Philip Weiss and his amazing website

December 17

GUEST: Philip Weiss, founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss, a website devoted to all the developments in Israel and Palestine, author of The World the Settlers Made and co-editor of The Goldstone Report, gives a prerecorded talk on "How police and vigilantes operate to attack and undermine minority groups and progressive movements in the U.S. and Palestine.”

Mondoweiss

Philip did a Zoom panel discussion for a number of local groups in the Hudson Valley: Jewish Voice For Peace - Hudson Valley, Middle East Crisis Response, NYC Veterans For Peace, US Boats to Gaza, and Women in Black - New Paltz. 

Speakers explored how we can support local and national movements in overcoming racism and political repression to achieve basic human rights for all. The panel included a Kingston, NY BLM activist (Anne Ames), the editor of mondoweiss.net (Philip Weiss), and a radical feminist, revolutionary member of Black Alliance for Peace (Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture).

Watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/Wh_elSbf348

Mondoweiss is a website that tells the truth about racism, both in America and in the Middle East. If our mainstream media could wean itself away from corporate cash, we wouldn't need websites like Philip Weiss'. But in a world dominated by the Pentagon and neoliberalism, we must learn to cherish and protect the resources we have. 

That said, Mondoweiss is a joy to read, full of the unexpected insights and historical analyses that have been airbrushed away by conventional liberal thought. Make Philip's website part of your daily reading. 

 

Loosen the grip of our empire on the minds of its people

 

December 10

GUEST: Matthew Hoh, US Marine veteran with two deployments to Iraq, former Department of Defense and State Department war analyst, and writer for the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, talks about the empire and how veterans suffer as a result of our endless wars abroad. 

About Me - Matt Hoh

This picture of Matt Hoh says it all (he is the Marine on the left). With several tours in Iraq, and then a war analyst job with the State Department and the Department of Defense, Matt knows the empire from the inside out.

We talked a lot about how the American empire works. Why do the citizens of this country put up with its endless wars, especially since they are designed to make the billionaires richer and the rest of us poorer? How do parents send their sons and daughters to die making profits for Big Oil?

Matt refers to what he calls the "myth of redemptive violence." Our patriotic narratives are all about using aggression to solve moral problems. Hollywood is the Pentagon's most effective propaganda device. Our nation's movies and TV shows are literally written and financed by the war industry. Is it any wonder that Americans shoot each other at such an astounding rate? Or that we spend such an obscene amount of money on weaponry and foreign occupations? At some point, nations always have to choose between their democracies and their war machines. 

Matt's journey from a Marine to an activist and writer for peace and social justice holds a lesson for us all. We collectively can begin to loosen the grip of our empire on the minds of its people. 

Shaking this empire to its rotten core

December 3

GUEST: Sunsara Taylor, former co-host of the weekly WBAI-FM radio show Equal Time for Free Thought, political writer (Revolution and Truthdig), and frequent guest on Fox New (The O'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, and the Sean Hannity Show), talks about her current work as part of the organization Refuse Fascism. 

In the Name of Humanity We Refuse To Accept a Fascist America

Sunsara has stories to tell. While so many liberals hope that there will be opposition to the white nationalists in the nation's streets, Sunsara and the Revolutionary Communist Party are there. When liberals change the station before Tucker Carlson comes on, Sunsara is lining up to debate him on the air. What makes people like Sunsara Taylor? And why can't we have more of them?

Our stifled media is one reason we can't. Corporate media defines the scope and boundaries or our national discourse. Now that the Democrats have won the presidency, the story of social justice and reform is over. In this narrow discourse, all change means either voting in a Republican or a Democrat. After that, our media focuses on such things as the Russian hacking of government computers. The Russians are coming, again! No proof needed on tabloid stories like this.

Sunsara focuses her media efforts on real issues like racism, economic disparities, and US militarism abroad. That is exactly what our mainstream media does its best to avoid. Even AOC's fight to change the direction of the corporatized Democratic Party is of little interest to influential media like The New York Times. 

Do we have to join a revolutionary party to take leave of the corporate controlled, two party duopoly? Yes, we probably do. Few of us will be able to match Sunsara's energy and kick ass mentality. But talking to her gives one the impression that there is a whole new world of resistance ready to shake this empire to its rotten core. 

What the empire is doing to us

November 26

GUEST: Todd Miller, independent journalist and writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, In These Times and Al Jazeera, talks about his most recent book, Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Borders Around the World. 

The Majority Report with Todd Miller

We are lucky that journalists and writers like Todd Miller go out into the field with nothing more than an idea for a good story. Todd's story, however, is so much better than good. He reveals the US Empire in the countryside of Guatemala.

Todd's writing takes us on a traveler's journey of occupied nations. The troops are the same, young men from the US outfitted with the empire's most expensive weaponry. Their mission is the same as well, to set up boarders so that the poor of the world can't get in the way of the neoliberal robbery of natural resources and anything else of value. They are the empire's bag men, fighting wars in every part of the globe to make profits for giant multinational corporations. 

The fact that most Americans don't even know about the empire that ends up costing them so much, is a study in the effectiveness of our national propaganda. We learn US exceptionalism in our schools and colleges. We are taught to admire the "high minded" principals behind all our many wars. We feel good about US foreign policy without understanding what it is doing to the rest of the world. And what it is doing to us. 

The rich vain of hatred

November 19

GUEST: Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and author of five books, including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, talks about the Trump presidency and the threat it poses to American democracy.

Pandemic offers Trump a dangerous opportunity to seize power

Like slaves to the tabloids, we can't stop following the fool that we elected four years ago. And almost elected again. If it were up to white people, Trump would be off starting new wars by now. 57% of white voters pulled the lever for Trump this time, and if it wasn't for voters of color, he would be planning his next four (or maybe twenty four) years right now.

What does it mean when the majority of whites people vote for a candidate that they know is a racist? Not a hidden racist either. Trump is a full blown, violent hate-monger, and the only people who are still unaware are the ones lying in the morgues and refrigerator trucks, the victims of his deadly lack of concern about COVID.

I don't know what I would do as a Black person. It wasn't ignorance that led to Trump's 57% of the white vote. It was that a majority of white are basically racist. No wonder the polls were so for off. It is one thing to vote in secret, and quite another to let your racism be seen in the light of day. These are the folks who used to wear those pointy white hats at night. And they are the majority of whites in America. That must have been what the Jews felt as Hitler tightened his grip. It wasn't just Hitler; he had discovered a rich vain of hatred in the German people, and had mined it all the way to the top.  

If we want a real democracy, white America must come to terms with its centuries old fear and hatred of Blacks. Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works shows us the way it has been done before. Can we the people, both Black and white, save ourselves from the fate of the Germans?

Stopping the empire's blood lust

November 12

GUEST: Rory Fanning, US Army ranger with two tours in Afghanistan, peace activist and author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of The Military and Across America, talks about Pat Tillman, Army recruiters, and his support for Israeli refuseniks.

Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger's Journey

Rory is a bright, sensitive person who discovered morals in Afghanistan. He, of course, had morals before. He joined the US Army willing to risk his ownlife for the privilege of serving his country. It's just that once in Afghanistan, he realized that he was terrorizing and killing people for being in the wrong house at the wrong time. The troops he served with realized this too, but what was to be done? They all had become killing machines, in the service of god knows what. Or, as Kathy Kelley puts it, in the service of "the most powerful warlord" in that devastated country, the US military.

His friend, Pat Tillman, was killed by "friendly fire" for his consistently speaking out against how the occupation was unfolding. What is another US soldier's death in the grand scheme of things? We have troops all over the world, spending America's treasure on subjugating or killing native peoples. And killing a lot of them. Two or three million in Vietnam. Another million or so in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Korean War cost at least two million lives. And those are the big wars, not the mini invasions and occupations that are too numerous to mention. 

Rory discovered his country in the Middle East, and he discovered himself. Never more would he serve the empire. Or maybe he would serve it in a different way, by going to high schools and telling seniors not to enlist. He is also serving his country by exposing the billions made by weapon makers, huge corporations that live off the jugular vain of the Third World. Why would they ever stop the empire's blood lust?

Quote from Activist Radio guest, Dr. Monica Gandhi

In a report updated Tuesday, the CDC says that is still the primary intention of wearing masks. But it also cites growing evidence that even cloth masks can also reduce the amount of infectious droplets inhaled by the wearer.

"This messaging is key to increase adherence and interest in mask wearing. I am thrilled!" Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician with the University of California, San Francisco, said in a tweet Tuesday.

Ghandi argued in a recently published paper that wearing masks can reduce the severity of illness with COVID-19, even if the wearer does become infected.