AlternativeRadio

Warren Buffett, the much-admired genius investor and one of the world’s richest men said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And who are the losers? The working class, people who work for an hourly wage or are salaried. The ruling class has driven down wages and benefits, smashed unions, and cut programs that protect the disadvantaged. All of this at a time when income and wealth inequality has reached historic extremes. Who’s to blame? In a classic example of divide and rule immigrants are demonized and scapegoated. It’s all their fault. Not the bosses and CEOs who make oodles of money. Can the working class, long taken for granted by the Democratic Party, be a force for positive progressive change? How might it overcome its own internal divisions and contradictions? Interviewed by David Barsamian. Recorded at KGNU.

“Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech.” There it is. Plain and simple. The First Amendment to the Constitution. But since 9/11 that amendment has been under sustained attack. Whistleblowers John Kiriakou, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and others are hounded, threatened and imprisoned by the U.S. government. A fascinating and compelling account of past and present efforts to secure and expand political and social rights for workers, women and African-Americans. A classic Zinn from our archives.

The history of the anti-government and anti-democratic politics that have transformed the U.S. in recent years is largely obscured from view. The radical right’s agenda includes: suppression of voting rights, privatization of everything from schools to Medicare to Social Security to public lands, elimination of unions and limiting majority rule. Core beliefs also include: there is no problem tax cuts won’t solve and that the best kind of regulation is no regulation. Let industry decide. And the intellectual godfather of this extreme right-wing thinking? Someone you’ve probably never heard of. James McGill Buchanan, a Nobel Prize-winning economist. And the money to promote his ideas comes mostly from billionaire Charles Koch. These ideological positions have moved from beyond the fringe to where they are openly discussed and legislation is proposed. If these forces get their way democracy will be in chains.

Ralph Nader points out the term climate change is a vast understatement and does not convey the gravity of what we are facing. He says, climate disruption is more accurate. Study after study, report after report make it clear that human activity is transforming our planet. With heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, millions of people will be at risk. But the fossil-fuel industry with its insatiable hunger for profits continues its assault on the Earth. It has an ally in the president who claims to “have a natural instinct for science,” and asserts: “Any and all weather events are used by global warming hoaxsters to justify higher taxes.” Note that he asked for and obtained approval to build two sea barriers to protect his golf resort in Ireland from rising water.

Surveillance Capitalism is a global architecture of behavior modification which poses profound threats to society. It was invented at Google, duplicated at Facebook, and has moved almost seamlessly into virtually every economic sector. Vast wealth is accumulated in an ominous new economic order where predictions of our behavior are bought and sold. Surveillance Capitalism has ominous consequences for democracy and humanity in the 21st century. It is based on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power. It claims human experience as a free source of raw material and challenges our autonomy and social solidarity. Our minds are being mined and harvested for data and are being fundamentally changed in the process. Surveillance Capitalism is a business model that Shoshana Zuboff says seeks growth by cataloguing our “every move, emotion, utterance and desire.”

Given that people in the U.S. spend more money on health care than the rest of the world combined, then logic would dictate that we have the best health outcomes. Well, we don’t. Why? Increasing evidence from epidemiologists— the scientists who study the health of populations — indicates that everything from life expectancy to infant mortality to obesity, can be linked to the level of economic inequality within a given population. Almost a quarter of U.S. families live in poverty, the highest of all rich nations. Poor health and poverty go hand-in-hand.  Checkups are deferred. Pain is endured. People engage in wishful thinking, i.e., maybe that numbness in my foot will just go away. Single payer universal health care would go a long way toward addressing our absurdly expensive health care system and reducing the number of unnecessary early deaths.

The list of U.S. invasions, occupations, coups and sanctions in Latin America is a mile long. It is after all, “our little region over here,” and our “backyard” according to policymakers in Washington. Starting with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 the continent and its people have been a laboratory for U.S. intervention, a kind of piñata, a punching bag. As the U.S. became a world power techniques perfected in Latin America were then globalized. Today, once again Washington turns its hegemonic gaze south. The National Security Advisor John Bolton denounces the “troika of tyranny”— Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and the leaders of those countries as “the three stooges of socialism.” Apparently with no sense of shame or of history Bolton declared, “We’re not afraid to use the phrase ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in this administration.”

The U.S. and Iran are on a collision course. The name-calling and saber rattling are ominous. The New York Times headline reads: “Iran Calls U.S. ‘Desperate and Confused.’ Trump vows ‘Obliteration.’” Is Iran going to commit suicide by attacking the world’s most lethal military? Washington is exerting what it calls “maximum pressure” on Iran and on anyone who wants to do business with that country. For most Iranians the punitive sanctions the U.S. has imposed are a form of warfare, albeit the economic kind. The Iran nuclear deal was working just fine according to the UN when Washington unilaterally abandoned it thus triggering the current crisis and the slide to war. The attitude emanating from Washington is more like that of a bully: You do what I tell you or else. Respectful dialogue is what is needed, not hectoring and badgering. Interviewed by David Barsamian. Recorded at KGNU.

The U.S. is Number One. America is first in the world in having 2.3 million people behind bars. They are held in state prisons, federal prisons, county jails, juvenile correctional facilities and other lockups. The prison industrial complex costs state and federal governments billions of dollars annually. Every year, over 600,000 people go to prison. Yet mass incarceration has not been a deterrent to crime, nor reduced societal problems of poverty and racism that drive tens of thousands of people to jails and prisons annually. It has even been argued that our penal system actually exacerbates societal problems. The movement for abolition, with its proud history of challenging slavery, should be applied today to the abolition of prisons. Ruth Wilson Gilmore says abolition is not just about closing prisons. She urges us to address the problems that make us "the incarceration nation."

The title of this program may come as a surprise to some. The Constitution is considered by many in the United States as a sacred document. Its framers are venerated as demi-gods. The Founders, white men, slave owners and holding property shaped a document that would codify and entrench their class power and privilege. It was crafted to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 made sure that the interests of the wealthy were secured and that democracy, rule of the people, was constrained and limited. “The property less multitude,” which James Madison recognized as “the majority faction” was a “danger” to be contained.  The “unequal distribution of property” was a political powder keg for the framers hence the need to maintain “the spirit and form of popular government” with only a minimum of substance.