Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, worker's rights
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Understanding Capitalism
The great German playwright, and political figure, Berthold Brecht, observed that to understand fascism you have to understand capitalism, from whence it springs. Today, it is also helpful for us to understand that the rise of fascism in Germany 100 years ago, has parallels we can see now with the rise of fascism in the United States.
Prior to World War I, which began in 1914, the German working class and middle class were relatively prosperous. The German unions were strong and influential. Prior to World War I, Germany also had the largest and strongest socialist party in the world, and it was the second largest political party in the German Parliament. The German economy was booming. And German culture was the jewel of Europe.
This all came to a crashing end in 1917, when Germany was defeated in what was an inter-imperial war against the United States, France, Great Britain and Russia. The consequences of that defeat brought us fascism and World War II, 20 years later. In the 1920’s, inflation wiped out the savings of the German people. When the depression hit in 1929, the German working class was desperate. The ground was fertile for the rise of Adolf Hitler, a ruthless, cunning and violent demagogue.
Here in the United States, our economy boomed for 100 years, from the end of the Civil War until the 1970s. But since then, American workers have not made any progress. Their wages, in real terms, have not risen in 50 years! “Neo- liberalism”, which is just another word for aggressive capitalism, has wiped out 30 million industrial jobs in the US, starting in the 1980s. Women were driven back into the workforce. People had to work two jobs just to keep up.
In Germany, it was the Jews who were blamed. Here in the US, it is immigrants and people of color who are scapegoated. The demagogue Trump, like Hitler before him, is a captivating speaker and a very effective cult leader, who is now poised to take the power of the government and turn it against “we the people.”
Guest – Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus from the University of Massachusetts, and the author of the forthcoming book, “Understanding Capitalism”. According to New York Times, Richard Wolff is, probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their national syndicated show Economic Update. Professor Wolff has authorized numerous books on capitalism and socialism, including most recently “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself“, “Understanding Socialism“; and “Understanding Marxism”, which can be found at democracyatwork.info.
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Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Instead of the socialist ideal of universal human emancipation, that many European Jews supported, Zionist Israel is the outcome of a very different political ideology…an ideology that a relatively small number of middle and upper class European Jews advanced unsuccessfully until after World War II.
The founders of Zionism promoted it as a Jewish solution to the “Jewish problem.” Communists and socialists rejected this self-segregating reliance on Western colonial powers. And the current increasingly pariah status of Israel and its imperial backer, the United States, has proven the fallacy of the Zionist solution.
Israel is the product of a colonial settler ideology that has its roots in the racist and imperialist practices of the European powers of the 19th century. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, an Austrian /Hungarian journalist, was a great admirer of Cecil Rhodes, the British imperial figure who founded the mineral settler colony of Rhodesia in what became apartheid South Africa.
From its inception, the goal of the Zionists was to overwhelm and displace the indigenous native Arabs in Palestine. As a result, despite its own self-promotion, Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the holocaust, much less of the prophets of the Hebrew people who propounded the 10 Commandments.
The horrific slaughter since last October 7th of the Palestinians in Gaza, has been live streamed for people all over the world to see.
Guest – Emmaia Gelman is a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and the founder of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. Her book on the powerful Zionist organization the Anti-Defamation League is about to be published by the University of California press.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, worker's rights
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Present Danger Of Fascism In The United States
The rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters has transformed American politics, perhaps more than anything else has since the gathering of forces of the rebellious slave owners in the south, a century and a half ago. His first four years in office were chaotic, uninformed programmatically, and not animated by any kind of cadre of capable administrators. It was, instead, full of his statements and actions that many critics deemed to be racist, sexist and Xenophobic.
He lost the election in 2020, although he received 74 million votes! As he runs for the Presidency again, this time he is talking rather openly about wanting dictatorial authority, if he is elected again.
And this time if he does win, he now has the aid of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has produced the 900-page “Project for 2025” document on how to radically change our country so as to make it far, far more conservative, providing far fewer rights to the American people, and allowing any president so inclined, to run the country as an authoritarian, a virtual dictator. He has an authoritarian right wing Supreme Court, which in its latest decision, aptly named “Donald Trump versus the United States of America,” has given the presidency carte blanche immunity, placing the president above the law, allowing the president to do almost anything he or she wants to do, as long as it’s deemed to be “an official presidential act”.
Today’s program is the lead off to a series of shows on fascism, how to resist it, and how to defend against it. I will be conducting this series with my co-host, Michael Smith, who cannot be with us today due to illness.
Guest – Chris Hedges, the journalist and author spent two decades as a foreign correspondent serving as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 14 books including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and The Death of the Liberal Class.
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Guantanamo Bay Prison: 30 Suspects Remain
Once a front-page story, the U.S. prison on Guantanamo Bay is seldom in the news these days or, apparently, on the minds of the American people. But it certainly should be. Because the history and on-going operation of Guantanamo Bay Prison, or “GITMO” as it is often called, exposes the lie behind our claim to be a nation governed by the “rule of law”. Condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and many other such groups, it is a permanent stain on the character of the American people.
Since 2002, at the height of its operation, close to 800 captives from many different Muslim nations were held there under tortuous conditions as “suspects” rather than being classified as “prisoners of war”, which they clearly were, and accorded all of the rights they were entitled to as prisoners of war. The youngest was 13 years old! In fact, 21 of the detainees were children. All of the detainees were subjected to barbaric forms of torture. Some committed suicides. Hundreds were convicted in sham trials and in illegitimate military tribunals. Many, if not most suspects, clearly bore no responsibility for combat operations in the Muslim nations where we were waging war.
Today, about 30 suspects remain in the U.S. prison on Guantanamo Bay. Sixteen are “cleared for release”, but it has not yet been made clear to what country they can be released. Three have not been charged, nor have they been cleared for release. And nobody can reasonably predict when, if ever, they will be freed. And in the latest shameful twist, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has now upended a plea deal for the three prisoners accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. It would have allowed the men to plead guilty and be sentenced to life in prison…and instead, given Austin’s intervention, they will now face the death penalty if they are tried and convicted.
Clearly, GITMO is a consequence of America’s imperialist wars in Muslim countries, wars for those Muslim countries’ oil, and for geopolitical gain. Of course, over the many years of these wars, U.S. presidents have repeatedly claimed that we are not at war with Islam. Well, tell that to the families of the millions of dead and wounded Muslims our bombing and invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan caused; tell it to the thousands of Muslims forbidden to enter America through travel bans; tell it to the countless numbers of Muslim citizens and residents of America, who’ve been discriminated against at work or in public; tell it to the Muslim children attacked on their way to school and called “terrorists;” or, tell it to the Muslim worshipers whose mosques have been infiltrated by government spies.
And…for that matter… tell it, as well, to the Palestinian Muslims. Because America’s desire for Mideast oil is also a big reason why Israel exists in the Middle East. A big reason why the United States has partnered with it in its war on the Palestinian people, and why we’ve sent billions in military aid to Israel over the years to keep Israel secure in its role as our “advanced military force” in the oil rich Middle East.
Guest – Shane Kadidal, a Senior Managing Attorney of the Guantanamo Project, at the famed Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where he has worked on several significant cases arising in the wake of 9/11, including the Center’s legal challenges to the indefinite detention of men at Guantanamo.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Human Rights, Torture, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers, worker's rights
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Assange: Journalism Is Not A Crime
Julian Assange is the greatest journalist of our time. By publishing the truth about secret government surveillance of American citizens and American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places the American government and the CIA have plotted to kidnap and kill him.
They initially smeared his name falsely, accusing him of being a rapist, forced him to get political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where they videotaped conversations with his lawyers and stole the contents of their phones and computers. At his extradition hearing in London, where the British government did the bidding of the US, they kept him incommunicado in a glass box and the judge made her decisions before she heard the evidence.
They have had him imprisoned in torturous solitary in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London for four years. He could be extradited to the United States any minute from now to stand trial on the false accusation of espionage to which he answers “journalism is not a crime.“ He will certainly be convicted and entombed in what amounts to a death sentence.
The rule of law is crashing in our country. What is being done to Julian Assange is being done in the name of the law.
Guest – Craig Murray has written the most penetrating and eloquent accounts of Julian Assange’s predicament. Murray was the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was fired for blowing the whistle on his country’s practice of torture. He himself has recently served four months of solitary confinement in prison, where he was put, he believes, to prevent him from testifying at the trial of David Morales – whose company contracted with the CIA to spy on Julian and his attorneys. This alone should’ve caused the case against Julian to be dismissed.
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UAW Organized Labor Strike 2023
It’s no secret that the size and strength of the union movement is not, today, what it has been in the past. Where once more than 30% of the U.S. private workforce was unionized, today it’s only about 5 or 6 percent, with another 33% of workers in unionized government jobs. Harsh, pro-employer labor laws are a big reason for the decline in unionized jobs, as is the change in the percentage of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
But in the last few years, despite the harsh laws governing union organizing, we’ve witnessed a surge in militant and successful strikes by workers. Nurses, schoolteachers, more recently the UPS workers, and now the strike by the United Auto Workers. Today we examine the UAW strike, the new way it is being conducted, and to learn what it can tell us about this increased union militancy, why it’s happening now, and what it portends for the future.
And our guest for this topic could not be a better person to help us understand the UAW strike, and the increased militancy of workers and union actions across the United States, in general.
Guest – Dianne Feeley, a 60’s radical who started off working with the Catholic Worker movement in New York City. Ms. Feeley is, herself, a retired auto worker, and former member of the UAW Local 22 in Detroit, Michigan. She is currently a leader in the socialist, feminist organization Solidarity, and writes regularly for both the Jacobin Magazine and the magazine, Against the Current.
Hosted by attorney Jim Lafferty
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crony Capitalism, Supreme Court, worker's rights
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Economic Update: Banking Collapse Contagion?
On March 10, 2023, the Silicon Valley Bank, the most important bank in Silicon Valley, failed. This bank held the money of some of the wealthiest people in the world, venture capitalists who invested in tech businesses.
The government bailed it out hoping to prevent the crisis from becoming a nationwide contagion like the one in 2008 when even larger banks failed. As a consequence in 2008, 8.7 million people lost their jobs. Unemployment jumped to 10%. There was a 1/3 drop in the value of homes and 10 million people lost their homes. The government did nothing to help them.
After the Silicon Valley Bank crashed the Signature Bank in New York crashed followed by the Republic Bank and then Credit Suisse. We speak with the economics professor Richard Wolff on why the economy was threatened with collapse and what must be done to protect us from the unstable banking system.
Guest – Richard Wolff is emerita professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts where he taught for for 35 years and a visiting professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the Nee School University, NYC. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their national syndicated show Economic Update. Professor Wolff has authorized numerous books on capitalism and socialism, including most recently “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself“, “Understanding Socialism“; and “Understanding Marxism”, which can be found at democracyatwork.info.
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Upcoming Supreme Court Cases
The ever more conservative and activist Supreme Court has already heard arguments this term in a number of cases of vital importance. The cases involve the legality of President Biden’s student debt relief plan, the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other independent agencies, and the liability of social media cites where it is claimed that Google’s algorithms sent people to a hateful site that the plaintiffs in the case claim led to an Islamic State attack that killed their child.
Also of concern is the Supreme Court’s refusal to take an appeal from a lower count opinion upholding the State of Kansas law forbidding the State from doing business with any company that refuses to certify it does not support the boycott, divestment and sanctions, or “BDS” movement against Israel. And there is the Helaman Hansen case that addresses the question of whether the First Amendment permits criminal punishment of speech that merely encourages a noncitizen to remain in the United States, without any requirement of intent to further illegal conduct, and when remaining in the United States unlawfully is itself not a crime.
Julian Assange Movie – Ithaka
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Guest – Attorney Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of American Words of Freedom, and of Freedom of Assembly. Steve Rohde is a regular contributor to TruthDig as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is a leader in the national campaign to free the imprisoned investigative journalist, Julian Assange.
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Civil Rights, Human Rights, Immigration, worker's rights
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Zachary Sklar: The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir
Screenwriter and journalist Zachary Sklar grew up in Hollywood as, in his words, “a child of the blacklist.” His fine book The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir has just been published. We will speak with him today.
In the 1950s, Zach’s father George Sklar, a playwright and screenwriter, was blacklisted from the movie industry for his past membership in the Communist Party. His mother, Miriam Blecher, was a modern dancer in the Martha Graham company and founding director of The New Dance Group. During the McCarthy era, many of their friends were hauled in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, calIed HUAC. Several of them fled the country. Others were imprisoned. As a result, Zach grew up in an atmosphere of all-pervasive fear.
Richard Nixon rode to power on fear. After he retired, a reporter asked him what his secret was. He replied instantly, “It was fear, fear, and they don’t teach you that in the Boy Scouts.”
Zach’s beautiful collection of personal essays tells his story of how he overcame the fear he experienced as a child growing up in Hollywood during the blacklist years.
Guest – Zachary Sklar is a writer, editor, and teacher. A graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, he has taught magazine writing at that institution and also has served as the executive editor of The Nation magazine. Zach Sklar edited several books about the CIA for Sheridan Square Press, including Ari Ben-Menashe’s Profits of War and New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s bestselling On the Trail of the Assassins, which makes the case that the CIA was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Zach later co-wrote with Oliver Stone the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the movie JFK. He has been a creative adviser at Sundance Screenwriting Labs for more than two decades, and currently teaches screenwriting for the Harlem Dramatic Writing Workshop in New York. Zach Sklar was a friend of our show’s co-founder Michael Ratner and edited Michael’s memoir Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer.
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Exploiting The Labor Of Migrant Children
The New York Times headline, in its February 25th edition, says it all: “Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.” Yes, last year 130,000 unaccompanied minors entered the United States, and last year the federal agency responsible for placing these children in suitable situations as their cases are processed, lost track of at least 85,000 of them. But we know where all too many of them can be found: working 10-12 hours a day in violation of our nation’s child labor laws in the American supply chain for many major brands and retailers…retailers like Ford and General Motors. Retailers like Walmart and General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Nature Valley, and PepsiCo, which owns Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats…and the list goes on.
So, underaged children, here in the U.S., and needing to earn money to send to their destitute families back home, or pay off the smuggler who brought them to the United States, are working under long, unsafe and exploited conditions, for some of America’s largest corporations. Never mind that the federal child labor provisions, authorized by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, also known as the “child labor laws,” were enacted to ensure that when minors do work, the work is safe and does not jeopardize their health, well-being or educational opportunities, and that sets age limits for various types of work.
As we will shortly learn from our guest for this topic today, that Act is being violated over and over again in 2023. Twelve-year old roofers in Florida and Tennessee, underage slaughterhouse workers in Biden’s home state, Delaware, and children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota. The shame of this should be mind boggling for the American people. But as we now begin interviewing today’s guest, this is still the despicable reality of the lives of these minors now in our country.
Guest – Professor Sara Rogerson, the Director of the Justice Center at Albany Law School, where she is also the faculty Director of the Immigration Law Clinic, in which students represent immigrant victims of crime. Her scholarship addresses flaws in the administration of immigration laws and policy, including intersections with domestic violence and international law. SSRN.com
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers, worker's rights
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How The United States Took Out The Nordstream Pipeline
The war in Ukraine is illegal. It’s a violation of international law. Peace forces in the United States are demanding a ceasefire and negotiations and the recognition of Russia’s legitimate security concerns. At the same time, we recognize that the Russians were provoked by the United States and NATO in to invading Ukraine, having placed so many military bases and bombs on Russia’s border.
The latest development of enormous economic and political consequences is the American blowing up of the two pipelines that provided cheap Russian natural gas to Europe. The great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, has recently discovered and published a hugely significant investigative article on Substack, proving that the United States,despite its vehement denials, was in fact, responsible for the blowing up the pipelines.
This was done to prevent the integration of Russia into the European economy. Because now the United States and Norway sell liquefied natural gas and natural gas, to Western Europe at four or five times the price of Russian gas.
Guest – Seymour Hersh, has won a Pulitzer Prize and five Polk awards, beginning with his expose of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam where American troops killed 500 women, children and old men. His important articles were published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other mainstream media outlets. But his article on the US blowing up of the two pipelines had to be self-published on his Substack platform.
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Denouncing The Horrors Of Socialism
On February 2nd of this year, the now Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution “ denouncing the horrors of socialism.” It passed overwhelmingly in a 328–86–14 vote. More than half of the Democrats voted for it, while 86 voted against it and 14 voted “present“. The resolution is made up of lies and half truths. We urge listeners to read it for themselves. It is online. The resolution is three pages in length and 99% of it consists of a series of whereas clauses pointing out with the Republican authors of the resolution believe are examples of the “horribles” of Socialism.
What is socialism? Socialism has never really existed anywhere yet there have been attempts starting with the great Russian revolution of 1917 which effectively ended the slaughter of World War I. It was overthrown in 1991 when the USA and others successfully restored capitalism. What would a socialist society be like? First of all it would be democratic politically and economically and it would not be run by the one percent.
America has a rich history of electing people with a socialist vision. Socialism would illuminate racism and economic want. It would provide for education and healthcare, housing and employment for everybody. Production would be for human needs, not for profit. It would clean up the environment and eliminate the threat of catastrophic man-made climate change.
Guest – Jeff Mackler is the National Secretary of Socialist Action and was their candidate for president in 2016 and in 2020. Mr. Mackler also serves on the Administrative Committee of the United National Anti-war Coalition, or “UNAC”. He is the Director of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and a steering committee member of the National Julian Assange Defense Committee. A lifelong activist, Jeff Mackler is the author of 25 books and pamphlets and political, economic, and anti-US imperial war movements.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
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