Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • Trump Order Threatens Jews and Free Speech
    A new executive order by President Trump stamps a radical new definition on the meaning of anti-semitism. Its purpose is to clamp down on freedom of speech. A Chicago area rabbi says her congregants have said “this feels like the first step toward us wearing yellow stars.” The new order defines any and all criticism of the State of Israel as anti-semitism. Of course it is not. On this show, Alison Weir, of IfAmericansKnew.org, explains how the new order, ironically titled “Combatting Antisemitism” actually clamps down on Americans right to free speech. By declaring anti-Zionism as anti-semitism it says that Judaism is a nation: something Other than American. An article in The Atlantic is aptly titled “American Jews Are Terrified.” Seriously dangerous stuff.
    1 hr
  • Brit Election Was Actually a Win for Anti-Globalist Left–Really!
    Hard to imagine but the mainstream media has it wrong. What has been pictured as a crushing blow was actually a victory for progressive politics in the UK. Across Europe and Britain, working people are standing up against what our guest calls the “Panzers” of the German controlled EU. Author and Guardian journalist Greg Palast and his associate Leni Badpenny argue that Corbyn was a bit like Hillary Clinton: abandoning the working class base of the party. And Palast says those who say “Democrats will also be crushed if they nominate a progressive” are quite wrong: humorless unlikable Jeremy Corbin is not Bernie Sanders. And in terms of the immigration issue, as with the US, the EU’s policies greatly exacerbate the refugee crisis. What really happened on December 12th was that the British people said NO to what Palast calls “the union of corporate powers.”  Thus a victory for the left.
    1 hr
  • Hong Kong Explained
    Chinese leadership in Beijing is very insecure. They control many distinct regions of the vast country and what’s going on right now in Hong Kong makes them worry about leakage. Former Hong Kong and China correspondent for BusinessWeek Dave Lindorff on this show explains what is happening on the streets of formerly British controlled Hong Kong. He says they set up this mess with their handover of Hong Kong in 1997. And with greater capitalist prosperity in China the hoped-for democratization promised by people like Al Gore in 2000, with the “constructive engagement,” is thought of as just a joke. The Chinese Army is ready at the border, but when Hong Kong police increased their violence, the normally staid conservative business people and bankers of the city joined the mass of students on the streets in protest. What is it all about, what started the massive protests, and how might it end? Listen in!
    1 hr
  • Plundered Iraq Rising Up
    It didn’t start with W’s 2003 war on Iraq. The British have plundered what is now Iraq since the 19th century. After the incredible economic and physical devastation and perhaps a million deaths, though little noticed in the news, the people of Iraq are rising up to take control of their own  country. Of course, all the imperial plundering has been about oil. On this show award winning international columnist Eric Margolis (who has reported from danger zones all over the globe) sheds light on this overlooked but vital country. Dick Cheney argued that “it is too precious to be left to the Arabs.”  What do America and Britain want? Does Trump even have a policy there? Could the people of Iraq become a new force in the region despite it all? Listen in.
    58 min
  • The Crucial December 12th British Election Explained
    Consumed with Brexit, the old upper and lower class divisions are themselves divided. According to professor Kenneth Surin, a Brit teaching at Duke, the decision made by voters in the upcoming general election will be of major importance. On one hand there’s the Tories’ Boris Johnson who was against the hard Brexit he is now championing. Surin says “BoJo doesn’t stand for anything but acquisition of power. Brexit is a vehicle for his ambition.” On the other hand is traditional-left Labour candidate Jeremy Corbyn. When asked about allegations of Corbyn being anti-semitic, Surin says Tories are more anti-semitic, Corbyn is for a Palestinian state and would cut off military aid to Israel for the moment.  Complicating matters is that the working class is largely against a Green New Deal which Corbyn favors. Of course there similarities between BoJo and Trump; such as facts do not matter to supporters, as well as many personal characteristics. On Brexit the two differ greatly. So much at stake, give a listen.
    1 hr
  • The Kurds are a Nation; Why Don’t They Have a State?
    We all know that, thanks to Trump giving them a green light, Erdogan’s Turkish military is now aggressively slaughtering the stateless Kurdish people. Kurdish women warriors were exceptionally effective in their fight against our common enemy ISIS. Yet Trump abandoned them to the terror now proceeding. There are tens of millions of them, they’ve been a true nation for many hundreds of years. Yet there is no Kurdistan. Why? How did we get here? According to associate professor John Broich, the Kurds were left out when the Great Powers drew arbitrary lines in the sand and created new states in the aftermath of the first world war, in Versailles in 1919. They in their white ties and tails eating caviar and drinking champagne while the Kurds were just ignored. Much of the blame lies with the British and their lust for oil to service their vast empire. Will there ever be a safe place for the Kurds? Is the world now paying attention?
    59 min
  • The Truth On Bolivia//Believing Trumps Lies
    Bolivia’s first indigenous president Evo Morales brought better lives to many of the dispossessed, yet he was recently overthrown. What of the role of the US and Brazil’s right wing leader Bolsonaro? On part one Bolivia scholar Nicole Fabricant explains what happened and describes the current terror.  And on part two, writer Teri Kanefield shares her insights into why so many blindly believe Trump’s obvious lies. There is the basic fascist need to undermine the truth. Formerly agreed upon laws must be torpedoed for a dictator to get away with his actions. There is reassurance in believing simple lies instead of more complicated truths. And it’s all very dangerous to democracy. Can it survive in either country?
    1 hr
  • Deport the Immigrants and Radicals: Trump’s Precedent 100 Years ago
    We were all startled by Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant frenzy launched in 2015. But there is solid precedent. In an article in The New Yorker, acclaimed author of many history books, Adam Hochschild tells the tale: When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals. It was during and after the first world war that people like Woodrow Wilson, a very young J.Edgar Hoover, and A. Mitchell Palmer launched a massive sweep of the country, aimed at ridding white America of undesirable immigrants. Today the feared ones “invade” from the south of our border, back then the “swarms”of aliens were from Eastern Europe. Hochschild paints a clear picture of the widespread purge, deporting historical figures like feminist Emma Goldman. But along with villains there arose heroes, like the today-unknown Louis F.Post who, as acting Labor Secretary, took on the justice department and won. And Americans finally grew tired of the frenzy. As Hochschild says, “Democracy came close to losing its soul.” But we did not.
    1 hr
  • When Political Parties Lose the Consent of the Governed: The Civil War and Donald Trump
    Why did so many Obama voters go for Trump in 2016? What happens when party elites don’t know how to react to changes of popular opinion at the ground level? While they may try to do both: keep the elite and powerful happy as well as absorb the populist movement, the two establishment parties often fail. Sometimes with most unpleasant results, such as the Civil War and the election of Trump. In his new book Crisis! When Political Parties Lose the Consent to Rule, author and labor organizer Cedric deLeon argues that the Clinton wing in 2009 intentionally crushed Obama’s “New New Deal” agenda, so social and economic inequalities were left to fester, leading directly to the ascension of Trump to the White House. And in discussing the crises that led to the Civil War, deLeon argues that the myth that slave owners caused southern secession is wrong, that these wealthy elites wanted to remain in the Union! DeLeon cites recent strikes in red states like Kentucky and West Virginia as examples of ways to force the parties back to serving the popular will.
    1 hr
  • A New Deal That’s Also Green
    The New Deal aspect of the Green New Deal often gets forgotten. The goal now as in the 1930s is to make the state the instrument of the popular will. Democratizing the economy, making it work for the common good, was Roosevelt’s goal and is also now intrinsic to the Green New Deal.  “The Greening of the New Deal” published in The Nation and elsewhere is by our guest author Steve Fraser. Then as now, plutocratic opponents try to create fear by insisting the New Deals are communistic. But again then as now, the New Deals save capitalism from its own savage excesses. The Green New Deal has the public will involved in the economy, the government incentivizing private investments for the common good. And it’s not about just taking on climate change, but also health care, housing, employment, racial justice, and healthier food. Can Democrats, in addition to Bernie Sanders, get on board and make it happen?
    1 hr

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