoned their previous "responsibility" to their employees and went for the money. Slashing tens of thousands of jobs during the 1990s soon morphed into sending work overseas. A decade later, foreign IT workers were being given guest visas to work at half the wages here in America.

All this was facilitated by loosening governmental regulations. Congress and the President didn't have to be fooled by the likes of Bill Gates making the bogus case for cheap foreign IT workers. Our elected officials were already on the payroll of Big Tech.

The biggest rewards for destroying US jobs, however, went to the very people who planned the transition. The salaries of IBM CEOs skyrocketed, starting with Louis V. Gerstner, who according to The New York Times, "received $4.8 million in salary and bonus, plus stock options and other incentive pay with a current value of more than $13 million." And that was his first year.

Workers' lives get desperate and CEO's make out like the bandits they have become. Will this type of income disparity eventually bring down our democracy? The fact that our country is now in the hands of a pathological madman should answer that question.  

Only path to survival?

November 7

GUEST: Rick Ufford-Chase, peace activist and Moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and Susan Smith, a Muslim member of Jewish Voice for Peace, talk about the November 12 International Symposium on Migration and Border Solidarity at the at the Westchester Ethical Culture Society in White Plains, NY.

International Sanctuary Principles Statement

Must we rethink everything to support the concept that all humans deserve a chance to live? Rick and Susan ask us to put away our old way of thinking and consider all people to be our brothers and sisters.

In the coming years, the surge of refugees will only get stronger, until millions are roaming the earth asking to simply survive. The US with our endless and fruitless wars abroad is part of the problem. We have never dared leave the model of military spending after World War II, and have poured our trillions of dollars into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. No one knows how many wars our country is fighting now, the state of mind of characters in George Orwell's 1984.

And then there is climate change, with floods and fires that make larger and larger areas of our world simply unlivable. Like the weapons industry, the petroleum corporations are driving this mass exodus from lands that once supported hundreds of millions.

Will the earth become a killing field. What will be our part in the die-off of our species? In the die-off of all species?

Rethinking our human experience may emerge as the only path to survival. 

Hyper neoliberalism and unvarnished kleptocracy

October 24

GUEST: S. Shankar, Chair of the English Department at the University of Hawaii, novelist, and translator with an interest in postcolonial literature, talks about the US caste system and how it compares to India's rigid social hierarchy. His most recent book is Ghost In The Tamarind.

Does America have a caste system?

Most people know that the US is a caste system, with ever fewer at the top, and millions at the level of untouchable homeless. The media furnishes the mythology that keeps us from rebelling: work hard enough and you will get rich too.

But the odds are just too overwhelming, and most citizens have simply lost faith. It doesn't help that the very rich now take everything, and only spend their billions on buying politicians. Both parties have the same monkey on their backs, the need to spend hundreds of millions to get elected. Politicians and lobbyists are really the same class. Both work to fashion laws benefitting the very richest.

Can a democracy really be a caste system? Most people know the answer to that as well. Democracy is the corporate narrative rather than the reality in these united states. The election of Trump is one sign that the public's faith is gone. He was going to drain the swamp, but was only capable of a cruder version of the status quo. There are those who miss the Obama era. But is a well groomed and articulate lier preferable to a vicious, neurotic clown? Both are products of an unravelling system of hyper neoliberalism and unvarnished kleptocracy. 

Keeping those contractors happy

October 17

GUEST: Andy Pragacz, community radio producer (WBDY), teacher at SUNY Cortland, and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), talks about changing the criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.

No New Jails in New York State!

I wonder if this movement is all across the country. We know of many locations already, where taxpayers are tired of all the money spent on jails. Here in Dutchess County, the legislature gets unlimited campaign contributions from outside contractors, and guess what, they are building a 200 million dollar new jail.

It doesn't matter that hundreds are in jail because they can't afford bail, are addicted to drugs, need mental health services, or are simply people of color. All the services that could keep people out of join have been cut back or eliminated. Even after serving their time, ex prisoners have to navigate a complex probation maze that often sends them right back to jail. The system is set up to generate convicts. Is it any surprise that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world?

It is well past time to question the prison industrial complex, that mixture of racism and barbarism that ends up calling for endless new jails. Politicians have to keep those contractors happy. 

Free expression of ideas

October 10

GUEST: Seth Donnelly, educator, activist with the Haiti Action Committee, and author of the recently published book, The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation, talks about how rich countries rob the poor of the world.

The Lie of Global Prosperity - Monthly Review

Seth Donnelly is a busy man. He teaches at a local high school. He takes his students to places like Haiti for a look at poverty in the Third World. He researches and writes a book on global poverty and exploitation. In short, he is the Social Studies teacher that I wish I had. Maybe learning about US foreign policy would have saved me from being drafted in 1967.

His book explodes a lot of theories we have accepted without much question. Is the IMF trying to reduce poverty? Are the big banks criminal entities when it comes to Third World dept. Treat yourself to Donnelly's essays and book. This is really the free expression of ideas, especially when it comes to the hidden costs of empire.