Generations following behind us

February 20

GUEST: Steve Hoffman, labor activist in the Washington Federation of State Employees, and former Freedom Socialist Party candidate for US Senate from Washington state, talks to us about the return of the strike, and how labor is "getting its mojo back."

Freedom Socialist Party candidate

Yes, there are the billionaires, who dominate our political discourse as well as elections. It is a natural consequence of a society that puts no limits on the greed and plunder at the top. A fascist society as it turns out. To "drain the swamp," we elected a demagogue who just might put an end to the entire democratic charade.

But there is a resource in our country that is pushing for something different. We saw it in Occupy, when the labor unions marched in to protect the Wall Street encampment. It was early morning just before the first sunlight came through the trees. There were thousands of us standing in a huge circle around Zuccotti Park as thousands more union members came down the street to join us. I remember thinking that this is what the end of neoliberalism will look like. Here was joy that we all had worked so hard to achieve.

Occupy was crushed by the plutocrats, led by the biggest sellout of them all, our President Obama.   How could the Democratic Party show its face after such a betrayal?

The left, however, remained standing. People like Steve Hoffman who will always be there to fight another day. If we can't change the Democratic Party by nominating Bernie, we will go on to break the two party system for good. We will all be there another day, and this time there are generations following behind us.

Destroyed by the very racism it was created to overcome

February 13

GUEST: Zahra Billoo, civil rights attorney, board member of the National Lawyers Guild, and executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), talks about Muslim rights and why she was removed from the Women's March board.

An Interview with Ousted Women's March Board Member

We have all talked about a united front against all forms of racism and discrimination. The Women's March seemed to be that combination, at least for a while. From three to five million people marched in the US against war and for universal human rights. The NYC march was so big that parts of the city were completely shut down. At the supposed end of the march, we ran into tens of thousands who had not yet begun. The Woman's March in NYC was simply too big to organize.

What followed was much less inspiring. The new board of the Women's March decided that it didn't want one of the original members because she had criticized Israel. Zahra Billoo, a Palestinian American, was ousted.

PEP stands for "progressive except for Palestine," and is a fitting acronym for how the Women's March lost its way. The human rights of Palestinian women in the US and in the Holy Land cannot be left out to satisfy a few influential Zionists. There are no ethnicities that are undeserving. We don't have an "untouchable" class for Muslims. In fact, to suggest that the rights of Palestinian women don't count is the essence of the racism and discrimination that the march was supposed to oppose.

Zionism is the embodiment of racism, the demand that only Jews in the Holy Land deserve our respect and support. Half the people living in the region are not Jewish. Are their rights somehow nonexistent?

In the end, the Women's March was destroyed by the very racism it was created to overcome.

Tyranny abroad and tyranny at home

February 6

GUEST: Margaret Flowers, retired pediatrician, co-director of Popular Resistance and co-host of Clearing the FOG on WBAI (Tuesday mornings at 9:00), talks about the four Embassy Protectors facing federal charges for trying to prevent the Venezuela Embassy from being turned over to leaders of a failed US-led coup.

Embassy Protectors Defense Committee

Margaret Flowers writes for Popular Resistance, a source of news and analysis that I use more and more to do Activist Radio. So few US media outlets are free from the influence of our all pervasive but perpetually invisible empire.

The blockade of Venezuela is one example. Few people in the rest of the world see US intervention in Venezuela as an attempt to free its people from tyranny. Yet that is the Pentagon narrative that defines the boarders of acceptable thought in our country. Any journalist who wants to keep getting paid must follow the prescribed script. There are no alternate story lines in the mainstream media.

Yet the egregious war crimes being committed by the US in Venezuela are plain to see. Maduro is a fairly elected president and Guido is the figurehead of a CIA backed coup, like the dozens of other such US backed coups in Latin America. Our blockade is an act of war based on nothing, a clear violation of all international law. Venezuela is not an imminent threat to the US, an assertion so preposterous that even our President hasn't made it yet.

True tyranny is not only controlling the media, but also attacking anyone with a differing point of view. That is why I picked this provocative depiction of Uncle Sam above. We have such a homogenous view of the world in part because truth tellers and whistle blowers face vicious retaliation when they engage in non-violent civil disobedience. US tyranny abroad eventually produces the same tyranny here at home.

It takes a history of being oppressed

January 30

GUEST: Colin Jenkins, researcher, political writer, and founder of the Hampton Institute, a working-class think tank named after Fred Hampton, talks about neoliberalism, the war economy, and his own political awakening as a US veteran.

Colin Jenkins' articles

How is it that African American writers and theorists can expose the empire much more effectively than white academics can. The Fred Hampton Institute connects all the dots to describe what motivates  neoliberal America in the twenty-first century: greed, militarism, and media complicity.

It is interesting to note that the two most influential thinkers of the 1960s were both African Americans assassinated in the prime of their lives at age 39. Martin Luther King, Jr. had come to realize the full malevolence of the empire of his day, and called attention to US imperialism in his later speeches. Malcolm X had an epiphany after traveling to Mecca, and saw his people's struggle in a similar way, as a fight against capitalism and imperialism.

Fred Hampton, murdered by the Chicago Police and the FBI when he was only 21, had come to believe that racism was dependent on militarism and colonial exploitation. Three visionary leaders telling it like it is. We as whites just can't seem to bring ourselves to look at our "democracy" in that way. Maybe it takes a history of being oppressed to recognize the empire.

The Trump triad

January 23

GUEST: Emma Briant, an academic at Bard College who specializes in propaganda and the workings of Cambridge Analytica, talks about her research in identifying the secret techniques being used to influence public opinion.

Cambridge Analytica, how I peered inside the propaganda machine

Our world is now full of tiny data bits, being collected silently by our ever present electronic devices. Using AI (artificial intelligence) this data is reorganized into a whole for each person on earth, and then used to predict and to influence their behavior.

In effect, each of us is put into a predefined category of people, like the results of a Myers Briggs personality assessment.  From there, test are run to determine how best to control the things we do or believe in. The "dark triad" category represents the most vulnerable type of people to work with, and Cambridge Analytical limited their efforts in the 2016 presidential race to this group.

In psychology, the dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They are called "dark" because of their malevolent qualities.

This does sounds like your typical Trump voter, motivated by fear, greed and malice for all. Send them a hate message about Blacks or immigrants, and they will go running off to the polls to choose their favorite hater in chief. In fact, Trump is the most recognizable manifestation of the dark triad, from his self absorption to his endless preoccupation with crazy conspiracy theories. And for sheer malevolence? Perhaps the dark triad should be renamed the Trump triad.

But this takes us away from the real problem with these techniques. Potentially, this technology can know us better than we know ourselves, and in so doing can pull our strings without us even realizing how we are being manipulated. That is the brave new world that we must learn to understand and to resist.

Bard College does not like interview of two students

Malia,

Thanks for your comments on the recent interview with two Bard Students. Thanks for listening!

Would you mind if we read part of your email on the air?

The fact that Al Quds comes up at all seems to be a red herring. The issue is whether students who protest a racist speaker on campus have a right to express themselves during a public presentation.

Reading a short statement from the audience seems more like a courageous thing to do rather than a gross transgression of student regulations. Would such behavior at a KKK event on campus bring out similar official condemnation? 

Bard would never invite a member of the KKK to speak on campus? Why then did Bard allow a known racist to be part of a panel on antisemitism?

Bard's connection with Al Quds is an admirable initiative, not a get out of jail card for oppressing students' freedom of expression on campus. Yet every letter about the incident I read from Bard College includes a rather long section on Al Quds. That to me is bizarre, and suggests the use of Al Quds as a public relations strategy. 

As "Chief of Staff & VP for Strategy and Policy," isn't that a little too transparent for the educated public you are trying to influence? 

Perhaps we can have both: praise for Bard's link with a Palestinian University, and praise for Students For Justice in Palestine reading a statement about racism and Islamophobia at a public event. 

Fred Nagel
https://classwars.org

On Jan 29, at  3:38 PM Jan 29, Malia Du Mont <mdumont@bard.edu> wrote:

Dear Fred, Eli, and Raphaelle,

I recently became aware of your program and of an interview you conducted with two Bard students in December.

I was surprised that the subject of Bard's enormous investment in Palestinian education did not come up during the interview, so I wanted to share some information about our work at Al Quds Bard College, the largest American-Palestinian educational collaboration. Our work with the Palestinian Authority, now in its 11th year, includes a BA program and a Master of Arts in Teaching program in the West Bank that we are also working to expand to refugee camps in Jordan. No other American institution of higher education has worked as long or as closely on the ground to advance the cause of liberal arts education for Palestinian students. We have deep and enduring relationships with our colleagues at Al Quds, whose students receive Bard degrees.

I found it bizarre and deeply unfortunate that, during your interview, the students cited Leon Botstein's stint almost a decade ago as an orchestra conductor in Israel as evidence that Bard College has Zionist leanings, but they elected not to mention the fact that Palestine's first and largest liberal arts college is a Bard institution and an integral part of the Bard network, and that no other American institution of higher education has prioritized and invested in the cause of Palestinian education to the extent that Bard has. This omission likely created a significant misapprehension of the nature of Bard's engagement in the Middle East among your listeners. Therefore, I wanted to make sure that you are aware of the scope and impact of Bard's work in Palestine. We are dedicated first and foremost to our mission as an educational institution, expanding access to underserved populations around the world.

I hope you find this information helpful. Thank you for engaging with our students and faculty members on important issues.

Best,
Malia


Malia K. Du Mont '95
Chief of Staff & VP for Strategy and Policy
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson NY 12504
office: 845-758-7800/ cell: 845-891-3113
mdumont@bard.edu

Jailing a man for filming a murder

January 16

GUEST: Elias Holtz, a freelance television producer and queer organizer with The #BradleyPride NYC Coalition and The Freedom Socialist Party, talks about police violence and the story of Ramsey Orta, who was prosecuted and imprisoned for videotaping the murder of Eric Garner.

Plan to establish the Elected Civilian Review Board

Reading about the harassment of Ramsey Orta after he filmed the murder of Eric Garner is like taking a peek at some fascist regime of the 1930s. The NYC cops could not be controlled. Ramsey had videotaped one of their members choking a Black man laying on the sidewalk. Viewers could even hear the dying man pleading, "I can't breath."

At first it was shining spotlights into Ramsey's home and stopped people coming in and out of his house. Pretty soon it escalated to arresting him for various crimes. He was jailed at least eight times in fewer than two years before any of the charges stuck. Were the guns and drugs planted on him? In a white world, such things don't happen. But for Ramsey Orta and Eric Garner, their skin color determines whether they are treated with justice or not.

Ramsey finally made a number of plea deals, mostly to free his mother and his brother who had also been arrested. But once in jail, the harassment got even worse. Continually targeted for petty infractions, Ramsey has spent much of his prison time in solitary confinement.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-suicide-attempt-ramsey-orta

Elias talked with us about the critical fight to empower communities to combat police abuse. The effort is being organized by the NYC Campaign for an Elected Civilian Review Board and a Special Prosecutor (ECRB). These are grassroots coalitions, led by the Freedom Socialist Party, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, and family members of several police victims.

For more information, visit stoppoliceviolencenyc.org.