US imperialism will never be considered reasonable discourse


April 21

GUEST: Jacqueline Luqman, Pan-Africanist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and co-host of "By Any Means Necessary" on Radio Sputnik, talks about her work with the Black Alliance for Peace and the Pan-African Community Action. 

Jacqueline Luqman - articles in Muck Rack

There are some groups, like Black Alliance for Peace, that are so far left that it feels like you are in a different universe when talking to them. Jacqueline is one of those people, and I think her for this interview.

What is most unsettling about the Black Alliance for Peace is that almost every point that they make about US imperialism is true. It is just that we, as mainstream whites, don't use the word "imperialism." I don't know why we shy away from the word. Maybe it brands us as being outside the normal perimeters of what is being thought in the general public. Is it simply because we think that talking about imperialism would make us less effective in communicating with the general public? Or is it that deep down, we can't think of our country in this way? 

My Army experience in Korea helped me make the transition from a liberal to realist. The US occupation of Korea for the last 70 years is based on military imperialism, and the peace that never really comes is mostly because the US has never given up its imperial ambitions to occupy all of Asia. Like the ambition to destroy Russia, the US simply never stopped fighting the World War II. We as a country have killed millions trying to create the greatest empire the world has ever seen. It's not so much for the glory of it all, as it is for the profits of the very few. War is where the most profits are; just look at our defense budget.

So people like Jacqueline can get away with speaking the truth because our media is so good at giving us narratives that favor militarism and intervention. NPR just loves talking about human rights in Ukraine! It is simply the Pentagon controlling what Americans are allowed to think. Talking about US imperialism will never be considered reasonable discourse. 

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The price we all pay for being tied to the racist state of Israel

April 14

GUEST: Rasha, immigrant rights activist and fundraiser for nonprofits working for human rights, mental health and peacebuilding, talks about her family's forced separation when they attempted to visit a dying relative in Palestine. 

Israel’s cruel policy of keeping families apart

Rasha provided a personal account of what it is like living in or even visiting an apartheid state. Every rule is different, based on one's religion and ethnicity. Do that long enough, and one loses a sense of human rights. One class of people has everything, while the other class is treated like little more than animals. 

I wonder how this effects Zionists living in the US. Are they more likely to view some people as less than deserving? One group as subhuman when it comes to separation or suffering? One group whose existence is little more than a joke?

Perhaps the complete acceptance of racism distinguishes pro-Israeli groups in the US. They are often not progressive at all, having cast their lot with our most dangerous fascist, Donald Trump. Zionist groups are often exposed as funders of racism, or at least as proponents of Islamophobia. The Clarion Fund, a group that links conservative causes to overseas funders operating in Israel, spent $18 million distributing the racist film "Obsession," both to police groups and to the general public. That's big money from Israel behind the push to bring apartheid to American shores. 

Zionist groups form natural alliances with the extreme right in our own country. America can't support racism and apartheid in Palestine without bringing the evils of race hatred to our own shores. It's the price we all pay for being tied to the racist state of Israel.

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With the very worst of the fascist oppressors on the planet.

 

April 7

GUEST: Abderrahmane Amor, human rights activist, journalist, political commentator, and media director of AMP (American Muslims for Palestine), talks about the campaign to bring the plight of the Palestinians into public awareness. 

Newest member of our team

For seventy years the Palestinians have been under the boot of the Israeli apartheid state. The resistance to Zionism in the US came very slowly. The Israel Lobby, like other fascist movements, became very adept at buying and using power in our nation's capital. Truman won his race for president on Lobby money, and it has only gotten more corrupt since then. Trump was paid a million dollars for his promises to locate the US embassy in Jerusalem, and to recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel. In fact, the Israel Lobby gives lots of money to almost all members of Congress, as long as they promise to look the other way as more Palestinians are shot and homes demolished. 

Our own member of Congress, Rep Antonio Delgado rakes in well over $30,000 per year as long as he never says the word Palestine. How corrupt is that! In return, he travels to Israel (paid for by the Lobby), and refuses to meet with our local Palestinian rights group. He is one of those PEPs, or progressive except for Palestine. Bought off by money, he represents what is so rotten about our political system. 

Of course, he is the same way about the Green New Deal, Universal Healthcare, universal rights for children, and most every other progressive reforms. Delgado always "has a plan" for that, a way to obscure the fact that he is little more than a Wall Street stooge.

So what is rotten in the Middle East depends on what is rotten in our nation's capital. If some day we can free ourselves from this kleptocracy, there will be hope for Palestine. Until then, the empire will continue to form alliances with the very worst of the fascist oppressors on the planet.  

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For exposing the empire's hypocrisy


There is nothing our mainstream media loves better than a war crime. That is a war crime committed by an enemy of the US. Crimes that can be traced back to our numerous invasions and occupations of other countries don't count at all.

The years long genocidal treatment of civilians in Yemen and Palestine is paid for by the United States. The bombs used are from American factories. Without US support these war crimes would end. The same could have been said for the millions killed in Korea, Vietnam, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

The My Lai Massacre was one of the few war crimes that the US has ever admitted to. And that was almost covered up by the young Army major ordered to investigate the mass murder. Years later, that same officer, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, would lie to the UN about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." There is nothing like covering up US war crimes for advancing one's career in the empire.

The reverse is true for truth tellers. Those foolish enough to even research US war crimes are hounded, like the current members of the International Criminal Court. The US has branded them "national security threats," denied them visas, and threatened them with other retaliatory actions.

And then there is Julian Assange, who proved that the US committed war crimes in Iraq. For him no penalty is too great. He will spend his life in jail simply for exposing the empire's hypocrisy.


Fred Nagel


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Oblivious to the obvious hypocrisy

March 31

GUEST: Stephen Zunes, leading scholar of the Middle East and North Africa and co-author of  Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, talks about how the US and France have blocked the UN from calling for an end to occupation and a national referendum.

Stephen Zunes, co-author of Western Sahara

Stephen Zunes expands our awareness of how many people of the world live under brutal oppression. Western Sahara is one of those areas. A decades long occupation has been followed by ethnic cleansing and Moroccan settlements. The goal is the annihilation of the indigenous peoples of Western Sahara so that Morocco can steal their land resources. 

To the UN's credit, the occupation of Western Sahara has been consistently condemned by the General Assembly. But France, Israel and the US have different standards than most of the world. The US has gone further than any country in recognizing Morocco's captured lands. 

The occupation of Western Sahara is just one of the many war crimes that the US has actively supported. Saudi Arabia's genocidal campaign against Yemen has been backed by US weaponry and planes. The apartheid treatment of five million Palestinians is another example. The US gives close to 4 billon a year so that Israel can destroy houses, ruin orchards, steal water resources, and imprison tens of thousands of Palestinians.   

The invasion of Ukraine has given the US Empire a chance to condemn military occupation and human rights violations committed by Russia. But what about the US record? It is up to our mainstream media to obscure coverage of US war crimes so that it can cheerlead righteous indignation towards Russia. All this passes right over the heads of most Americans, who seem oblivious to the obvious hypocrisy. 
 

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Overcoming racism in the Westchester Reform Temple

March 24

GUESTS: Jessi Sander, a Jewish American school teacher, and her lawyer Robert Herbst talk about why she was fired from her job by the Westchester Reform Temple for a recreational blog post criticizing the most recent attack on Gaza by the State of Israel.

A Jewish Teacher Criticized Israel; She Was Fired

Jessi Sander was fired for her beliefs. Not for beliefs she had expressed in the school that had hired her as a teacher. Sander was fired for some blog posts she had written years before. 

The official position of the Westchester Reform Temple is that teachers' opinions fall under the protection of free speech. Not only that, the Rabbi who hired Sander had talked about the importance to the Jewish faith of expressing and discussing ideas. 

PEP has long been a problem for the nation's liberals. "Progressive except for Palestine" holds that human rights values and racial justice should apply to all. Well, not to all. Palestinians don't get human rights because they keep reminding the world that Israel has stolen their homes, slaughtered their youth and pushed millions off their lands. Instead of upholding "Jewish" traditions, PEP zealots allow no debate on Israel's right to commit these war crimes. Like all colonial philosophy, those being occupied and oppressed are less than real people. 

I am sorry that Jessi Sanders is paying the price for this hypocrisy. And like many Jewish people of her age, she is fighting back against Israel's apartheid. As Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, said several years ago, "It's a fight between Jewish values and Jewish tribalism." Joel paid a price himself for writing the book. He was pushed out of his teaching position at Bard College, that supposed bastion of liberal thought in Upstate New York. Liberal of course, except for Palestine. 

Joel died several years ago, and Jessi Sanders will someday overcome the racism she has found in the Westchester Reform Temple. But will the six million Palestinians in the diaspora ever regain their homeland? Will the five million Palestinians living under a brutal occupation ever get their lives and their dignity back? 

We as Americans hold the key to ending the occupation. Our Congress members must stop getting payments from the Israel Lobby. Maybe then our elected representatives will stop giving Israel 3.8 billion a year for weapons to kill Palestinians. The shameful courting of our police departments by Israeli money and training might come to an end as well. And the billions that Israeli megadonors put into racist campaigns against Muslims will be exposed and terminated.

There is a lot of work to do, and genuinely progressive Jews will be standing there with us as we shine a light on Israel's crimes. Not in our name!

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Holding Our Ground: Resisting Colonialism

March 17

GUEST: Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham), spokesperson for the Gidimt’en check-point on Wet’suwet’en lands and resident of the Cas Yikh (grizzly house), an Indigenous reoccupation site in British Columbia since 2014, talks about her people's resistance to the Coastal Gasoline pipeline.

Gidimt’en Access Point vows to continue resistance

We were fortunate to get Sleydo' as a guest on Activist Radio. She and her family are under assault by the Canadian Mounties and other agents of the Coastal Gasoline pipeline. The video of these officials taking a chainsaw to her house is as disturbing as any footage of Palestinians losing their homes. The forces of Big Oil will allow no resistance, as we have seen in our own country at Standing Rock. 

The tie that binds together the Wet’suwet’en and the Palestinians people, however, is not Big Oil. It is the invader mentality that condones slowly pushing native peoples off their lands. It is a special form of racism practiced by those with too much power, and no sense of human rights. It is the ugly side of US and Western imperialism, that doesn't hesitate starving millions in Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen, and Western Sahara for political and economic gain. 

A number of local human rights groups in the Hudson Valley invite you to discuss these issues further in a Zoom event. I hope you can join us.

Holding Our Ground: Resisting Colonialism
and Environmental Destruction

Sunday, April 3 at 12 noon ET 

Colonization exists to exploit land and natural resources for the profit of the colonizers. The history, culture and needs of the indigenous people are not relevant considerations to the colonizers. Palestinians and indigenous American people have both faced determined campaigns to separate them from their lands and despoil their resources. This Zoom panel will explore the ways these two colonized peoples have fought back to preserve their natural resources from invading settlers, soldiers, pipelines, and corporations. 

Panelists:
-Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability, professor at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities, and author of several books including "Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment.”
-Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham), spokesperson for the Gidimt’en checkpoint on Wet’suwet’en lands and resident of the Cas Yikh (grizzly house), an Indigenous reoccupation site in British Columbia since 2014.

To register for this Zoom panel go to

Sponsored by Jewish Voice For Peace - Hudson Valley, Middle East Crisis Response, NYC Veterans For Peace, US Boats to Gaza, and Women in Black - New Paltz. Contact: mecr@mideastcrisis.org or 845 876-7906

Thanks,

Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck, NY
 
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