Ralph Nader Radio Hour

First on today's show, Ralph welcomes author, statistician, and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and give us his take on the election results. Then, Ralph and journalist Ryan Grim speak about President-Elect Trump's cabinet appointments and what we can expect from the upcoming Trump Administration. Finally, we're joined by constitutional law expert Bruce Fein for a post-election Donald Trump legal roundup.  

Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent twenty-one years as a derivatives trader before changing careers to become a scholar, mathematical researcher and philosophical essayist. Mr. Taleb’s works focus on mathematical, philosophical, and practical problems with risk and probability, as well as on the properties of systems that can handle disorder.  He is the author of many essays and books about risk and uncertainty including the New York Times bestselling The Black Swan and his latest Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.

The supporters of Israel are getting smaller in relative economic and financial size—and of course, in technological size as well. So it's getting smaller while at the same time, Israel relies more and more on their support. So that's not a robust situation. In other words, the strategy of Israel being continuously confrontational has led to more and more confrontation, and the strategy of relying on the West is not going to pay off.

Nassim Nicholas Talib

Israel has been behaving like a child with a strong personality and been capable of winning concessions from her or his parents continuously. So that's what has been happening. But the problem is— not finding any resistance, they kept going, they kept going, and one day they realized that, ah, they went too far but it was too late. So you can rely on AIPAC to do a bunch of things, but at some point, the strategy is not going to work.

Nassim Nicholas Talib

Ryan Grim is co-founder of Drop Site News, host of the podcast Deconstructed, and co-host of the show Counter Points. He was previously D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and the Washington bureau chief for HuffPost, and he has been a staff reporter for Politico and the Washington City Paper. He is the author of the books This Is Your Country on Drugs, We’ve Got People, and The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.

[The incoming administration of Trump and his Trumpsters] are very aggressive. They think they're above the law. They are greedy. They want to turn the U .S. government into a honeypot for their commercial paymasters—which include their own businesses, by the way, like Elon Musk. And when that happens—when you have greed and almost total power with the Supreme Court on your side, with the Congress under Republican control—you're inevitably going to get serious examples of corruption. You're inevitably going to get blatant corruption. 

Ralph Nader

So far, to a lot of people's great disappointment, Democrats have been pretty terrible at [going after corruption]. So on the one hand, they angered the entire support base for Donald Trump and whipped them up into a frenzy accusing Democrats of prosecuting their enemies, while at the same time not actually prosecuting them for any corruption…Now, because the Trump movement has been able to argue to its base that it feels persecuted, they are probably going to spend a significant amount of their energy going after those who they see as their persecutors. 

Ryan Grim

Time is one of [Donald Trump’s] restraints and incompetence is another. He's up against those two elements—and in-fighting. There are a number of competing factions for his attention and for his agenda and they are going to relentlessly work to undermine each other. So that factor will restrain him. 

Ryan Grim

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

I do think there's a remedy here, and that is I think that any of the decisions made by the people who are appointed through illegal or unconstitutional recess appointments, when they take any action, you wouldn't have to comply with their actions. You can say the decisions, their orders are null and void because they weren't appointed properly.

Bruce Fein

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 11/13/24

1. Following Kamala Harris’ disastrous defeat at the hands of Donald Trump last week – which saw the Vice President lose the electoral college by a greater margin than Hillary Clinton and swept Republicans to power in all three branches of government – the Democratic Party blame game is in full swing. Perhaps the most prominent critical voice has come from Bernie Sanders, who issued a blistering statement in which he writes “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them.” DNC Chair Jamie Harrison has dismissed this criticism, calling it “straight up BS,” but in this moment Democrats are finding it harder to wave this critique away. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, for example, echoed Bernie’s warning, writing “when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”

2. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears to be setting the stage for Elon Musk to take on a prominent position in the incoming administration. Axios reports Trump had a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last Wednesday, and was joined by Musk. Details of the call remain murky, but Trump reportedly said he “will support Ukraine” and Musk said he will continue to aid Ukraine with his Starlink satellites. Bloomberg further reports that Musk joined Trump on a call with Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, and may meet with Trump and Argentinian President Javier Milei at Mar-a-Lago.

3. Filling out the incoming administration, CNN reports Trump has offered New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik the role of Ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik entered Congress as a moderate Republican, but has grown closer and closer to the Trump wing of the party. More recently, she rose to national prominence for her role as ringleader of the McCarthyist hearings on supposed antisemitic protests on college campuses; in actuality of course, these protests were merely demanding recognition of human rights for Palestinians. Because of her staunch Zionist bona fides, Anti-Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt celebrated her selection. Stefanik has previously boosted the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, per the Washington Post, but apparently the ADL is happy to look past that so long as she blindly backs the State of Israel.

4. Another Trump administration staffing decision which has drawn scrutiny is the supposed appointment of Massad Boulos, father-in-law to Tiffany Trump, as “US point man for Lebanon,” per the Times of Israel. Boulos, a Lebanese-American billionaire, told the Lebanese network MTV “People see that Biden and Harris failed to end the wars and failed to even return the American hostages from Gaza…Lebanese Americans are migrating to [the] Republican Party and to Trump because they feel that Trump is their only hope to end this war, and end all the wars… so we can start talking about rebuilding Lebanon and Gaza.” However, this dovish tone is at odds with Trump’s promises to Right-wing Zionists, meaning one faction or the other is in for a rude awakening.

5. In more Middle East News, a potential political earthquake is unfolding in Israel. According to the Times of Israel, the chief of staff to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allegedly been accused of using security camera footage from the Prime Minister’s Office to blackmail an IDF official into “changing protocols of government meetings related to the October 7 Hamas attack…the attempts to alter the meeting minutes centered on how much knowledge Netanyahu had of the potential for a Hamas attack immediately before October 7.” Specifically, this report insinuates that Israeli intelligence was aware of “activation by terror operatives of dozens of SIM cards.” A curious detail of this scandal is that U.S. media has largely failed to report it at all. As of now, the most high-profile American journalist to cover it is none other than legendary investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh.

6. Back on the home-front, the Democrats are failing to safeguard the National Labor Relations Board. Trump has already made it abundantly clear that he will do everything he can to rollback the Biden-era gains for unions and their workers. Bloomberg reports that in addition to “defang[ing]” the NLRB and dismissing the Board’s crusading General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, “business advocates are…urging Trump to make the questionably legal move of firing all the Democrats on the labor board, so that he can more quickly unwind the union-friendly rulings of the Biden years.” Per JacksonLewis, the NLRB currently has “a 2-1 Democratic majority. In June 2024, Biden renominated current Board Chair Lauren McFerran (whose term expires on Dec. 16, 2024) to a third term and nominated Joseph L. Ditelberg to fill the Board’s vacant Republican seat. The Senate, however, has not yet confirmed these nominations. If McFerran is confirmed for a third term, the Board will maintain a Democratic majority until at least August 2026, when Member David Prouty’s term expires. This extended majority could lead to the continuation and expansion of pro-labor policies and decisions. But if the nominees are not confirmed by the Senate prior to Trump taking office, they will likely be filled by Trump appointees and the Board will return to a Republican majority.” In a word, if the Senate acts fast they could shore up the NLRB until late 2026 – but if they fail to act in the lame-duck session, Trump will be able to stack that Board like he has so many other institutions, up to and including the Supreme Court.

7. In more NLRB news, Matt Bruenig, via his Substack NLRB Edge, reports that a major unfair labor practice charge he filed against Bloomberg LP successfully forced the firm to change their standard employment agreement. The charge alleged that Bloomberg LP was “maintaining illegal confidentiality, coworker non-solicitation, and customer non-solicitation rules…[which] violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act.” Bruenig argued that “a reasonable employee would read them as prohibiting …publicizing working conditions, soliciting coworkers to leave for a competitor as part of a broader course of protected activity, and soliciting customers to engage in a solidaristic consumer boycott of the company.” Beyond the wonkish improvements to Bloomberg employment agreements however, Bruenig emphasizes that he was “able to get these changes…without ever revealing the identity of the person [he] was working for,” a loophole rarely used by lawyers. He notes the obvious value in doing so, writing “if an employer does not know which of their employees is behind the charge, they cannot retaliate against them. Thus, it is possible to get your employer to comply with the NLRA without incurring any personal risk.”

8. Another major story from NLRB Edge concerns the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Put simply, Amazon was accused of interfering with the 2022 rerun union election at the facility via “Unlawful Confiscation of Union Materials…Surveillance and Coercion…[and] Disparate Enforcement of Rules.” The Administrative Law Judge overseeing this case agreed Amazon had violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, among other findings, and therefore ordered a second rerun election. He also issued a cease and desist order demanding Amazon “stop unlawfully removing union literature and engaging in surveillance of employees' protected activities.” While there is no guarantee a third election will yield different results, it is encouraging to see the NLRB stand up to corporate titans like Amazon.

9. Our final two stories today concern education. First, in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports that since 2023, “The state’s average SAT score dropped to 948 out of 1600, an 18-point decline.” This is now the third year in a row that Florida’s SAT scores declined. In addition to the overall SAT scores, “Florida’s SAT math score dropped eight points to 455 - among the lowest for the ten states that, like Florida, test more than 90% of their graduating seniors.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made “anti-woke” education reform a centerpiece of his administration, leading many to attribute this decline to his leadership. The Sentinel reports “The Florida Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.” 

10. Finally, to end on a positive note, Sacramento State University has “announced the creation of Sacramento State Native American College, the first of its kind in California, offering students an inclusive, Native-based education that fosters connections to community and tribal government.” This college will reportedly “offer a diverse range of programs that integrate academic excellence with tribal values, traditions and community engagement,” and while “All students will minor in Native American Studies, with an emphasis on Native American Leadership, [they] can pursue any major the University offers.” Per California law the college is “open to students of all races and backgrounds who are interested in learning about Native life, history, and culture,” and the University notes that “Sac State also is home to the nation’s first Black Honors College, which offers a comprehensive curriculum focused on the Black and African American experience.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph and the team invite cofounder of RootsAction, Norman Solomon, to autopsy the carcass of the Democratic Party after Donald Trump’s decisive defeat of Kamala Harris in the presidential election. They dissect what happened on November 5th and report what needs to be done about it. 

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.

The Democrats couldn't even get their base vote out that they got out in 2020. And what are they looking at? Are they looking at themselves in the mirror for introspection? Are they cleaning house? Do they have any plan whatsoever— other than collect more and more money from corporate PACS? This is a spectacular decline.

Ralph Nader

We kept being told that party loyalty über alles, we had to stay in line with Biden. And…that lost precious months, even a year or a year and a half, when there could have been a sorting out in vigorous primaries. We were told that, "Oh, it would be terrible to have an inside-the-party primary system." Well, in 2020, there were 17 candidates, so there wasn't space on one stage on one night to hold them all—the debates would have to be in half. Well, it didn't really debilitate the party. Debate is a good thing. But what happened was this party loyalty, this obsequious kissing-the-presidential-feet dynamic allowed Biden to amble along until it became incontrovertible that he wasn't capable.

Norman Solomon

A lot of people on that committee—and of course, running the DNC—they and their pals had this pass-through of literally millions of dollars of consultant fees. Win, lose, or draw. It's like General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, they never lose a war. And so, these corporate donors, they never lose a presidential race. They didn't lose what happened with Harris and Trump. They cashed in, they made out like the corporate bandits that they are.

Norman Solomon

One reality as an activist that I've come to the conclusion on in the last couple of decades is that progressives tend to be way too nice to Democrats in Congress, especially those that they consider to be allies. Because they like what some of the Democrats do…and so they give too many benefits of the doubt. It's like grading them on a curve. We can't afford to grade them on a curve.

Norman Solomon

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 11/6/24

1. As of now, Donald Trump is projected to win the 2024 presidential election by a greater margin than 2016. In addition to winning back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona, Trump also appears to have flipped Nevada – which went for both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Most shocking of all, Trump has won the national popular vote, something he failed to do in 2016 and 2020 and which no Republican has done in 20 years. Democrats also faced a bloodbath in the Senate elections, with Republicans on track to win a 54 seat majority in the upper chamber.

2. Bucking tremendous party pressure, Representative Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse Kamala Harris at a United Autoworkers rally in Michigan just days before the election, POLITICO reports. Tlaib urged attendees to turn out but “kept her speech focused on down-ballot races.” Tlaib is the only member of “the Squad” to withhold her support for Harris and the only Palestinian member of Congress. She has been a staunch critic of the Biden Administration’s blind support for Israel’s campaign of genocide in Palestine and voted Uncommitted in the Michigan Democratic primary.

3. Along similar lines, the Uncommitted Movement issued a fiery statement on the eve of the election. According to the group, “Middle East Eye ran a story…[which] contains unfounded and absurd claims, suggesting that Uncommitted made a secret agreement with the Democratic Party to not endorse a third-party candidate.” The statement goes on to say that “this baseless story…is misguided at best and a dishonest malicious attack at worst.” Uncommitted maintains that “leaders and delegates are voting in different ways, yet remain untied in their mission to stop the endless flow of American weapons fueling Israel’s militarism.” In September, Uncommitted publicly stated that they would not endorse Kamala Harris, citing her continued support for the Biden Administration policy toward Israel, but urged supporters to vote against Donald Trump.

4. Progressive International reports that over 50 sovereign nations have called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel, calling it “a legal, humanitarian and moral imperative to put an end to grave human suffering.” This letter cites the “staggering toll of civilian casualties, the majority of them children and women, due to ongoing breaches of international law by Israel, the occupying Power,” and warns of “regional destabilization that risks the outbreak of an all-out war in the region.” Signatories on this letter include Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Norway, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, and China among many others.

5. Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush have sent a letter to President Biden accusing him of illegally involving the American armed forces in Israel’s war without proper Congressional authorization. Per the accompanying statement, “The Biden administration has deepened U.S. involvement in the Israeli government’s devastating regional war through comprehensive intelligence sharing and operational coordination, and now even the direct deployment of U.S. servicemembers to Israel. Not only do these actions encourage further escalation and violence, but they are unauthorized by Congress, in violation of Article I of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.” The letter concludes “The Executive Branch cannot continue to ignore the law…In the absence of an immediate ceasefire and end of hostilities, Congress retains the right and ability to exercise its Constitutional authority to direct the removal of any and all unauthorized Armed Forces from the region pursuant to Section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution.” This letter was endorsed by an array of groups ranging from the Quincy Institute to Jewish Voice for Peace to the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches, and signed by other pro-Palestine members of Congress including Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, and André Carson – though notably not AOC.

6. In a story that touches on both the election and labor issues, the New York Times Tech Guild voted to go on strike Monday morning. The Times Tech Guild, which represents “workers like software developers and data analysts,” at the Times negotiated until late Sunday night, particularly regarding “whether the workers could get a ‘just cause’ provision in their contract…pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies,” per the New York Times. The Guardian reports “The Tech Guild’s roughly 600 members are in charge of operating the back-end systems that power the paper’s…[coverage of] the presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – but also the hundreds of House and dozens of Senate races across the US that will determine who will secure control of Washington in 2025.” Kathy Zhang, the guild’s unit chair, said in a statement “[The Times] have left us no choice but to demonstrate the power of our labor on the picket line…we stand ready to bargain and get this contract across the finish line.”

7. In more labor news, AP reports the striking Boeing machinists have “voted to accept a contract offer and end their strike after more than seven weeks, clearing the way for the aerospace giant to resume production.” The deal reportedly includes “a 38% wage increase over four years, [as well as] ratification and productivity bonuses.” That said, Boeing apparently “refused to meet strikers’ demand to restore a company pension plan that was frozen nearly a decade ago.” According to a Bank of America analysis, Boeing was losing approximately $50 million per day during the strike, a startling number by any measure. The union’s District 751 President Jon Holden told members “You stood strong and you stood tall and you won,” yet calibration specialist Eep Bolaño said the outcome was “most certainly not a victory…We were threatened by a company that was crippled, dying, bleeding on the ground, and us as one of the biggest unions in the country couldn’t even extract two-thirds of our demands from them. This is humiliating.”

8. Huffington Post Labor Reporter Dave Jamieson reports “The [National Labor Relations Board] has filed a complaint against Grindr alleging the dating app used a new return-to-office policy to fire dozens of workers who were organizing.” He further reports that NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is seeking a “Cemex order” which would “force the company to bargain with the [Communications Workers of America].” In a statement, CWA wrote “We hope this NLRB filing sends a clear message to Grindr that…we are committed to negotiating fair working conditions in good faith. As we continue to build and expand worker power at Grindr, this win…is a positive step toward ensuring that Grindr remains a safe, inclusive, and thriving place for users and workers alike.”

9. In further positive news from federal regulators, NBC’s Today reports “On Oct. 25, the United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption that gives restaurants like McDonald's the “right to repair” broken machines by circumventing digital locks that prevent them from being fixed by anyone other than its manufacturer.” As this piece explains, all of McDonald’s ice cream machines – which have become a punchline for how frequently they are out of service – are owned and operated by the Taylor Company since 1956. Moreover “The…company holds a copyright on its machines…[meaning] if one broke, only [Taylor Company] repair people were legally allowed to fix it…due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act…a 1998 law that criminalizes making or using technology, devices or services that circumvent the control access of copyrighted works.” This move from the Copyright Office reflects a larger pattern of regulators recognizing the issues with giving companies like Taylor monopolistic free reign over sectors of the economy and blocking consumers – in this case fast food franchisees – from repairing machines themselves. With backing from public interest groups like U.S. PIRG, the Right to Repair movement continues to pick up steam. We hope Congress will realize that this is a political slam dunk.

10. Finally, in an astounding story of vindication, Michael and Robert Meeropol – sons of Ethel Rosenberg, who was convicted of and executed for passing secrets to the Soviet Union – claim that long-sought records have definitively cleared their mother’s name. Per Bloomberg, “A few months ago, the National Security Agency sent the Meeropols a box of records the spy agency declassified…Inside was a seven-page handwritten memo…The relevant passage…is just eight words: ‘she did not engage in the work herself.’” Put simply, Rosenberg was wrongfully convicted and put to death for a crime she did not commit. The article paints the picture of the men uncovering this key piece of evidence. “After he read it, Robert said his eyes welled up. “Michael and I looked at it and our reaction was, ‘We did it.’”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. They'll discuss the crucial role that the Postal Service plays in our democratic process, and how organized labor is impacting this year's elections. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist James Bamford to talk about his latest article in The Nation: "Israel Is Killing Whole Families in Gaza—With Weapons Made in America." Plus, how candidates' positions on Israel may win or lose them voters on Election Day. 

Mark Dimondstein is the President of the American Postal Workers Union. Since 2013 when Mr. Dimondstein was elected, he has turned the APWU into a fighting activist organization. Mr. Dimondstein advocates for the rights of postal workers as well as the right of the American people to a vibrant public Postal Service. The American Postal Workers Union supports Medicare for All and belongs to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The APWU believes in paying a living wage and providing benefits to all workers.

We have about 200,000 members. And we definitely represent people throughout the entire political spectrum and throughout the whole country. So we represent people from right to left, left to right, everybody in between, and we represent people from the most rural outpost in the country to the urban centers. So first, the way we handle it is we don't try to tell people how they should think and how they should vote. We're all adults, we vote for what we think is in our best interest as workers, as family members, as community members, as citizens and so on. So we don't try to dictate to our members how to vote, but we do have a responsibility to lead…So I think leadership has a responsibility to educate our members, to activate our members, and to get our members to be involved in the political electoral process.

Mark Dimondstein

I'm a proud Jewish American. Jewish Americans should be the first to say “never again” when it comes to genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and when it comes to war crime. And we're not going to solve all the problems of the Middle East and the complicated history of the Middle East on this radio show. But let's at least be clear that the crimes committed against the Jewish people should never be allowed to be committed against anybody else—no matter who's doing it. 

Mark Dimondstein

Kamala Harris sent her two closest advisors to Wall Street about a month ago to get advice on her economic and tax policies and not connecting with the Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a progressive proposal. She doesn't connect with citizen groups. She goes around campaigning with Liz Cheney…It's quite amazing that the most popular incumbent elected politician in America today is Bernie Sanders…And she's ignoring Bernie Sanders and going into one state after another with people like Liz Cheney. 

Ralph Nader

Whatever happens next Tuesday, our work isn't done. The divisions that have been created by white supremacy, by this anti-immigrant fervor out here—these things aren't going away. Issues that divide workers instead of unite workers—the growing bigotry, the attack on women's rights to reproductive freedom and health, the attacks on voting rights—these are issues that are going to be here with whoever wins the election. So the working people and the trade union movement have a lot of work to do, whatever the outcome.

Mark Dimondstein

James Bamford is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker for PBS, award-winning investigative producer for ABC News, and winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting for his writing in Rolling Stone on the war in Iraq. He is the author of several books, including Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence.

The reason I wrote [my article] was because people read about the bombs blowing up schools and refugee camps and hospitals and killing scores and scores, hundreds, thousands of people… But few people realized that it's middle America, largely, that’s building the bombs, sending the bombs, and the American taxpayers are paying for the bombs. All the Israelis are doing is dropping the bombs.

James Bamford

I think the only way is international pressure. I wrote about this in my last book, that the only thing that you can ever do to affect Israel is to have an international boycott sanction. We have to treat it like the worst country on earth. That's what happened with South Africa. That's what stopped apartheid—once they couldn't buy anything.

James Bamford

RECOGNIZING TIME-PRESSURED HEADLINE WRITERS’ CONTRIBUTIONS TO READERS

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 10/30/24

1. A crisis is unfolding at the Washington Post following billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to block the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In a statement signed by 21 opinion columnists at the Post, they write “The…decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake.” Signatories include Karen Attiah, E.J. Dionne, and Dana Milbank among many others. Since the publication of that statement, two opinion writers have resigned: David Hoffman, who has written for the Post since 1982 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize just last week, as well as technology columnist Molly Roberts. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan also resigned his position at the paper. This from Semafor. Responding to the outcry, Bezos himself published an op-ed in the paper arguing that Americans see the news media as too politicized already and an official endorsement would merely make matters worse. As of October 29th, over 200,000 Washington Post readers, nearly 10% of the total readership, have canceled their subscriptions, per NPR.

2. Like the Washington Post, the LA Times also opted not to endorse Kamala Harris. Similar backlash followed, with the New York Times reporting “Thousands of readers canceled subscriptions. Three members of the editorial board resigned. Nearly 200 staff members signed an open letter to management demanding an explanation, complaining that the decision this close to the election had undermined the news organization’s trust with readers.” Nika Soon-Shiong, the activist daughter of LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, publicly stated “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process…As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” Per Vanity Fair however, her father disputes this narrative, saying “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion…She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.” The murkiness of these circumstances has left readers with many questions that likely will not be answered until well after the election.

3. According to Slate, “Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [last] Saturday…According to Trump, the Israeli leader said he disregarded President Joe Biden’s warning to keep troops out of Rafah in southern Gaza.” In other words, Trump is conducting foreign policy independent of the sitting president, a flagrant violation of the Logan Act and the Constitution itself. This collusion between Trump and Netanyahu is reminiscent of the Nixon campaign’s collusion with the South Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam War and thereby undermine the Hubert Humphrey campaign and similarly, the Reagan campaign’s collusion with Iran to prolong the hostage crisis. Yet again however, it seems unlikely that there will be any consequences to this open criminal activity.

4. Reuters reports that on Monday, Israel formally banned the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza since this campaign of slaughter began is quoted saying “If UNRWA is unable to operate, it'll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza…So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.” Reuters reports “over 13,300 children whose identities have been confirmed have been killed” in Gaza, while “Many more are believed to have died from diseases due to a collapsing medical system and food and water shortages.”

5. The Muslim Mirror reports “In a landmark diplomatic move, Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected President of Mexico and the country’s first Jewish head of state, officially recognized the State of Palestine.” Sheinbaum is quoted saying “Today, Mexico reaffirms its commitment to human rights and justice for all. Recognizing Palestine is a step toward peace and a signal to the international community that the Palestinian people deserve dignity, statehood, and the right to self-determination.” Neither the United States nor Canada recognize the State of Palestine.

6. Over 20,000 workers have lost their lives working on Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030 project, per the Hindustan Times. These workers, almost exclusively migrants, say they feel like “trapped slaves” and “beggars,” and allege widespread exploitation including “unpaid wages, illegal working hours and human rights abuses.” While rumors of the workers mistreatment has been circulating for years now, a new ITV documentary has brought more attention to the issue in recent days. The deeply suspect NEOM mega-city project alone, which is just one aspect of Saudi Vision 2030, is expected to cost at least $500 billion.

7. BRICS, the loose multi-polar alliance of countries forming an alternative economic bloc to offset the United States, recently concluded their latest summit. Per Democracy Now!, the alliance voted to accept 13 more countries to the bloc, including Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These were chosen from nearly three-dozen applicants. The outpouring of applications indicates a substantial appetite for an economic alternative to the United States throughout much of the world.

8. On October 22nd, Congressman Ro Khanna re-introduced the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act, intended to curb the trend of private equity gobbling up housing stock across the country. The bill was first introduced in 2022, but the crisis has only grown since then. According to NOTUS, “In the first half of 2024, one in four ‘low-priced’ homes were purchased by investors…In that same time, the percentage of Americans with a ‘high degree of concern’ about housing costs rose to 69%.” If passed, this bill would raise taxes on home acquisitions by private equity firms that hold over $100 million in assets and “bar government-supported lenders from backing new mortgages for such purchases.” Both presidential campaigns have made housing a major issue on the trail, though only the Kamala Harris campaign has offered viable policy to address the crisis.

9. E&E News reports Argus Insight, a conservative research firm is “collecting information that could be used to discredit officials involved in a multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.” The suit, filed last year in Oregon, accuses “Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, McKinsey…and hundreds of other defendants of being responsible for a dayslong heat wave in 2021 that killed 69 people. Multnomah County, home to Portland, is seeking more than $51 billion to pay for damages from the tragedy and to prepare for future disasters.” It is unknown why exactly Argus is seeking this information, but experts speculate that they are “using the same tactics that the tobacco industry deployed against its critics decades ago.” Benjamin Franta, an Oxford professor of climate litigation, is quoted saying “The strategy is to ‘try to figure out who is helping to inform these cases and…discredit them in some way…If someone loses on the facts, they try to shoot the messenger.’”

10. Finally, the Popular Information Substack reports “On October 10…[Attorney General Merrick] Garland held a press conference and announced that TD Bank had illegally laundered over $670 million of drug money.” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo added “Time and again, unlike its peers, TD Bank prioritized growth and profit over complying with the law.” Surely such a clear, textbook case of corporate criminality would result in criminal charges…except Garland and the DOJ brought no charges, instead settling for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement and a fine of $3 billion. Only two low-level employees were hit with criminal charges, despite clear evidence showing the involvement of high-level executives. Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the deal “This settlement lets bad bank executives off the hook for allowing TD Bank to be used as a criminal slush fund.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

As the Medicare enrollment period gets underway again, we welcome Dr. Adam Gaffney to remind us the ways all those heavily advertised Medicare Advantage programs are ripping you off. Then we receive another house call from Dr. Marty Makary, author of Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health about the effect of medical groupthink on all kinds of accepted treatments from peanut allergies to opioid addiction. Finally, founder of Media Matters, David Brock stops by to discuss his latest book, Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.

Dr. Adam Gaffney is a physician, writer, public health researcher, and advocate. Dr. Gaffney practices at the Cambridge Health Alliance and is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A member of the Cambridge Health Justice Lab, his research focuses on healthcare financing, reform, and equity, and disparities in lung health. He writes about the policy, politics, and history of health care, and is the author of To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History.

The reality is we don't need Medigap. We could plug those holes with public coverage. There's no reason to have a role for private insurers to cover a slice of our healthcare when all seniors need the same thing—which is comprehensive universal care.  There's no need for these private stopgap measures, when what we need is a public system of universal care.

Dr. Adam Gaffney

I do think there’s growing interest among physicians in change. Their bosses are increasingly these for-profit companies whose mission is not really medicine. Their mission is money. And what we need to do is to rethink our healthcare system, so it serves communities, is owned by communities, and it returns us to the underlying reason why we went into this profession—which is to help patients, and not to pad the pockets of shareholders.

Dr. Adam Gaffney

Dr. Marty Makary is a Johns Hopkins professor and member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, Unaccountable and The Price We Pay. Dr. Makary has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he has published more than 250 scientific research articles. He served in leadership at the W.H.O. and has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools. His latest book is Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.

For most of human history, doctors were respected, but maybe like you would respect your hairdresser, or maybe a clergy member in the community. And we didn't have many tools as doctors. We had a lancet, we had a saw to do amputations, we had a couple of drugs that didn't work or were counterproductive like digoxin. And then what happened in 1922 is Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. And by the post-World War II era in the 1940s and '50s, we saw the mass production of antibiotics. That ushered in the white coat era of medicine. Doctors began to wear a white coat. They now had the power to prescribe a magical pill that could cure disease, make childbirth safe, enable surgeons to do procedures safer. And this ushered in this new unquestioned authority. And what happened was, physicians as a class took advantage of this unquestioned authority.

Dr. Marty Makary

David Brock is a Democratic activist and founder of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group. Following the 2010 elections, Mr. Brock founded the Super PAC American Bridge, which works to elect Democrats. He is a New York Times best-selling author, and his books include the memoir Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, Killing the Messenger: The Right Wing Plot to Hijack Your Government, and his latest book is Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.

The Federalist Society was originally founded by three rightwing law students. And it was pitched as a debating society. So I don't think in the original incarnation, they had a master plan. But soon enough, they realized that membership in the Federalist Society could confer on people a certain imprimatur for appointments—and that's appointments not only to the federal judiciary, but all through the executive branch.

David Brock

The scheme to overturn Roe has been going on for all these decades. There were setbacks, of course, because there were times when Republican appointees ended up being independent—Sandra Day O 'Connor, for example, David Souter, for example—and the right was defeated in their effort to overturn Roe. So it took a while and it took a lot of steadfast, patient spending of money on their crusade.

David Brock

[This is] a time when the Biden regime is supporting the destruction of the ancient land of Lebanon— whom he's called in prior years an ally. He's letting Netanyahu destroy Lebanon with the same tactics that Netanyahu applied to the genocide in Gaza.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 10/23/24

1. Last week, Israel announced they had killed longtime Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. As NBC put it, the footage of his death released by Israel “showed Sinwar not hiding in a tunnel surrounded by hostages — as Israeli officials often claimed he was — but aboveground and hurling a stick at a drone with his last ounce of strength.” American political leaders, such as Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, are seeking to use Sinwar’s death to argue that Israel has accomplished its mission and should therefore conclude its genocidal campaign in Gaza. Israeli leaders however have made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of pulling out of Gaza, with Benny Gantz – chairman of Israel’s National Unity Party and among Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chief political rivals – stating that the Israeli military “will continue to operate in the Gaza Strip for years to come,” per Al Jazeera.

2. According to POLITICO, during an August 29th meeting in Washington Lise Grande, the top U.S. official working on the humanitarian situation in Gaza told the leaders of more than a dozen aid organizations that “the U.S. would not consider withholding weapons from Israel for blocking food and medicine from entering [Gaza].” It is illegal to block the delivery of humanitarian assistance under both American and international human rights law. As the paper notes, Grande’s “candid assessment…raises questions about the seriousness of recent Biden administration threats to [withhold arms].” One attendee told POLITICO “[Grande] was saying that the rules don’t apply to Israel.”

3. Meanwhile, Israel continues its war on the United Nations mission in Lebanon. On October 20th, UNIFIL released a statement saying “Earlier today, an IDF bulldozer deliberately demolished an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN position in Marwahin…The IDF has repeatedly demanded that UNIFIL vacate its positions along the Blue Line and has deliberately damaged UN positions. Despite the pressure being exerted on the mission and our troop-contributing countries…We will continue to undertake our mandated tasks.” UNIFIL added “Yet again, we note that breaching a UN position and damaging UN assets is a flagrant violation of international law and Security Council resolution 1701.”

4. In a frankly dystopian story from the United Kingdom, British counterterrorism police “raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley,” despite the fact that Winstanley has not been charged with any offense. Electronic Intifada reports the raid was conducted under sections 1 and 2 of the 2006 “Terrorism Act,” which deal with the “encouragement of terrorism.” Human Rights Watch has previously urged the British government to repeal the repressive provisions of the 2006 act noting that “the definition of the encouragement of terrorism offense is overly broad, raising serious concerns about undue infringement on free speech.” Electronic Intifada further notes “In August, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service issued a warning to the British public to ‘think before you post’ and threatening that it would prosecute anyone it deemed guilty of what it calls ‘online violence.’” Winstanley is the author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn and has been interviewed by the Capitol Hill Citizen.

5. According to the Libertarian magazine Reason, Bob Woodward’s new book War includes a passage about a “shockingly blunt conversation,” between President Biden and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham regarding “Biden's attempts to negotiate a ‘megadeal’ between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.” Per Reason “Graham reportedly said that only Biden could secure a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty, because it would ‘take a Democratic president to convince Democrats to vote to go to war for Saudi Arabia’” Biden’s response? “Let's do it.” Furthermore, reports indicate this security pact only fell apart after October 7th, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman seeing a prominent deal with Israel at that time as a major political liability. Reason cites an article from the Atlantic in January wherein Salman reportedly told Secretary of State Antony Blinken “Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don't, but my people do…Half my advisers say that the deal is not worth the risk. I could end up getting killed because of this deal.”

6. In more international news, the Cuban energy grid collapsed on Friday, under strain from Hurricane Oscar. The complete grid collapse left the entire country of 10 million without electricity, per NPR. Reuters reports that over the weekend, the grid failed three more times as authorities sought to restore power. Brasil de Fato, or BdF, a Brazilian socialist news service, reports China, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Barbados are offering support to Cuba amid the total blackout. BdF further reports “The Alba Movimientos platform, which brings together more than 400 organizations from 25 countries, issued a statement...[saying] ‘No one can attribute this virtual collapse of the Cuban electricity system to a specific measure by the US government – that would be too simplistic…this is’“the result of a long strategy of planned destruction of the material and spiritual living conditions of the Cuban population…with the financial resources denied to Cuba due to the blockade policy, 18 days of accumulated damages equal the annual cost of maintaining the country's electricity system.” According to the UN, the U.S. embargo cost Cuba $13 million US dollars per day between 2022 and 2023 alone.

7. A new scandal has rocked American Higher Education. Inside Higher Ed reports “Last week a lawsuit accused 40 colleges and universities, as well as the nonprofit College Board, of participating in a price-fixing conspiracy to jack up tuition rates” specifically, for children of divorced parents. The scheme itself had to do with consideration of the non-custodial parent’s income, but the larger issue at stake here is the fact that the universities entered into a “cartel” in violation of antitrust laws. As this piece notes this is the “second major price-fixing antitrust lawsuit filed against highly selective universities since 2022, when 17 institutions…were accused of illegally colluding to set common financial aid formulas. So far, 10 of those institutions have settled for a combined $248 million.”

8. Boeing has offered their striking machinists a new deal, which they hope will end their crippling strike. ABC reports “The new offer delivers a 35% raise over the four-year duration of the contract,” which is short of the 40% raise demanded by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers but considerably better than the aerospace titan’s previous offer of 25%. ABC continues “The proposal also hikes Boeing's contribution to a 401(k) plan, but it declines to fulfill workers' call for a reinstatement of the company's defined pension.” As this piece notes, the machinists overwhelmingly rejected Boeing’s previous offer last month; this week they will vote on the new proposal. Whatever the details of the final contract, this episode clearly demonstrates the power of a union, even going up against one of the most powerful corporations in America.

9. A stunning CNN investigation reveals the extent of predatory fundraising by the major parties off of elderly people suffering from dementia or other forms of cognitive decline in their old age. According to “More than 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups… deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans…into giving away millions of dollars.” These heartbreaking stories concern “Donors…often in their 80s and 90s…[including] retired public workers, house cleaners and veterans, widows living alone, nursing home residents…[with] money…from pensions, Social Security payments and retirement savings accounts meant to last decades.” To cite just one just one shocking example: “[an] 82-year-old woman, who wore pajamas with holes in them because she didn’t want to spend money on new ones, didn’t realize she had given Republicans more than $350,000 while living in a 1,000 square-foot Baltimore condo since 2020.”

10. Finally, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has sent a letter to Rodney McMullen, Chairman and CEO of Kroger, decrying the company’s “decision to roll out surge pricing using facial recognition technology.” Specifically, Tlaib cites concerns about price manipulation based on external factors like supply as well as discrimination based on race, gender, and other criteria determined through facial recognition. Tlaib ends this letter with six key questions, including “Will Kroger use…facial recognition to display targeted advertisements…?…What safeguards will be in pace?…[and] Are there plans to sell data collected in the store?” among others. Grocery prices continue to be a source of everyday economic hardship for working Americans and corporations are increasingly interested in surge pricing for essential goods. There is some comfort in knowing at least one member of Congress is concerned about this dangerous combination.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes back William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They'll discuss the Cost of War Project's latest reports on US military spending in support of Israel, and the humanitarian costs of the war in Gaza. Then, Ralph is joined by Palestinian writer and analyst Sumaya Awad to discuss the mass civil disobedience at the New York Stock Exchange, which was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace to protest the weapons manufacturers that are making millions off the genocide in Gaza.

William Hartung is an expert on the arms industry and US military budget, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War.

In all my years of watching the operations of Washington—including the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq—I have never seen such a servile position by top officials of an administration to a foreign power. Not even close. They are humiliating the United States of America. They are jeopardizing the United States of America—because as you know, the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA have studies and scenarios of blowback. So this war in the Middle East is gonna come back to the US in terms of reprisal and retaliation. And we are not able to anticipate that because we think, as the ruling empire in the world, that we're invulnerable. But we're not invulnerable.

Ralph Nader

The Biden administration is living in the past. They’ve got this “Israel, right or wrong” ideology. They think it's a political detriment to criticize Israel, and the fact that the younger generation is not locked into that point of view. But I think they’re going to hurt themselves more by enabling the war crimes that Israel is committing than they would by taking a stand. And of course, they keep trying to say that they're pushing for a ceasefire…But as long as they're doing the weapons and the financing, that is laughable.

William Hartung

It's just stunning. Given the record of this century—two failed wars, $8 trillion spent, hundreds of thousands killed—and yet they could say with a straight face, “We need a dominant military.” As if that’s the tool that's gonna solve any of these problems, rather than make them worse.

William Hartung

Sumaya Awad is a Palestinian writer and analyst based in New York City, and she is the spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace’s mass civil disobedience event at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Awad directs strategy and communications for the Adalah Justice Project, and she is a cofounder of the Against Canary Mission Project, which defends student activists targeted by blacklists for their Palestinian rights advocacy. She is the co-author of Palestine and Elections and co-editor of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction.

There were over 200 arrests—the majority of them anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorkers, who want to send a clear message both to the US government and the American people that Israel weaponizes their identity in order to justify crimes against humanity and that they are not okay with this. That they refuse for their identity and Jewish people to be weaponized in this way. And that in fact, what Israel is doing and what the US government is funding and politically backing is actively making this country and certainly the rest of the world unsafe not just for Jewish people, but for others.

Sumaya Awad

We are strategizing about how to push back against the role of AIPAC and the grip of AIPAC. I think the reality is that there are many people in Congress that are actually benefiting financially from what is happening in Gaza. We know that at least 50 members of Congress have links to the military-industrial complex—whether that's through stocks or other things. And so it's about unraveling this network, these connections between our government, the way it's profiting from the genocide and then what that means in terms of these elections across the country.

Sumaya Awad

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 10/16/24

1. The Israeli government is finally dropping the facade that the genocide in Gaza is about ‘returning the hostages.’ Haaretz reports “According to senior defense officials, the Israeli government is not seeking to revive hostage talks and the political leadership is pushing for the gradual annexation of large parts of the Gaza Strip.” Not only that, apparently “Israel's political leaders have not held any discussions with the various security branches about the condition of the hostages.” In other words, Israel clearly does not care about the hostages at all and are simply using them as political props to prolong their campaign of terror. In addition, the AP reports “Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza,” and if Palestinians are unable or unwilling to leave their homes, they “would be considered combatants — meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them.” Last weekend, Israel launched an offensive against the Jabaliya refugee camp, resulting in gruesome footage of Palestinians burnt alive while still connected to IV tubes in field hospital tents.

2. Responding to a report by NBC, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), is sounding the alarm that “US officials have discussed joining Israel in offensive strikes against Iran, and passing them off as ‘defensive’ after the fact.” As Just Foreign Policy notes, this would not only violate the War Powers Resolution, but “Unnamed US officials” are seeking to circumvent the debate and Congressional vote required for such an act under the Constitution. Now the question becomes whether the American empire will allow itself to be drawn into a rapidly escalating regional war based on Israel’s aggression.

3. On October 10th, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reported “This morning, two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall. The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital.” Beyond this attack, UNIFIL also reports that the IDF fired on the UN positions in Labbouneh and Ras Naqoura, ending by writing “Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and of Security Council resolution 1701.”

4. On October 8th, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal released a statement decrying the lack of action by the organs of U.S. foreign policy regarding the killing of American citizen Aysenur Eygi in the West Bank. Jayapal writes “It has been 32 days…and we have seen no movement toward an independent investigation by the U.S. government and no additional information on changes in the practices of the…IDF…units that are using live ammunition on those who are peacefully protesting…I am frankly appalled…If the Israeli government is unwilling or unable to follow our own domestic laws as well as international humanitarian laws…we must initiate our own investigation into Eygi’s killing.”

5. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn and the parliamentary Independent Alliance have sent a letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy expressing their “disgust over the government’s complicity in one of the greatest crimes of our lifetime.” This letter goes on to explain how “the government could have...opposed the genocide in Gaza. It could have ended military, economic and diplomatic support...[and] defended the equal application of international law. Instead, the failure to bring Israel to justice emboldened it to kill thousands of people in Lebanon and now, wage war on the UN.” The letter then asks a series of questions to the British government, including “what red lines, if any, does Israel have to cross for the government to end its diplomatic and political support?” and “does the UK government oppose genocide?”

6. In a humiliation for Elon Musk, Forbes reports that Tesla stock slid by nearly $70 billion following the “sour” reaction to the company’s unveiling of their absurd new products including a “robotaxi” and “Optimus” humanoid robots. In fact, disappointment in Tesla’s “cybercab” was so acute that Uber shares spiked by 11% and Lyft’s by 10%. Another story signaling that Tesla is vastly overvalued comes from the Orange County Register, which reports the Irvine Police Department spent over $150,000 on the first ever police Cybertruck. What is the department planning to use this eye-wateringly expensive boondoggle for? According to this report “the department does not plan to use the truck for patrols. The Cybertruck will…principally be driven by DARE officers to schools.”

7. According to USA Today, “A study from the University of California Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment found that a California state law [which] raised the minimum wage for fast food workers did not lead to large job loses or price hikes.” The law in question, AB 1228 established a “$20 per hour minimum wage for those working at fast food restaurants with less than 60 locations nationwide and restaurants located inside airports, stadiums and convention centers. The law further gave employees stronger protections and the ability to bargain as a sector.” The study found that this law effectively raised average pay of these non-managerial employees by almost 18%, a truly remarkable margin, while prices went up only about 15 cents per $4 item. Hopefully this study will finally put an end to the old canard that raising wages for fast food workers leads to widespread job loss and price increases.

8. A depressing story from NPR exposes the US Department of Agriculture’s “Wildlife Services” program, described as “a holdover from the 1930s, when Congress gave the federal government broad authority to kill wildlife at the request of private landowners….So long as livestock or human life are threatened.” Employees of this program continue to kill “hundreds of thousands of noninvasive animals a year…Even species considered [endangered]…like grizzly bears.” Yet even within the broad mandate of this program, data shows “employees frequently kill native wild animals without evidence of livestock loss,” including 11,000 in Montana. The USDA and the Bureau of Land Management now face increasing calls to overhaul this outdated program.

9. Politiken, a prominent Danish newspaper, reports local harbormaster John Anker Nielsen encountered US Navy vessels at the scene of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage operation in 2022, per Al Mayadeen. Nielsen, the harbormaster of Christianso, told Politiken that in the days after the explosion he tried to initiate a rescue mission “after noticing ships with their transponders turned off and presuming an emergency.” Yet once they drew near, they discovered the vessels to be US Navy warships. According to Nielsen, “the Naval Command then instructed…[him] to turn back.” This report conforms to the narrative of the Nord Stream sabotage as presented by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and directly contradicts the narrative put forward by the U.S. government.

10. Finally, on October 11th the Democratic National Committee released what it claims is “its first-ever ad focused on third-party candidates,” per DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The ad features Green Party nominee Jill Stein grotesquely morphing into Donald Trump with dialogue arguing that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump.” As many have remarked, the DNC feeling the need to disseminate such an ad is an ill omen for their chances in the coming election, particularly in Michigan where recent polling shows Stein drawing 40% of Muslim voters, compared to 18% for Trump and just 12% for Kamala Harris, per Reuters. Of course, the DNC could instead direct their efforts to improving their standing with Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan – as well as young progressives throughout the country – by taking a stand against the ongoing genocide in Palestine, but then that isn’t really their style.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (retired) joins us once again to give his unvarnished view of the now yearlong ethnic cleansing of Gaza, an assault that has now extended into Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Plus, our resident constitutional expert, Bruce Fein stops by to give us a quick take on how U.S. material support of the Israeli aggression in Lebanon, an ally of ours, is a clear violation of The Neutrality Act.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum. 

The Jewish state in the Levant is finished. Now, if it wants to be a liberal democracy— if it wants to become a real democracy, it could possibly remain. But this Jewish state, especially in its current manifestation, which is the ultimate manifestation, has ended. It's through. The rest of the world, if nothing else, will terminate it just as it did the South African apartheid state. And it will happen—and it will happen despite the Empire's (The U.S.) protestations to the contrary. In fact, I predict ultimately when the Empire smells the tea leaves, it will probably join the crowd and tell them they have no choice but to be a liberal democracy—to invite what that means, which is ultimately a Palestinian Arab majority, and to even change their name to Israel-Palestine or Palestine-Israel or whatever. That's the future. The future is not Bibi Netanyahu.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Netanyahu talks about Joshua who moved on after Moses had given him instructions, and after the leadership had sort of fallen apart, and Joshua takes over. And they go in, and under God's instructions they are to kill everything in sight— leave no human being alive. And that's Netanyahu. Netanyahu thinks he's a latter-day Joshua, and that's what they're doing. They brought a thousand years of history's most rude, most bloodthirsty, most unbelievable procedures in waging war against another state or another people back into vogue again. And we're supporting it.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

The Neutrality Act of 1794 in substance prohibits anyone in the United States from directing or supplying arms or assistance— or otherwise engaging in war—that is against a country with which the United States is formally at peace. The United States at present is at peace with Iran. It's at peace with Lebanon. Indeed, Lebanon's an ally. We already know that President Biden had ordered Navy ships to use their Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense in collaboration with Israel to shoot down Iranian missiles—an act of war. And now they basically said we are combatants with Israel and probably planning covertly to join military forces on the next initiative that Israel takes against Iran. So it's a clear violation of the Neutrality Act.

Bruce Fein

Listeners, you have your Senators and Representatives campaigning, as we speak, in your communities. You ask them to come to your town meetings where they can hear you out, and where you require them to respond. This is their moment of vulnerability before the election.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 10/9/24

1. In These Times reports “U.S. Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists.” This piece, based on interviews with 18 Jewish professionals at 16 different Jewish organizations over several months, yielded descriptions of “being fired, quitting under pressure, or seeing their roles disappear since October 7 for issues surrounding criticism of Israel or support for a permanent cease-fire.” The magazine identifies this trend as part of “a radical rightward turn in mainstream Jewish organizational life over the past year...[where] Support for Israel and its government’s assault on Gaza appear to have become a defining feature of employability.” Shaul Magid, who teaches modern Judaism at Harvard Divinity School is quoted saying “More than an exercise in pro-Israel muscle, this is…an act of desperation. The liberal Zionist center is collapsing.”

2. In a statement, the Hind Rajab Foundation – named for the five year-old girl killed by Israeli forces – has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing 1,000 Israeli soldiers of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza.” The statement goes on to say “These individuals, all of whom have been identified by name, are accused of participating in systematic attacks against civilians during the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” examples of which include destruction of civilian infrastructure, illegal occupation and looting, and use of inhumane warfare tactics, among others. The Foundation alleges that this complaint is supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence, including “videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media documentation.”

3. In a clash of the fast food titans, the Washington Post reports McDonald’s has filed a lawsuit against Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS and National Beef Packing alleging that the meat packing giants engaged in a “conspiracy…to fix, raise, stabilize and/or maintain the price of beef…at supra-competitive levels — that is, prices artificially higher than beef prices would have been in the absence of their conspiracy.” In this complaint, McDonald’s alleges that “the price per hundred pounds of cattle had historically stayed within $20 to $40 of the average price per hundred pounds of wholesale beef…. [but] By 2021, the difference had ballooned to $156.50.” The meatpackers have been under increasing scrutiny for the past several years. “In 2020, the Justice Department…sent subpoenas to the four meatpackers in an antitrust probe. A year later, nearly 30 members of Congress sent...a letter, suggesting it was time ‘to determine whether the stranglehold large meatpackers have over the beef processing market violate our antitrust laws and principles of fair competition,’” and in 2022, JBS agreed to a $52.5 million settlement with direct purchasers.

4. In the final days before the 2024 election, Republicans are launching a full-scale assault on the regulatory state. The National Review reports House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer is opening an investigation into Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, accusing her of politicizing the agency by appearing at events with progressive lawmakers. These events have centered on policy – an event in Texas with Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar was focused on “corporate power and worker freedom,” while others have dealt with grocery prices, health care, and price gouging, per Punchbowl News – but Comer is alleging that these events were political in nature and thus prohibited by the Hatch Act. Meanwhile Mark Joseph Stern reports “Fourteen Republican attorneys general are suing to block a new [Federal Communications Commission] rule that would prohibit prisons from charging inmates extortionist rates for phone and video calls,” which can cost as much $54 each. It seems unlikely that these attacks on consumer protection rules will deliver political dividends for Republicans come November.

5. In another bizarre GOP misstep, Indiana Senator Mike Braun recently said “the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to legalize interracial marriage in…1967,” and that the decision should have “instead been left to individual states,” FOX59 Indianapolis reports. Braun then tied himself in knots saying that he condemned “racism in any form” but maintained that “We’re better off having states manifest their points of view.” The Indiana Democratic Party condemned Braun’s statements, calling his rhetoric “an endorsement of…dangerous white nationalist views.”

6. Airline Geeks reports “Boeing has cut health care coverage for 33,000 of its workers and their families as [the] machinists union strikes continue to halt production in the Pacific Northwest.” International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers International President Brian Bryant responded to this clear attempt at strikebreaking by saying “Boeing executives cannot make up their mind…One day they say they want to win back the trust of their workforce. The next moment…Boeing executives are…tripping over dollars to get pennies by cutting a benefit that is essential to the lives of children and families, but is nothing compared to the cost of the larger problems Boeing executives have created …over the last ten years. Their missteps are costing not just the workers but our nation.” The Machinists have been on strike since September 13th, and Bryant said “Our members continue to be strong in their resolve and will not settle for anything but a fair contract that recognizes and rewards the critical and dedicated work they perform.”

7. According to Documented NY, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has run a secretive program for years where ICE agents have trained hundreds of civilian volunteers on how to operate multiple types of firearms, conduct investigations and surveillance of immigrants, and use lethal force on human beings.” Documents from this quasi-fascist program, revealed via FOIA request on October 1st, include “detailed images showing where to strike with a baton or a weapon to cause differentiated harms on the body…presentations on how to shoot a gun, point at targets, and stand in positions to fire…[with] One presentation slide suggest[ing] yelling ‘drop the gun’ as a potential cover when employing lethal force against someone.” Ian Head, Open Records project manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights, calls this “a violent and racist program, where people pretending to be violent ICE officers got to hold guns and fire them in role-play situations where agents pretended to be immigrants.”

8. More fascist news comes to us from Canada, where the Ottawa Citizen reports “The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.” Documents show the department had already determined that 50 to 60 of the names or organizations were directly linked to the Nazis. As the article notes, “The memorial was supposed to be unveiled in November 2023 but…was put on hold after members of Parliament honoured Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian soldier with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis. That incident became an international embarrassment for Canada.”

9. In more positive news from our Southern neighbor, incoming Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced a new “Health at Home” program for seniors and persons with disabilities, per Latina Republic. The program, intended to reach 13.6 million people, “will bring healthcare personnel to the homes of all seniors across the country,” starting with a census to collect comprehensive health data to “establish a personalized care plan,” to be performed by over 20,000 new doctors and nurses. This ambitious program of preventative medicine is unimaginable in this country despite boasting a GDP almost 20 times the size of Mexico’s.

10. Finally, in Nebraska, a new poll from the Independent Center finds Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne leading two-term incumbent Republican Deb Fischer by a remarkable 5 points. Currently the candidates stand at 42% for Fischer, 47% for Osborne, with 10% undecided. Voter registration in Nebraska totals 49% Republican, 26% Democrat, and 25% Independent, meaning Osborne has a path to victory via a Democratic-Independent coalition. If successful, Osborne could provide a model for victory in red states: run as a left-wing populist and jettison the toxic Democratic Party brand.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

First on today's show, Ralph welcomes back Dr. Bandy Lee to discuss her recent conference, "The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership—The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump". Then, Ralph is joined by Professor Ted Postol to talk about the missiles and rockets (and other weapons) being used in the expanding war(s) in the Middle East. 

[Nadia Milleron] went down to Springfield, the state capitol, and met with every assembly member, saying—for future wrongful death, you should give people in Illinois the opportunity to file for punitive damages against these corporate defendants, or other similarly-positioned defendants. And she got it through—it was considered impossible to beat Boeing, and she got it through and the governor signed it. That's the determination of a parent who loses a child to corporate crime

Ralph Nader

Dr. Bandy Lee is a medical doctor, a forensic psychiatrist, and a world expert on violence who taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years before joining the Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law. She is currently president of the World Mental Health Coalition, an educational organization that assembles mental health experts to collaborate with other disciplines for the betterment of public mental health and public safety. She is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul.

Let me clarify that there's a distinction among the evaluations that mental health experts do—one is diagnostic, the other is functional. And the diagnostic exam is the one that mental health professionals have no business doing on a public figure because that's what you do in private therapy sessions, and you diagnose someone in order to outline their course of treatment. But a functional assessment is something you do for the public—and that includes unfitness or dangerousness—and these kinds of comments are not only permitted, they are part of our societal responsibility because we are responsible not just for private individual patients, but for the public, for society.

Dr. Bandy Lee

Donald Trump is not an isolated phenomenon. He is a product of the system that has come before him and he is an accelerator of the dangers that succeed him. I do not believe that a Biden presidency would have been this dangerous without a Trump presidency preceding him. 

Dr. Bandy Lee

Ted Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. He previously worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations. In 2016, he received the Garwin Prize from the Federation of American Scientists for his work in assessing and critiquing the government’s claims about missile defenses.

I do not want to appear like I don't think it matters, but at the same time, it's been provoked to the point that it's amazing that the Iranians have restrained themselves to this point. But the Iranians know that they're going to suffer heavy damage from Israel. They have not wanted to go to war. They have shown great wisdom and restraint in spite of the situation.

Ted Postol

What the Israelis want—this guy Netanyahu in particular, who I think is delusional besides being psychopath—what Netanyahu wants, he wants a decisive victory. Again, let me underscore that—a decisive victory against Iran and also Hezbollah and Gaza, these poor victims of his genocide in Gaza. He can't do that. He's going to kill God knows how many more people in his effort—which is already a crime against humanity that's beginning to look like the Holocaust—but he's not going to defeat Hezbollah in a decisive way. 

Ted Postol

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 10/2/24

1. ProPublica reports “The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance [USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration] concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.” Yet just days later, instead of acting upon this information, Secretary of State Antony Blinken misled Congress telling lawmakers “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance [to Gaza].” In USAID’s report, the agency laid out specific examples of Israeli interference, including “killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.” The State Department Refugee bureau separately concluded that “the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.” Yet because Blinken refused to accept these facts and instead opted to lie to Congress, the weapons pipeline to Israel continues to flow unimpeded. Some, including Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have called on Blinken to resign, per the Middle East Monitor.

2. On September 27th, Israel assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. According to NBC, the Israelis made this decision “after concluding [Nasrallah] would not accept any diplomatic solution to end the fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border that was not tied to an end to the war in Gaza.” Through this assassination, and the assassination of Hamas Political Bureau chairman Ismail Haniyeh earlier this year, Israel has made clear that they would rather resort to extrajudicial killings than negotiate an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israel now plans to invade Southern Lebanon, further escalating this conflict into a regional war, with the full backing of the United States.

3. Following the pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon, the office of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib issued a statement decrying that “The Biden-Harris administration continues to allow Netanyahu and the Israeli government to operate with impunity as they carry out war crimes. After facing no red line in Gaza…Netanyahu is now expanding his genocidal campaign to Lebanon…Deploying more U.S. troops and sending more U.S. bombs will only lead to more suffering and carnage. The...administration is capable of stopping the bloodshed. President Biden must implement an immediate arms embargo to end the slaughter and de-escalate the risk of a wider regional war.” Yet, far from de-escalating, the Biden administration has stood by while Netanyahu has escalated further, with increasing signs that the situation will tip over into a full-scale regional war between Israel and Iran. Dark days indeed could be ahead.

4. This week, Hurricane Helene cleaved a “500-mile path of destruction” stretching from Florida to the Southern Appalachians, per CNN. So far, the casualties include at least 128 dead and whole communities wiped off the map. Yet, this devastation is not limited merely to peoples’ homes and communities. In a darkly ironic twist, “Hurricane Helene's severe flooding [in Asheville, North Carolina] knocked offline the top tracker of U.S. and global climate data, including of extreme weather…The National Centers for Environmental Information,” or NCEI. According to the NCEI, “Even those who are physically safe are generally without power, water or connectivity,” per Axios. And just outside Atlanta, Vox reports “Amid the devastation and mass flooding…A chemical fire [at BioLab] released a massive plume of potentially toxic gasses into the air.” Officials issued a shelter-in-place order Sunday evening covering Rockdale County, home to around 90,000 people. EPA testing detected signs of chlorine gas in the air. Fulton County, which includes parts of Atlanta, has reported “a haze and strong chemical smell.”

5. Last week, the International Trade Union Confederation published a report accusing “Some of the world’s largest companies of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights.” This report specifically names Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore. This report cites a litany of damning acts by these corporations – ranging from union busting and environmental degradation to funding of far-right and anti-indigenous movements around the globe – but makes the fundamental point that “This is about power, who has it, and who sets the agenda. …They’re playing the long game, and it’s a game about shifting power away from democracy at every level into one where they’re not concerned about the effects on workers – they’re concerned about maximizing their influence and their extractive power and their profit…Now is the time for international and multi-sectoral strategies, because these are, in many cases, multinational corporations that are more powerful than states, and they have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized.” Per the Guardian, “the ITUC includes labor group affiliates from 169 nations…representing 191 million workers…the federation is pushing for an international binding treaty…to hold transnational corporations accountable under international human rights laws.”

6. Yet, although these corporations are being called out for their role in undermining democracy, the Biden administration is granting many of them large sums of money via the newly announced “Partnership for Global Inclusivity on AI.” According to the State Department, this partnership will bring together the Department of State, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI to “promote inclusivity, respect for human rights, digital solidarity, and equitable access to the benefits of AI globally.” As the American Prospect’s Luke Goldstein notes, every single one of the companies listed are currently facing lawsuits or are under investigation by either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, and two of these corporations were clients of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s during his time as a consultant at WestExec Advisors. And in California, Variety reports Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a bill that “sought to ward off catastrophic risks of highly advanced [AI] models…[that] could be used to develop chemical or nuclear weapons.” This bill was strongly supported by SAG-AFTRA.

7. A new article in the Atlantic makes the case that “Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake.” On a previous program we discussed how the “widespread legalization of sports gambling over the past five years has [led to a] roughly 28% increase in bankruptcies and an 8% increase in debt transferred to debt collectors,” along with substantial increases in auto loan delinquencies and use of debt consolidation loans. Beyond the financial damages however, this piece cites a new University of Oregon study that found in places where sports gambling is legalized, a loss by the home NFL team increases intimate partner violence by approximately 10%. As Deseret News put the question, “If, after six years, a law was discovered to be encouraging domestic violence while causing people, especially the poor, to lose what little money they could put toward savings, what would be the correct next step?”

8. On September 24th, the Federal Trade Commission took action against Invitation Homes, the country’s largest landlord of single-family homes, for “an array of unlawful actions against consumers, including deceiving renters about lease costs, charging undisclosed junk fees, failing to inspect homes before residents moved in, and unfairly withholding tenants’ security deposits when they moved out.” The FTC complaint cites a 2019 email from Invitation Homes’ CEO “calling on the senior vice president responsible for overseeing the company’s fee program to ‘juice this hog’” by making additional fees mandatory for renters. This action comes as “Democrats Are Torn Between Donors and Their Base,” over the high-profile FTC Chair Lina Khan, Wired reports. While many billionaire Democratic donors have publicly called for Khan’s ouster, polling shows around “80 percent of Democrats feel that the government should be doing more to take on corporate monopolies, compared to only 3 percent who say it should be doing less...[and] Nearly 90 percent of Democrats…feel that lobbyists and corporate executives hold too much power over the government.” To his credit, powerful House Democrat Jim Clyburn recently defended Khan when asked whether she should be fired, saying “… fired for what? For doing [her] job?…I suspect that people who represent Invitation Homes may want her to be replaced by somebody who would not do their [job],” per the Huffington Post.

9. POLITICO Europe has published a shocking exposé documenting “the atrocities carried out during the summer of 2021 by a [Mozambican] commando unit led by an officer who said his mission was to protect ‘the project of Total.’” The “Total” in question being TotalEnergies, the French energy titan operating an enormous liquid natural gas plant in the Southeast African country. According to this report, “villagers had been caught in the crossfire between the Mozambican army and ISIS-affiliated militants. Having fled their homes, they had gone to seek the protection of government soldiers. Instead…[t]he soldiers accused the villagers of being members of the insurgency. They separated the men — a group of between 180 and 250 — from the women and children. Then they crammed their prisoners into… shipping containers…hitting, kicking and striking them with rifle butts. The soldiers held the men in the containers for three months. They beat, suffocated, starved, tortured and finally killed their detainees. Ultimately, only 26 prisoners survived.” Beyond this horrific massacre, this piece investigates the complex relationship between the Mozambican government, the Islamist insurgency, and French energy interests operating in Mozambique.

10. Finally, on the eve of the inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s incoming president and the first ever Jewish head of state in North America, tensions are mounting between the country and its northern neighbor, the United States. On his way out, popular left-wing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, has declared a Yucatán port owned by Alabama-based Vulcan Materials a nature reserve in a move that the company is calling “expropriation.” According to Reuters, the company has quarried limestone in Mexico for over three decades and AMLO has long criticized their activities as environmentally damaging. AMLO also offered offered up to 7 billion pesos or $362 million for the land, but Vulcan rejected the offer. In response to AMLO’s move, Republican Senators Katie Britt of Alabama and John Cornyn of Texas sent a letter “threatening Mexico with ‘crushing consequences’ if the incoming Administration of Claudia Sheinbaum,” doesn’t reverse this decision, per José Díaz Briseño of Reforma. This vague saber rattling raises the question, voiced by decorated journalist Ryan Grim, “Are Senate Republicans threatening some kind of coup”?

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Middle East expert and executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi, to fill us in on the consequences of Israel boobytrapping pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and how those tactics have the potential to blow back on us in the United States. Then we welcome back surgeon and humanitarian, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who has worked in Gaza during the Israeli assault, to update us on his efforts to get the Biden Administration to convince Israel to stop the killing. 

Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the co-founder and former President of the National Iranian American Council. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East, and has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, where he served in the Security Council, handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan, and Western Sahara, and in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Iraq. He has authored three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel— Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.

We're in a very sad situation in which we have a president who has been sitting on the front lines of American foreign policy for one-fifth of America's history, who thinks that he knows everything best, and clearly doesn't seem to be listening to anyone. And there's plenty of discontent inside the Biden administration itself—and people appear to have just given up and are waiting for the elections—but there's no clear signs yet that there won't necessarily be much of a change even after that.

Trita Parsi

Let's first remember that if any other entity had done this to Israel—or to us—we would not have hesitated for a second. We would have called it an act of terrorism, and we would have called it an act of war.

Trita Parsi

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma and critical care surgeon as well as a Northern California Veterans Affairs general surgeon, and he is Associate Professor of Surgery at the California Northstate University College of Medicine. Dr. Sidhwa served at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in March and April of this year, and he has done prior humanitarian work in Haiti, the West Bank, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Dr. Sidhwa and 45 other American doctors and nurses who have served in Gaza recently sent a letter exhorting President Biden, VP Harris, and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to effect an immediate ceasefire.

It's hard to appreciate, but really literally everything in Gaza that makes a place a society has been destroyed. I think of it in three levels— at the very base is agriculture, food production, and housing, at the level above that is healthcare, and at the level above that is things that are for a higher level of society, education, arts, industry, whatever. That top level is gone. Literally every university in Gaza has been obliterated, physically destroyed…The hospital system is almost completely useless right now…the functionality of the hospitals is very little more than a four walled space in which people can walk into and ask for a doctor to put bandages on them. And then even the lowest level…something like 85 or 90 % of the water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

This is just outrageous. I mean, why are we doing this even to ourselves? Is it worth corrupting the entire executive department of the United States so that we can murder more children? Is that what Americans want? I don't think so.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Let's talk about Lebanon itself, not just Hezbollah. This is war on Lebanon—that has a dysfunctional government, to be sure— but it is a state that the U.S. is allied with in a way, supplying modest weapons to the Lebanese army, and France has had long relations with Lebanon going back to the mandate period. In the U.S., this is a whole new constituency where they're losing relatives and friends.

Ralph Nader

More links to the letter sent by Dr. Sidhwa and his colleagues:

To Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada

To Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the UK

How to email the President

How to call the President

Write or Call the White House

In Case You Didn’t Hear with Francesco DeSantis

News 9/25/24

1. On September 11th, Senator Patty Murray and Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding “an immediate, transparent, credible, and thorough independent U.S. investigation…into the killing of [Ayşenur] Eygi,” the American citizen murdered by Israeli forces during a protest in the West Bank. Senator Murray and Representative Jayapal both represent Washington state, where Ms. Eygi attended university. In this letter, Murray and Jayapal also list the numerous American citizens killed by Israeli soldiers even before the current explosion of tensions in the region, ranging from Rachel Corrie in 2003 to Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022. Senator Bernie Sanders echoed this call in his own statement on September 13th. Despite this pressure, the administration has not launched an investigation. The government of Turkey however – where Ms. Eygi was born, though she moved the United States when she was less than a year old – will pursue charges against Israel in the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, Reuters reports.

2. The Intercept reports that the Uncommitted Movement will not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. In their official statement, the Movement leaders write “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.” Harris proved unwilling to even meet with the Uncommitted leaders. This cold shoulder could have disastrous consequences, particularly in Michigan where Uncommitted garnered over 100,000 votes in the Democratic primaries.

3. Boeing is again in crisis. On September 20th, the New York Post reported that the chief of the company’s space unit, Ted Colbert, had been ousted after Boeing’s Starliner capsule left astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore stranded on the International Space Station. This comes amid a massive strike by Boeing machinists, 96% of whom voted in favor of the strike per Ryan Simms of KOMO News. The New York Post adds that Boeing’s shares have lost over 40% of their value so far this year.

4. In more union related news, on September 18th, the Congressional Workers Union announced that “staff in the Office of Congressman Mark Pocan and Congresswoman Val Hoyle secured the first-ever Memorandums of Understanding…between congressional staff and their members.” These MOUs include salary increases, back pay, and immediate cost-of-living adjustments. The union will continue to press for the first ever Congressional office collective bargaining agreement.

5. On September 12th, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “filed a proposed order against student loan servicer Navient for its years of failures and lawbreaking.” If approved by the court, this order would permanently “remove Navient from a market where it, among other illegal actions, steered numerous student loan borrowers into costly repayment options…illegally deprived student borrowers of opportunities to enroll in more affordable income-driven repayment plans and forced them to pay much more than they should have.” Additionally, Navient would be forced to pay out $100 million to harmed borrowers, on top of a $20 million penalty. CFPB Director Rohit Chopra is quoted saying “For years, Navient’s top executives profited handsomely by exploiting students and taxpayers…By banning the notorious student loan giant from federal student loan servicing and ensuring the winddown of these operations, the CFPB will finally put an end to the years of abuse.” Navient, formerly Sallie Mae, is described as “a repeat offender with a long history of regulatory violations,” and when the CFPB first took legal action against the company in 2017, it was the largest student loan servicer in the country.

6. More Perfect Union’s Jordan Zakarin reports the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Starbucks illegally closed all three of its Ithaca, New York locations and that the NLRB “ordered that those stores be re-opened, with the unionized staff re-hired and given 16 months of backpay.” Yet, Zakarin notes that because this was decided by an administrative law judge, Starbucks can and more than likely will appeal this decision. This case starkly exemplifies why the capitalist class feels so threatened by the newly reinvigorated NLRB.

7. A deeply disturbing story sheds light on sexual assault by CIA officers in postings around the world. The AP reports Brian Jeffrey Raymond, a longtime CIA agent, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for drugging, photographing, and sexually assaulting more than two dozen women in postings around the globe. Yet Raymond’s case is just the tip of the iceberg. “[A]nother veteran CIA officer faces…charges in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her during a drunken party in the office…Still another former CIA employee…is scheduled to face a jury trial next month on charges he assaulted a woman…at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. That case emboldened some two dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress with accounts of their own of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend are the CIA’s efforts to silence them.” Tellingly, even Raymond’s own attorneys contended that his “quasi-military” work at the CIA in the years following 9/11 contributed to his “emotional callousness [and] objectification of other people,” that led to his preying upon women. It is well worth remembering that, once set in motion, dehumanization is not easily stopped.

8. Amid an expansive corruption probe in New York City, Gothamist reports just how much the NYPD is receiving in overtime pay in the subway; whereas last year, this slice of overtime pay totaled $4 million in taxpayer money, this year it has ballooned to $155 million, a nearly 4,000% increase. Meanwhile the Mayor continues to slash budgets for essential city services, such as libraries.

9. Rolling Stone reports the Crypto lobby is spending gargantuan sums of money to take out Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown – reportedly $32 million by the end of September, or $800,000 per day. Aware that their cause is unpopular, they are not running pro-Crypto ads, but instead spots that say his opponent will stop “illegal immigrants from taking Ohio’s tax dollars.” As Luke Goldstein of the American Prospect puts it “Dems are getting played like a fiddle by crypto; Schumer caved to their demands to stop the bleeding and then crypto PACs said thanks we’re still dropping $32 mil in OH to knock out your senate majority.”

10. Finally, in a story featuring a dizzying array of the worst things imaginable, Bloomberg reports “The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft…as the tech titan seeks…electricity for data centers to power [AI].” This story notes that “one of the site’s two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst…nuclear accident” in American history, but Constellation Energy is “planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn’t compete economically.” In other words, Microsoft is dumping money into a defunct nuclear power plant that has proven to be unsafe for the sole purpose of powering AI that has no proven benefits. Corporate greed caused a catastrophe at Three Mile Island before. Corporate hubris could easily cause another.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes back Hassan El-Tayyab, the Legislative Director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation to talk about the FCNL's recent lobbying efforts in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the recently-introduced bill to restore funding to UNRWA. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist Rachel Corbett to discuss her recent article for the NY Times Magazine "The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down" about Próspera, the private, for-profit city off the coast of Honduras. Finally, our resident international-law expert Bruce Fein stops by to discuss Israel's recent coordinated attacks in Lebanon. 

Hassan El-Tayyab is Legislative Director for Middle East policy and Advocacy Organizer at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Previously, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he worked to reassert Congressional war authority and promote human rights in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition’s war in Yemen. 

I've been reading a recent statement that the Friends Committee has put out on the Gaza situation. They just can't seem to keep up with the massive expansion of Israeli state terrorism and the death and destruction that's being wrought on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, families, children, mothers, fathers, and the civilian infrastructure. [Their] effort on Capitol Hill—which is a longstanding feature of the Friends Committee on Legislation—seems hopelessly overwhelmed by the AIPAC-led Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby.

Ralph Nader

We try to find common ground. As you know, the Quaker way is to believe that there's a spirit and light in everybody—whether we agree with them or not, we want to engage. And that's just a philosophy that we've had for over 80 years as an organization, and much longer than that as Quakers doing peace advocacy work going back hundreds of years. So we try to engage with everybody. Maybe we don't agree on the weapons shipments, but we can agree on sending US Navy hospital ships to the region. 

Hassan El-Tayyab

If we care about peace, we have to throw down for peace. And not just support humanitarian aid, but actually get involved in the political end of this as well. Because we are spiraling. We're spiraling into a dark place if we don't get our act together.

Hassan El-Tayyab

Rachel Corbett is a journalist who has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and New York Magazine, among other publications. And she is the author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin which won the 2016 Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing.

On the one hand, you could almost laugh at something like this. There's so many silly anecdotes that come out of it. And on the other hand, it seems incredibly serious, like something that may be happening underneath the surface that has actually been intentionally happening underneath the surface. I think there's a concerted effort to keep things quiet while these cities get built and become almost too big to tear down… Although they're not that advanced, the sheer money behind them and the influence of the people behind them is serious, and this tribunal case alone proves it could have really serious effects on the actual world.

Rachel Corbett

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

There is no way that Israel was able to limit the distribution of the pages to Hezbollah, so they knew that they were taking a very high risk that civilians would be killed or injured—which is a violation of the Geneva Convention prohibition upon resorting to any military endeavor where the risk of harm to civilians is dramatically disproportionate to the military objective at issue.

Bruce Fein

Even with the low bar that many people present before the Biden administration, it is unsettling to see White House spokespeople day after day knowingly lying about Israel “complying with all laws.”

Ralph Nader

Ralph welcomes back Jack Dangermond, co-founder of Esri—Environmental Systems Research Institute, the leader in GIS mapping technology to open up his book, “The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges.” Then John R. MacArthur, journalist, author and publisher of Harper’s returns to discuss a recent study by neuroscientists that concluded that students absorb and retain information better on paper than they do on screens and what this means for the future of education and society as a whole.

Jack Dangermond is President of Esri—Environmental Systems Research Institute—and is recognized as one of the most influential people in the field of geographic information system—GIS—technology. Jack, along with his wife Laura, founded Esri in 1969. He is the author of The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges.

NatGeo Mapmaker

Geography is everything. It's what happens, when it happens, in some cases why it happens, but most importantly, where it happens.

Jack Dangermond

I believe geography and maps—the language of geography—are a new kind of way to understand the complexity of our world. Our world is complex. All these relationships—the world is hard to fathom. And using these interactive mapping tools, people can learn a lot in a short amount of time. They can see context, as well as all the content that they're learning in their various disciplines.

Jack Dangermond

Years ago, Jack called up and said—help us apply GIS to civic action, civic advocacy…We used GIS techniques, applied federal government data, and in a report we came out with in the 1990s—it was called “Racial Redlining: A Study Of Racial Discrimination By Banks And Mortgage Companies In The United States”—the map showed the worst-case lending pattern as prima facie evidence of unlawful discrimination against low-income areas in mortgage lending. And so, the applications for civic work still need a lot of attention. I don't think the potential has been reached anywhere near what it could be, especially as the field and the technology just explodes with innovation.

Ralph Nader

John R. MacArthur is the president of Harper’s, a journalist, and the author of several books, including Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War

Common sense tells you just instinctively—well, if somebody's looking at a page in a book or in a newspaper, there's less distractions and there's more focus on what you're actually reading, whereas on a screen you have a tendency to get distracted and the lighting is not good and so on and so forth. But now the obvious has been proven. And I get the sense that they're almost ashamed. They just don't want to address it. Or they're in so deep with big tech.

John R. MacArthur

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 9/11/24

1. Zeteo reports “Israeli forces allegedly shot and killed US citizen Ayşenur Eygi…at a demonstration in the West Bank village of Beita…The 26-year-old was there alongside other Americans who have been demonstrating against illegal settlement activity and providing a nonviolent protective presence for Palestinians…Ayşenur…was shot at the same weekly demonstration where American teacher and volunteer Amado Sison was shot last month.” This piece also notes that Eygi was in the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement, the same group that American activist Rachel Corrie was affiliated with when she was murdered by an IDF bulldozer in 2003. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken decried this incident as “unprovoked and unjustified,” saying “No one…should be shot and killed for attending a protest. No one should have to put their life at risk just for expressing their views,” per CNN. According to Yahoo News, President Biden has not talked to Eygi’s family, and neither he nor Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have issued a statement on Eygi’s death.

2. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was recently primaried by an AIPAC-backed challenger after being outspent a by margin of seven-to-one (per CNN), has issued a statement in light of the revelations that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sabotaged negotiations for a hostage and ceasefire deal in July. This statement reads “Netanyahu has continuously derailed negotiations and added new demands to stall for his own political benefit, with zero regard for the immense death toll and scale of human suffering…His goal is not to bring the hostages home or bring peace and safety to the region…Every life is precious and should be treated as such…My thoughts are with the families of the dead hostages, who have suffered an unimaginable loss, and with the people of Gaza, who are facing the horrors of genocide and being killed indiscriminately every day.”

3. Variety reports a group of prominent Hollywood actors are leading a new initiative to pressure the Biden administration to end illegal arms transfers to Israel. This new push, growing out of the Artists4Ceasefire collective, is led by Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Mahershala Ali, and Ilana Glazer. Ruffalo writes “Our demand is simple — our elected leaders must enforce existing U.S. and international humanitarian laws that prohibit the use of military assistance to commit ‘grave human rights violations.’” Nixon adds “Words without action will not end the unbearable suffering…Enough is enough. The global call for a permanent ceasefire — supported domestically by an overwhelming majority of Americans — must be answered.” Despite overwhelming public support for peace, advocating for Palestinian rights has been a dangerous proposition in Hollywood since October 7th, with “A top movie agent, an Oscar winner, and the star of Scream VII [having] all been demoted or fired for calling out Israel’s bombing of Gaza,” per Rolling Stone.

4. In a chilling story from our Northern neighbor, the Ottawa Citizen reports “The Ukrainian Canadian Congress says it plans to go to court to stop the federal government from making public the names of alleged Nazi war criminals who fled to [Canada].” As this piece explains, “At issue are documents created by a 1986 federal government war-crimes commission…One of the documents is titled ‘Master List of alleged war criminals resident in Canada… [including] names of alleged war criminals as well as Nazi scientists and technicians” who fled to the country. The total number is around 900. These records have been requested under Canada’s equivalent to the Freedom of Information Act. The government must now decide whether or not to disclose these names. According to this article, the Canadian government has consulted with leaders of Canada’s Ukrainian community, but not with Holocaust survivors or scholars.

5. In a major win for the Biden Treasury Department, the IRS announced last week that it has clawed back $1.3 billion from rich tax dodgers since last fall, per AP. Since 2023, the IRS has “launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing…taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.” According to officials, approximately 80% of the 1,600 tax delinquent millionaires have now made a payment.

6. More positive news comes to us from the union front. The Orlando Weekly’s McKenna Schueler reports “Florida's anti-union law, SB 256, has forced dozens of public sector unions to ask the state for recertification elections—and so far, they're all crushing it. Out of 26 elections with final results reported, workers in all but 1 have voted to keep their unions alive & intact.” Yet despite the unions’ overwhelming victories in these re-certification elections, “more than 68,000 public employees in Florida have lost their union representation - NOT because they voted to get rid of their unions, but because their union had low membership and didn't petition for a recertification election.”

7. In more red-state union news, Washington Post Labor Reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley reports “Apple retail workers in Oklahoma City secured a tentative union contract, the 2nd store to do so at Apple.” This contract between Apple and the workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America, is said to include “pay increases of up to 11.5% over 3 years, severance & store closure protections [and] worker involvement in scheduling.”

8. Yet not all is well on the union front. According to NJ.com a “civil war” is brewing between the United Autoworkers and the AFL-CIO at Atlantic City casinos over the UAW’s demand to end indoor smoking. According to this piece, many of the dealers at these casinos, represented by the UAW, have contracted emphysema or even cancer despite not smoking themselves due to their constant exposure to secondhand smoke. Meanwhile the state AFL-CIO, led by Charlie Wowkanech, is standing with the casinos against a proposed ban. The UAW’s Daniel Vicente is quoted saying “Dealing with Charlie was like dealing with some lame-ass mafia guy – it felt like a shakedown…We’re planning to go to war with these other unions…We’re coming straight at anyone who stands in the way of our people coming home safe.”

9. Another story of betrayal comes from France. Al Jazeera reports “More than 100,000 left-wing demonstrators…have taken to the streets across France to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint centre-right Michel Barnier as [Prime Minister], with left-wing parties accusing [Macron] of stealing legislative elections.” For the past two months, the French parliament has been hung due to legislative elections that left it divided into three blocs – the largest of which being the left-wing coalition. Yet despite a popular front alliance between Macron and the Left during the elections, Macron has now chosen to elevate a right-winger as PM in order to appease the far-right bloc led by Marine Le Pen. Al Jazeera notes that French pollster Elabe found that 74 percent of French people believed Macron had disregarded the results of the elections and 55 percent believe he has stolen them.

10. Finally, the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was held on Tuesday. Shortly before the debate, Harris finally released some concrete policy proposals on her website. These include vague pledges to reduce the cost of healthcare, increase the minimum wage, and protect the civil liberties of marginalized communities. Harris more clearly articulated her more conservative policies, including beefing up border security, increasing funding for law enforcement, challenging China on the world stage, and keeping weapons flowing to Israel. This suite of policies seems designed to correspond with her courtship of anti-Trump Republican voters, which has included touting the endorsement of Liz and Dick Cheney.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.