We haven't evolved fast enough

April 11

 

GUEST: Dr. Larry Wittner, early civil rights and anti-apartheid activist, author of several books, and Professor of History emeritus at SUNY Albany, talks about nuclear winter and Einstein's warnings about nationalism.

Einstein's Postwar campaign to save the world

I woke up last night to a huge explosion. When I rushed to the window, I saw a black cloud rising several miles away. Immediately, I tried to judge whether the explosion was in Kingston, a small city across the Hudson River. Was it the beginning of a nuclear war? I stood there for a while, thinking about my grandchildren. Would there be anyone left?

I don't know how many people in the United States have this nuclear Armageddon stored somewhere in their psyche. I think millions do, especially when the warmongers in our government are in the ascendancy. We don't really have a peace movement to balance the war parties. Little is said about our aggressive behavior towards China and Russia. In fact, Russia talks openly about a nuclear war if their national sovereignty is threatened. The US military support of Ukraine certainly fits that bill. 

In a way, nuclear war is like climate change. Most of us know that there is a good chance our life on earth will end in one of these two ways. As God told Noah: "It won't be water, be fire next time." Will it be the slow but irreversible heating of our planet, or will it be a flash of light seen from my bedroom window?

The wonder of it all is that no one in our political class seems to care. Maybe capitalism makes people live their lives as if there was no tomorrow. Get rich, buy everything you can, and hope the fire comes after you have gone. Perhaps this world view is the fatal flaw of human beings. We haven't evolved fast enough to compensate for our burgeoning technology. As Pete Seeger told us: "We will love or we will perish." 

All shit hole countries belong to the American Empire

April 4

 

GUEST: Sahar Aziz, award winning author, Distinguished Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University Law School, talks about how race intersects with religion in the US.

Distinguished Professor of Law

Acknowledgement of racism must be a powerful motivator. At least the right wing fundamentalists think so. Any academic course or publication that acknowledges racism in the United States is attacked, censored or removed from libraries. We don't want to know, and we certainly don't want our children to know. So our history must be lobotomized.

One might think that the same reactionary forces would object to the study of racism in US foreign policy. But it is our elite political class that opposes this type of analysis. It is the military industrial complex that makes sure that any academic who speaks or writes about racism in our foreign policy is attacked or fired. The racism that is at the heart of empire is strictly off limits.

That's because almost every military invasions the United States has undertaken in the last 75 years has involved an attack on people of color. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are all countries that are generally considered to be non-white. Or as our fascist leader might say, they always live in "shit hole countries." 

All shit hole countries belong to the American Empire.

Existence that threatens the entire human race

March 28

GUEST: Philippe Diaz, award winning French screenwriter, film director and producer with over 20 documentaries to his credit, talks about his latest project: I Am Gitmo, a movie that follows the travails of a Muslim schoolteacher sold to a CIA black site and transported to Guantanamo.

Cinema Libre Studio

Most countries have parts of their history they would like to forget. Shameful periods when their citizens acted like wild beasts instead of people. Think of the IDF forces in Gaza. How those sharp shooters must love putting a US made bullet between the eyes of a six year old. That will be a story to tell back at the barracks.

The US has more of these shameful periods than most, however. The horrors of slavery and lynching can still be seen in the embedded racism of our economic and criminal justice systems. The ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples can still be seen in their squalid concentration camps called reservations. And victims of US war crimes are still remembered in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Guantanamo is a similar boil on the ass of our nation. It hurts every time we sit down to join other nations that don't waterboard prisoners, anal rape them, and hold them for 20 years without charges. 

 

Gaza, however, is different. Our country stands with Israel as it commits another holocaust. As it starves Palestinian children to death, and obliterates the lives of two million parents. No, that is more like a terminal cancer that has spread from Israel to its only ally in the world, the United States. Neither country deserves to survive, just like the Third Reich had to be taken apart to stop its war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel and the US are no longer viable states, given the extent of their barbarism and slaughter. Their continued existence threatens the entire human race.

War crimes, disguised as a functioning democracy

More 2,000 pound bombs for the genocide. And more jets to drop them on helpless and starving Palestinians in Gaza. Biden comes through once more for the Israel the oppressor, for the pariah of the 21st century.

Genocide Joe will be running against the fascist, racist, would be dictator, Donald Trump. It is a parade of fools for the majority of sane Americans who refuse to starve tens of thousands of children, but don't want a crazy dictator either. Another lesser of two evils moment for the long suffering electorate?

It is more than that. We are presented with two very old men, whose life experiences have been war and crony capitalism. They embody some of the worst excesses of the American Empire since World War II. And they can hardly remember what they did yesterday.

Meanwhile, the very richest own just about everything there is to own. Three people in the US have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the nation. There is rampant hunger, homelessness and lack of medical care for millions, while half the nation's federal budget goes to making war on the rest of the world.

Late stage empires seldom work very well. Roman citizens were impoverished by the endless wars of the first century, while their emperors got crazier and more dangerous. Life was hell except for the very richest, who barricaded themselves against the stricken masses. Our own government is little more than 75 years of war crimes, disguised as a functioning democracy.

Not really a war, of course

The war goes on. Not really a war, of course. This is a widely admitted genocide, and its targets have been tens of thousands of civilians, almost half of them children.

The genocide has links to the one country still sending weapons and financial aid to Israel, our very own land of the free, home of the brave. The US is the accomplice to the worst slaughter of the twenty first century.

We can talk about the Israel Lobby, as well as the Christian Zionists, two groups that put Old Testament ravings above their basic humanity. "Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

But the butchery in Gaza can't all be blamed on religious psychopaths. There is something disturbing about our two war parties. Congress and our main presidential candidates are stumbling over each other for more bloodshed. 13,000 children aren't enough. Who could their God be?

Maybe it is Allen Ginsberg's Molech, the God that destroys children though materialism and war. Molech in the twenty first century is wearing an IDF uniform as he shoots starving Palestinians. He is also Congressman Pat Ryan, whose "Top Contributor" for 2024 is AIPAC at $39,900, and "Top Industry" is Pro-Israel at $159,000 (data from OpenSecrets.org). He talks about ceasefires, but always votes to send more bombs and bullets to Israel.

And will this carnage we watch every night eventually be called the American Genocide? We know that it will.

Similar motivations in Hindu Nationalists

March 21

 

GUEST: Andy Izenson, staff attorney, member of the Family Law Institute of the National LGBT Bar Association, and past president of the NYC National Lawyers Guild, talks about the enormous effect the right wing, Christian Zionist movement has on US support for Israel.  

Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic

There are secrets to be revealed when it comes to the Christian Zionist movement. There are twice as many avowed Christian Zionists in the US as there are Jews in the entire world. And their organizational strength and fund raising machine makes them a menace when it comes to influencing how our country treats Palestinians in the Middle East. 

Andy explains that the Christian Zionists want all the Jews in the US to "return" to Israel because that would get rid of them here. The second reason is that Christian Zionists are essentially fascist and want to subjugate our country to a new wave of paternalism, homophobia and anti feminism. In fact, these Zionists want to put their boot heel on the necks of anyone who is not Christian, male and white. Christian Zionists have an inherent congruence of interests with the fascist Israelis. They both seek to create a theocracy based on ethnic cleansing and murder. One could find similar motivations in the Hindu Nationalist movement and with the Islamic State.

The pantheon of killers and war mongers

March 14

 

GUEST: Shahd Safi, born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp and now in Rafah with her family, talks about her work as a freelance journalist and the desperation of the Palestinian people with nowhere else to go.  (Interview from Report Gaza)

Palestinian Women in Gaza: Cruel Realities of Displacement

This talk by Shahd was recorded from Report Gaza, and was somewhat disjointed. I had interviewed Shahd last spring, but lost all connection with her. I was so happy to hear that she and her family were still alive. And her eyewitness accounts were as revealing as they had been before the Israel genocide. 

Shahd stated plainly that her goal was to escape the carnage with her family. She wasn't very hopeful that a ceasefire would ever come. To Shahd, this looked to be another Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe of ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. She had started a GoFundMe to raise money for her escape.

Since then, I hear that Shahd and her family did escape. They had raised the tens of thousands necessary to survive. They had done something that few have been able to accomplish, and I don't blame Shahd. The pariah state of Israel may well get rid of all its six million Palestinians. Israel may get rid of all the Palestinians through slaughter and starvation, just like the Nazis did to the Jews. 

But the real difference is the role of the US. We fought the Nazis in WWII. We are in bed with the Nazis in 2024. We are sending them the bullets and the bombs. We are keeping the rest of the world from intervening. And the war crimes belong to us, as a nation. The US will take its place in the pantheon of killers and war mongers for the rest of recorded history.