Ralph welcomes fellow auto safety advocate, Jackie Gillan, past President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a coalition working together to reduce motor vehicle crashes, save lives and prevent injuries. Then, Ralph outlines the latest issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen and responds to your feedback from recent programs.

Jackie Gillan is past President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a coalition working together to reduce motor vehicle crashes, save lives and prevent injuries through the adoption of federal and state laws, policies and programs. Ms. Gillan has held senior policy positions for three state transportation agencies, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Senate.

Biden talks about peace and humanitarian aid and a two-state solution, but his deeds are to send endless supplies of weapons of mass destruction—including weapons that are used in sheer, total violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law…He appears weak to more and more Americans, and he may well pay that price on November 5th to the horror of a Trump presidency. This is how far he goes in his obeisance to the right wing, violent, genocidal political coalition that has hijacked the Israeli society.

Ralph Nader

Nearly every single safety standard on your car has our fingerprints on it and battle scars for the staff fighting in Congress and in the agencies to try to get those [auto safety] rulemakings finished.

Jackie Gillan

At the time in 1988, there were 47,000 highway deaths and I think everyone was quickly realizing that slick slogans and public education programs were not going to bring down deaths and injuries—so they brought advocates together.

Jackie Gillan

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 6/12/24

1. The New York Times reports that since last year, Israel has been running an “influence campaign” targeting Black lawmakers in the United States. This project, overseen by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, consists of a crude network of fake social media accounts that post “pro-Israel comments…urging [Black Democrats like Senator Raphael Warnock, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Representative Ritchie Torres] to continue funding Israel’s military.” This project was active on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, and utilized OpenAI’s ChatGPT, until both companies disrupted the operation earlier this year. The operation is still active on X, formerly Twitter.

2. Mondoweiss reports that Israel has been torturing Palestinian prisoners, aided by the complicity of Israeli physicians. According to the report, “prisoners are being viciously beaten and abused multiple times a day, caged in cells ‘not fit for human life,’ kept blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic ties, isolated from the outside world, stripped of their clothing, collectively punished through starvation, attacked by dogs, sexually assaulted, and psychologically tortured.” As for the doctors, “Israeli physicians collaborate with Shin Bet interrogators [Israel’s equivalent of the FBI] to ‘certify’… that [prisoners]… are ‘fit’ to undergo torture. Throughout the duration of interrogation, a physician provides a ‘green light’ that torture can continue…look for physical and psychological weaknesses to exploit…[and] falsify or refrain from documenting the physical and psychological effects of torture on a detainee’s body and mind.” Meanwhile, for all the talk of Hamas brutality, Israeli news anchor Lama Tatour was fired for commenting that recently released hostage Noa Argamani looked remarkably healthy, saying “Look at her eyebrows, they look better than mine??” per Business Insider.

3. The United Nations Security Council has, for the first time, overwhelmingly passed a Gaza ceasefire resolution, backed by the United States. Reuters reports “senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri…said [Hamas has] accepted the ceasefire resolution and [is] ready to negotiate over the specifics.” Yet, according to CNN, “Israel has vowed to persist with its military operation in Gaza, saying it won’t engage in ‘meaningless’ negotiations with Hamas.” As the CNN piece notes, “The resolution says Israel has accepted the plan, and US officials have repeatedly emphasized Israel had agreed to the proposal – despite other public comments from Netanyahu that suggest otherwise.” If the Israelis ultimately do not accept this ceasefire proposal, this would become yet another major embarrassment for the Biden administration.

4. POLITICO reports “AIPAC [is] the biggest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year…spending millions to boost moderates over progressives who have been critical of Israel.” This piece quotes Eric Levine, a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who has donated to Rep. Ritchie Torres as saying “Under the William F. Buckley rule of politics, I want to support the most conservative person who can win.” On the other hand, Beth Miller – political director at Jewish Voice for Peace Action – sees this as the lobby showing its true colors, telling the paper “AIPAC can’t actually claim that they represent Democrats and Republicans in the same way. That veneer of bipartisanship is gone.”

5. The NAACP, among the leading African-American Civil Rights group in the country, has called on the Biden administration to “Stop Shipments of Weapons Targeting Civilians to Israel [and] Push for Ceasefire.” In a statement, NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote “The current state of Gaza and the latest bombing of Rafah complicates an already dire humanitarian crisis.  Relief workers have also been killed while attempting to administer aid and support to the people of Gaza. The NAACP strongly condemns these actions and calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.” Data from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shows 68% of Black Americans favor an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza” and 59% believe “U.S. military aid to Israel should be conditioned to ensure that Israel uses American weapons for legitimate self-defense and in a way that is consistent with human rights standards.”

6. Yet the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza has not stopped censorship of pro-Palestine speech in the U.S. Democracy Now! reports outspoken progressive commentator and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign press secretary Briahna Joy Gray has been fired from the Hill’s morning show, Rising, for supposedly rolling her eyes during an interview with an Israeli guest. As Democracy Now! notes, “Last year, The Hill also fired the political commentator Katie Halper after she called Israel an apartheid state.”

7. Even more outrageous, the University of Minnesota is “pausing its search for director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — days after it offered the job to Israeli historian Raz Segal,” per the Star Tribune. As this article lays out, “Segal is…[a] professor of Holocaust and genocide studies …at Stockton University in New Jersey,” and a Jewish Israeli. Yet the offer was rescinded for “Among other things…[publishing] an article called ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide,’ which he published in [the Left-wing Jewish publication] Jewish Currents.” That’s right, apparently even being a Jewish Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies is not enough to protect you from charges of antisemitism.

8. A new article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, authored by Doctors Adam Gaffney, Steffie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein analyzes “The Medicare Advantage Paradox.” This piece argues Medicare Advantage delivers less care to patients at a higher cost. As the authors put it, “[as] enrollment in…private [Medicare Advantage] plans surpassed 30 million…the health insurance industry’s trade group proclaimed [Medicare Advantage] ‘a good deal for members and taxpayers.’…The first part of that claim is debatable, while the second part is false. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission…the nonpartisan agency reporting to Congress, recently estimated that [Medicare Advantage] overpayments added $82 billion to taxpayers’ costs for Medicare in 2023 and $612 billion between 2007 and 2024.”

9. In Britain, the Labour Party has been conducting a purge of its Left flank under the leadership of its cowardly centrist leader Keir Starmer. Included in that purge is former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn has represented the working class district of Islington North for over 40 years. Yet, as the Guardian explains, “[Corbyn] was blocked from standing again for Labour...[and] has been expelled from the Labour party.” The Guardian report continues “Last year, 98% of attenders at a local party monthly general meeting backed a motion thanking Corbyn for his ‘commitment and service to the people’, adding it was members’ ‘democratic right to select our MP’.” Ousted from the Labour Party, Corbyn now intends to stand for the seat as an independent MP. Writing in the district’s local paper, Corbyn stated, “When I was first elected, I made a promise to stand by my constituents no matter what … In Islington North, we keep our promises.”

10. Finally, CNN reports Chiquita Brands International  – formerly the United Fruit Company – has been found “liable for financing the Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,” by a Florida jury. The AUC was a “far-right paramilitary group that was designated a terrorist organization by the US.” Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3 million to the families of eight victims. CNN adds, “In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to making over 100 payments to the AUC totaling over $1.7 million despite the group being designated a terrorist organization…The company agreed to pay the US government a $25 million fine.”

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

Ralph welcomes back Bishop William J. Barber to discuss the upcoming Poor People's Campaign March and Assembly in Washington, DC on June 29th, as well as Bishop Barber's new book "WHITE POVERTY: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy." Then Ralph is joined by Phil Mattera from Good Jobs First to discuss their new report on corporate misbehavior, "The High Cost of Misconduct: Corporate Penalties Reach the Trillion-Dollar Mark."

Bishop William Barber is President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, which was established to train communities in moral movement building. He is Co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Founding Director and Professor at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.  His new book is White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.

I might add, for our listeners, a lot of these social safety measures have been long enacted and are operating in Western Europe, in Canada, even in places like Taiwan and Japan—like full health insurance, and a lot of the labor rights, the absence of voter suppression, higher minimum wages. And in Western Europe, they have abolished poverty—as we know it in the United States. 

Ralph Nader

One thing that people are saying why they're interested [in the Poor People’s Campaign] is because this is not just a gathering of a day, and it's not just a gathering for a few high-profile people to speak. The messengers are going to be the impacted people, and many of the people are committing to the larger effort of mobilizing these poor low wealth voters.

Bishop William Barber

It's not just “saving the democracy”, Ralph. It's what kind of democracy do we want to save?

Bishop William Barber

We see the kindredness of issues and oppression— that if these bodies can come together and unite, not by ignoring the issue of race, but by dealing with it and dealing with race and class together and recognizing the power that they have together, there can be some real fundamental change.

Bishop William Barber

Phil Mattera serves as Violation Tracker Project Director and Corporate Research Project Director at Good Jobs First. Mr. Mattera is a licensed private investigator; author of four books on business, labor and economics; and a long-time member of the National Writers Union. His blog on corporate research and corporate misbehavior is the Dirt Diggers Digest, and has written more than 70 critical company profiles for the Corporate Rap Sheets section of the Corporate Research Project website. He is co-author, with Siobhan Standaert, of the new report “The High Cost of Misconduct: Corporate Penalties Reach the Trillion-Dollar Mark”. 

This is a big problem with the Justice Department—it has this addiction to leniency agreements and it wants to give companies an opportunity not to have to plead guilty when there actually are criminal cases brought against them. So they offer them these strange deals—non-prosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements. And the theory is that the company is going to be so shaken up by the possibility of a criminal charge that they'll clean up their act, and they'll never do bad things again. But what we've seen over and over again is the companies get the leniency agreement and then they break the rules again. And sometimes the Justice Department responds by giving them another leniency agreement. So it turns the whole process into a farce. 

Phil Mattera

We're always interested in more transparency about both the misconduct and about enforcement actions. We feel that there's no justification for agencies to ever keep this information secret…I think there needs to be more pressure on companies, particularly high profile companies that have been involved in these offenses. A lot of companies seem to think that they pay their penalty, they just move on, and it's as if it's as if it never happened.

Phil Mattera

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 6/5/24

1.  In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected president in a landslide. Sheinbaum is the hand-picked successor of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, who is termed out but leaves office with an 80% approval rating, per Gallup. Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman president; she is also the country’s first Jewish president. In addition to years of service in government, Sheinbaum is an accomplished climate scientist who worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. During her campaign, Sheinbaum published a list of 100 commitments she will pursue as president. Front and center among these are climate-related goals. Sustainability magazine reports “[Sheinbaum] has committed to investing more than…$13 billion in new energy projects by 2030, focusing on wind and solar power generation and modernising hydroelectric facilities.” We urge the U.S. government to follow suit.

2. Stacy Gilbert, a senior civil military adviser for the U.S. State Department, resigned last Tuesday, alleging that “The state department falsified a report…to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza,” per the Guardian. Gilbert claims “that report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of state department experts who were consulted.” As the article notes, this report was a high stakes affair. Had the State Department found that the Israeli government had violated international humanitarian law, and linked those violations to U.S.-supplied weapons, there would have been serious consequences regarding the legality of American military support. In addition to Gilbert, “Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development… resigned on Monday…[saying] he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians.”

3. Per the Jeruslam Post, “South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor affirmed…that the United States would be next if the International Criminal Court (ICC) is allowed to prosecute Israeli leadership.” Pandor “went on to claim that nations and officials who provide military and financial assistance for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza ‘will be liable for prosecution…’ [and]…noted that a group of 140 international lawyers are currently working on a class action suit against non-Israelis, including South Africans, who have been serving in Israel’s military.” International law experts like Bruce Fein have previously warned that the United States’ material support for Israel during this genocidal campaign makes this country a co-belligerent in this war and therefore liable for prosecution by the ICC.

4. Liberal Israeli news outlet Haaretz has published a shocking report related to the recent revelations concerning Mossad’s intimidation campaign against the ICC. According to Haaretz’s report, the paper was “about to publish details of the affair” in 2022, when “security officials thwarted it.” Al Jazeera adds that the Haaretz journalist behind the story, Gur Megiddo was told during his meeting with an Israeli security official, that if he published, he “would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside.” This story highlights how deeply Israel has descended into authoritarianism, seeking to bully and silence not only international watchdogs, but their own domestic journalists.

5. Prem Thakker of the Intercept is out with an outrageous story of censorship at elite law reviews. According to Mr. Thakker, “In November, human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah was set to be the first Palestinian published in the Harvard Law Review. Then his essay was killed. [On June 3rd], he became the first [Palestinian published] in the Columbia Law Review. Then the Board of Directors took the whole site down.” As I write this, the Columbia Law Review website still says it is “under maintenance.”

6. Lauren Kaori Gurley, Labor Reporter at the Washington Post, reports “16 [thousand] academic workers at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Irvine will [go on] strike…according to their union… They will join 15 [thousand] workers already on strike at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis over the university's response to pro-Palestine protests on campus.” We commend these academic workers for leveraging their most powerful tool – their labor – on behalf of their fellow students and those suffering in Palestine.

7. More Perfect Union reports “The FBI has raided landlord giant Cortland Management over algorithmic price-fixing collusion. Cortland is allegedly part of a bigger conspiracy coordinated by software firm RealPage to raise rents across the country through price-fixing and keeping apartments empty.” Paired with the recent oil price fixing lawsuit and the announcement from retailers that they are lowering prices on many consumer goods, a new picture of inflation is starting to emerge – one that has less to do with macroeconomic reality and more to do with plain old corporate greed.

8. Vermont has passed a new law making it the first state in the nation to demand that “fossil fuel companies…pay a share of the damage caused by climate change,” per AP. Per this report, “Under the legislation, the Vermont state treasurer, in consultation with the Agency of Natural Resources, would provide a report…on the total cost to Vermonters and the state from the emission of greenhouse gases from Jan. 1, 1995, to Dec. 31, 2024… [looking] at the effects on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing and other areas.” Paul Burns of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group said of the law “For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire…Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”

9. Following months of pressure and a probe led by Senator Bernie Sanders, Boehringer – one of the largest producers of inhalers – has announced they will cap out of pocket costs for the lifesaving devices at $35, per Common Dreams. Boehringer used to charge as much as $500 for an inhaler in the U.S., while the same product sold in France for just $7. Sanders, continuing this crusade, said "We look forward to AstraZeneca moving in the same direction…in the next few weeks, and to GlaxoSmithKline following suit in the coming months,” and added “We are waiting on word from Teva, the fourth major inhaler manufacturer, as to how they will proceed."

10. Finally, the Justice Department has unsealed an indictment charging Bill Guan, the Chief Financial Officer of the Epoch Times newspaper with “participating in a transnational scheme to launder at least…$67 million of illegally obtained funds.” The Epoch Times is the mouthpiece of a bizarre anti-Communist Chinese cult known as the Falun Gong, famous for their outlandish beliefs such as that proper mastery of qigong can be “used to develop the ability to fly, to move objects by telekinesis and to heal diseases,” per the New York Times. The Falun Gong is also the entity behind the Shen Yun performances and their ubiquitous billboards. In recent years, the Epoch Times has gone all-in on Right-wing propaganda and fake news, with close ties to the Trump White House and campaign, as the Guardian has detailed. We urge the Justice Department to pursue this indictment to the hilt and shut down this rag that has become a cancer within our republic.

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

Ralph welcomes professor M. Steven Fish, political scientist and author of “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge” who argues that winning elections is about more than policy positions, it’s about projecting strength and dominance. And Donald Trump plays that game better than his Democratic rivals. Plus, former Navy Petty Officer, Phil Tourney, who was aboard the USS Liberty when it was attacked and nearly sunk by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats during the Six Day War in 1967, tells us why 57 years later, he still fights for accountability.

M. Steven Fish is a comparative political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. He writes and comments extensively on international affairs and the rising challenges to democracy in the United States and around the world, and he has published commentary in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. His latest book is Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge.

Dominance can be used for good or for ill. The Republicans have used it to advance injustice and corruption. And the Democrats need to—as they did in the 20th century, very often—use it in favor of justice.

M. Steven Fish

What’s holding them back? PAC money? Corruption of campaigns? Lack of character? Fear of skeletons in their own closet? What’s holding them back if it’s so obvious?Ralph Nader, on why Democrats aren’t more dominant

The Republican Party historically has been the party of “no”, once the Civil War was over. When they were formed in 1854, they were the party of “no” against slavery. But after that, they're the party of “no” against labor unions, “no” against progressive taxation, “no” against Medicare, “no” against Social Security, “no” against environmental health regulation, “no” against consumer protection, “no” against raising the minimum wage, “no”, “no”, “no”. And the Democrats— in those examples at least—were “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, and they never bragged about it.

Ralph Nader

Phil Tourney served aboard the USS Liberty as a US Navy Petty Officer on June 8th 1967, when the Liberty was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats. He is President of The USS Liberty Veterans Association, which was established to provide support for survivors of the attack. The efforts of the LVA are also focused on ensuring the US government finally conducts the public investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty.

I can't explain the carnage that went on, but that ship— all of us came together. All the spies, all the ship’s company we all came together…we saved that ship, to tell the truth—and we were ordered by Admiral Isaac Kidd never to say anything about it. He boarded our ship and told us to shut up or we’d end up in prison, fined, or worse— we all knew worse meant death. That's what they told us. To shut up. They took away our First Amendment rights and Congress has not done a darn thing in 57 years. The line is, “It was a case of mistaken identity, that's where they left it.

Phil Tourney, President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 5/28/24

1.  In Rafah, at least 35 people were killed Sunday night when Israel bombed a “tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in a designated safe zone,” per Al Jazeera. AP reports that at first, Israel’s military claimed it had “carried out a precise airstrike on a Hamas compound,” and only after photographic and video evidence of the horror inflicted on civilians emerged did Prime Minister Netanyahu reverse this position and claim the strike was a “tragic mishap.” Israel’s assault on Rafah continues despite the U.N. International Court of Justice ordering Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in the South Gaza city, per the BBC. 

2. The Guardian is out with a disturbing report alleging “The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency…threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation.” This expose details how Yossi Cohen, the former Israeli spy chief, threatened ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, reportedly telling her “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.” The paper also hinted at further forthcoming revelations, noting that they are working with +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call to expose “how multiple Israel intelligence agencies ran a covert ‘war’ against the ICC for almost a decade.” This piece notes that “According to legal experts…efforts by the Mossad to threaten or put pressure on Bensouda could amount to offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome statute.”

3. Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports through his newsletter that “The Biden administration has publicly admitted that it is working with tech companies to…suppress pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment,” under the guise of “limit[ing] Hamas's use of online platforms.” As Klippenstein explains, “Platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook have long banned terrorist organizations like Hamas. Now, however, the federal government is pressuring companies to ban ‘Hamas-linked’ accounts and those of pro-Palestinian Americans.” Human Rights Watch raised the alarm about censorship of pro-Palestine content in a report from December 2023, which detailed “Meta’s…‘systemic…censorship’ of speech regarding the…war.”

4. Over Memorial Day weekend, activists assembled in Detroit for the People’s Conference for Palestine. In a surprise address, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke to the crowd, decrying the genocide in Gaza and asking "Where's your red line, President Biden?" the Detroit News reports. Tlaib went on to call Biden an "enabler," who "shields the murderous war criminal Netanyahu." Over 100,000 Michigan residents voted “uncommitted,” in the state’s Democratic primary.

5. Celebrated actor Guy Pearce was recently photographed by the French subsidiary of Vanity Fair during the Cannes film festival. When he posed for the photo, Pearce wore a Palestinian flag pin; yet when the photo was published, the pin had been photoshopped out entirely. The Middle East Eye, which covered this story, reached out to Vanity Fair asking for a comment on why they edited the image, but did not receive a response. Vanity Fair restored the original photo and apologized, claiming it was a mistake, but many are not buying it. As one social media commenter put it, “This is a reminder that the media... will do anything and everything to hide any form of solidarity.”

6. The American Prospect’s David Dayen reports “[The American Prospect] has learned that during [Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s recent trip to California to participate in the 2024 RSA Cybersecurity Conference]…[she] had an off-the-record, no-readout briefing with several tech executives.” As Dayen notes, this meeting comes “at a time when the DOJ is suing both Google and Apple,” and as Monaco has spoken of making corporate criminal enforcement a higher priority at Justice. As there is no official record of this meeting it is impossible to know what was discussed, but the cloak-and-dagger nature of this rendezvous raises serious questions about DOJ’s commitment to pursuing the lawsuits against the tech giants. We demand the Deputy Attorney General disclose the content of this meeting at once.

7. The Reform Party, originally founded by Ross Perot, has announced that it “has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.…for President of the United States.” The most significant effect of this nomination, as the party notes, is that it “will hand [Kennedy] our automatic ballot access in the State of Florida as well as our advantages as a qualified party.” According to Kennedy’s campaign website, he is now eligible to be on the ballot in states totaling 229 electoral votes, though Axios has a lower tally. Kennedy now faces a race against the clock to qualify for the upcoming presidential debates, though even if he does qualify his participation is not guaranteed as both the Biden and Trump campaigns have agreed to sidestep the Commission on Presidential Debates.

8. In more Third Party news, the Libertarian Party has chosen Chase Oliver as their 2024 presidential nominee, per POLITICO. Oliver gained national attention for his 2022 campaign for Senate in Georgia, with some claiming his candidacy forced the race to a runoff, ultimately resulting in the reelection of Democrat Raphael Warnock. During that race, Oliver describes himself as “armed and gay.” Both former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vied for the Libertarian Party nomination. Trump himself addressed the convention in person but was roundly booed. He was ultimately deemed ineligible, while Kennedy received only 19 votes. However, Larry Sharpe, a longtime Libertarian Party member and unsuccessful vice presidential candidate expressed alarm about Kennedy’s potential impact on the party. Sharpe said “We’re gonna lose ballot access in probably 22 states. We’re not gonna make more than half a percent…RFK sucks the money out of the room and he gets the ‘I’m mad at the system votes’ that we used to get because we’re the only other guy on the ballot.”

9. The Teamsters union is turning their presidential endorsement over to their members. Since May 19th, Teamsters locals have been holding polls to determine which candidate the national union will endorse. This is a marked departure from the traditional endorsement structure, which is typically decided in a top-down fashion by the national union leadership. However, this process could result in a Teamsters endorsement of Donald Trump – a real possibility based on the union’s recent flirtation with Trump and the GOP more generally. We urge the union not to endorse Trump, who has an abominable track record on labor issues, clearly documented by the AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America.

10. Finally, Bloomberg Labor reporter Josh Eidelson reports the United Autoworkers union is petitioning the National Labor Relations Board, to “discard the results of last week's Mercedes election in Alabama, [and] asking the agency to hold a new vote due to alleged misconduct by the company.” CBS 42 reports this alleged misconduct includes “poll[ing] workers about union support, suggest[ing] voting in the union would be futile, target[ing] union supporters with drug tests and [per UAW] “engag[ing] in conduct which deliberately sought to exacerbate racial feelings by irrelevant and inflammatory appeals to racial prejudice.’” In addition to these complaints, Mercedes is reportedly under investigation by the German government for anti-union activity during this campaign. In a statement, the UAW wrote “All these workers ever wanted was a fair shot at having a voice on the job and a say in their working conditions…Let’s get a vote at Mercedes…where the company isn’t allowed to fire people, isn’t allowed to intimidate people, and isn’t allowed to break the law and their own corporate code, and let the workers decide.”

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

On today's program, Ralph welcomes two guests who have worked as civic advocates for more than fifty years—chemical engineer and environmentalist Barry Castleman, and solar energy advocate Ken Bossong. How do they maintain their civic stamina over more than five decades? That's what Ralph wants to know. Then, Ralph is joined by our resident international law expert Bruce Fein, to discuss breaking news from the International Criminal Court. 

Barry Castleman is a chemical engineer, environmentalist and researcher specializing in health issues. He is the author of Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects and has worked with public interest groups around the world over the past 50 years on the control of asbestos and chemical hazards. Mr. Castleman has been involved in rule-making on asbestos by numerous federal agencies as a consultant to the agencies and to environmental groups. He has testified as an expert witness in civil litigation in the US on the history of asbestos as a public health problem, and the reasons for failure to properly control asbestos hazards.

I remember speaking to students at Johns Hopkins about 30 years ago about careers in international public health, and talking to them about how they should try and listen into themselves and think about what it is they'd really like to do, what they're really interested in, and try to follow that. Rather than following the money or auctioning themselves off to the highest bidder when they graduate from Hopkins.

Barry Castleman

You lose your innocence reading these corporate documents. They're unbelievable in terms of showing that all of these decisions about health and safety and environment are business decisions to the people who make them. And the wanton, reckless, willful disregard of public health is clear. So making these documents publicly available is an extraordinary public service.

Barry Castleman

Ken Bossong is the Executive Director of the Sun Day Campaign, a non-profit research and educational organization he founded in 1992 to aggressively promote sustainable energy technologies as cost-effective alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels. Mr. Bossong has advocated for solar energy and other renewable energy for more than 50 years, and he previously served as Director of the Critical Mass Energy Project at Public Citizen. 

Nearly 100% of all the new generating capacity in the United States in the month of March—which is the most recent month for which there are statistics—came from solar alone. There was none from coal. There was only one megawatt from natural gas. There was, I think, three megawatts from oil. And there was zero from nuclear. So the only resource that's growing and scaling up rapidly is solar. Coming in second place is wind. The fossil fuel technologies and nuclear power combined are producing very little.

Ken Bossong

What keeps me going? Basically the bad guys. I am always ginned up by the challenge of confronting people who are doing things which I consider to be socially, environmentally irresponsible. And as you pointed out with the example of the oil companies, there's never been a shortage of people who are trying to do things that I think are damaging. 

Ken Bossong

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.

Although it doesn’t really change a whole lot on the legal chessboard, the more countries that recognize a Palestinian statehood, the more pressure there will be on the United States to do something that acknowledges their right…The one other element that comes into play, however, is that there are various tribunals, jurisdictions that can be employed only by a state... So the more that we have international recognition of a Palestinian state, it then would have standing instead of South Africa to go to the International Court of Justice and say—we want a declaration that genocide is being committed against us by Israel. So there are small ways in which I think the greater the recognition, the greater the legal standing Palestine has as in at least some international body.

Bruce Fein

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 5/22/24

1.  On May 20th, the International Criminal Court announced it would seek arrest warrants related to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Bucking pressure from western governments, the ICC will pursue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges including “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare…[and] Extermination…as a crime against humanity.” The Court also announced it would seek arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for their alleged international offenses. The ICC’s decision was met with indignation by Israel and its western allies, including President Joe Biden, who said “What’s happening is not genocide,” per the Guardian. Mousa Abu Marzouk – the first chief of Hamas’ politburo, and the head of Hamas' international relations – writes in Media Review Network “Hamas stands ready to appear before the ICC with witnesses and live testimony and bear the burden of any judicial finding against it or its members after a full and fair trial with rules of evidence; with examination and cross examination into [what] we have done or not over the many years of our leadership as a national liberation movement. Is Israel?”

2. On May 19th, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed when his helicopter was forced to make a “hard landing” near the Iranian/Azerbaijan border. Many suspect Israeli involvement in this crash, largely due to Israel’s history of assassinating Iranian officials. Israel however denies any involvement. The Middle East Monitor, relaying what Israeli officials told Channel 13, reports “The message Israel is sending to the countries of the world is that Tel Aviv has nothing to do with the incident.”

3. Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog has sent a letter to dozens of congressional Democrats “accus[ing] lawmakers of aiding…Hamas…misrepresenting Israeli policy and…inappropriately trying to influence President…Biden,” per the Huffington Post. This letter – a response to moderate Democrats Jason Crow and Chris Deluzio’s May 3rd letter alleging that Israel is breaking U.S. law – has rankled Democrats in Congress. One staffer told the Huffington Post that multiple parts of the letter “verg[ed] on offensive,” and another said “the tone of this letter is not reflective of the fact that the U.S. is the primary guarantor of Israel’s security. An unaware reader would assume that Israel is the superpower in this relationship and the U.S. the recipient of aid.” Yet another aid put it this way, “Never before have we received such a harsh letter from the Israeli government. But then again, never before have we been so critical of their actions.”

4. Independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports “The National Counterterrorism Center, created in the wake of 9/11 to combat al Qaeda, is now working overtime to find evidence of foreign funding of pro-Palestinian student protesters.” Klippenstein continues “The effort follows repeated calls by Congress for the federal government to investigate university protesters’ purported links to Hamas, and coincides with a push by the FBI and homeland security bureaucracies to link the campus demonstrations to foreign actors. Tempting as it might be to laugh off the specter of foreign powers directing undergraduate protesters, evidence of this would provide the legal basis for the intelligence community to spy on Americans. Absent a foreign connection, the protests are constitutionally-protected speech.” Civil liberties advocates have long warned of the American anti-terrorism apparatus being weaponized against internal dissent. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the Trump administration infamously worked feverishly to cook up some connection between foreign governments and supposed domestic “antifa” leaders. The fact that the Biden administration is seeking to do the same speaks to just how enticing it is for the federal government to use trumped up terrorism accusations to silence legitimate protests.

5. In a chilling new installment of the campus crackdown on pro-Palestine activity, POLITICO reports the California State University system has “placed Sonoma State campus President Mike Lee on leave… after he agreed to protesters’ demands to involve them in university decision-making and pursue divestment from Israel.” In a statement, CSU Chancellor Mildred García derided president Lee for his “insubordination and the consequences it has brought upon the system.” The message is clear: any degree of violence in confronting the student protesters is acceptable, engaging with their demands is not.

6. In more higher education news, the Harvard Graduate Student’s Union – organized under the UAW – has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university over their response to campus pro-Palestine protests, per Bloomberg labor reporter Josh Eidelson. “[The union is] claiming the school's retaliation violated students' right as employees to protest over workplace issues.” This charge will test the limits of workplace speech protections and we will be watching closely to see where the board lands.

7. Last week, workers at two Alabama Mercedes-Benz plants voted against joining the United Autoworkers by a margin if 2,045 to 2,642, per 1819 News. UAW President Shawn Fain blamed the loss on union busting by the corporation, stating “Mercedes engaged in egregious illegal behavior. The federal government as well as the German government are currently investigating Mercedes for the intimidation and harassment they inflicted on their own workers. We intend to follow that process through…This is a David and Goliath fight. Sometimes Goliath wins a battle. But David wins the war.” Fain went on to say “Justice isn’t about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice, getting your fair share. And let’s be clear: workers won serious gains in this campaign. They raised their wages, with the 'UAW bump.' They killed wage tiers. They got rid of a CEO who had no interest in improving conditions in the workplace. Mercedes is a better place to work thanks to this campaign, and thanks to these courageous workers.” Finally, Fain noted the similarities between this campaign and the previous attempts to unionize Volkswagen plants, stating “[Mercedes] told the workers to give the new CEO a chance. That’s exactly what Volkswagen told its workers in 2019. And in 2024, Volkswagen workers realized it’s not about a CEO. It’s about a voice on the job, it’s about getting our lives back, and getting our time back. The only path to do that is through a union contract.”

8. CNN reports that on Tuesday May 14th, the Justice Department  “notified Boeing that it [had] breached [the] terms of its 2021 [deferred prosecution] agreement in which the company avoided criminal charges for two fatal 737 Max crashes.” This report goes on to say “Families of victims and lawyers representing them met with the Justice Department late last month to persuade the Biden administration to end the agreement in light of multiple safety lapses at Boeing this year and in past years after the 2021 agreement was reached.”  Following this meeting, attorney Paul Cassell said the deferred prosecution agreement was “rigged” and “pledged to hold Boeing accountable for its ‘fraud and misconduct.’” 

9. On Monday May 20th, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange won the right to appeal his extradition to the United States. Per Democracy Now! “Assange’s lawyers argued before the British High Court that the U.S. government provided ‘blatantly inadequate’ assurances that Assange would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain. Assange…faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.” This is a major victory for Assange. Yet, as Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent puts it “[Assange is] not out of Belmarsh [Prison] yet…This could still end in him being sent to the U.S. And the person who can stop this is Joe Biden.”

10. Finally, according to Washington Post labor reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley, “[Over 400] physicians have filed to unionize with SEIU, in what they say would be the first doctor's union in Delaware and the Mid-Atlantic.” These physicians – employed by ChristianaCare, Delaware's largest private employer – have laid out a list of grievances they hope to address by organizing, including “patient safety concerns due to understaffing and inadequate resources…the erosion of the physician-led model of care...[and] the moral injury caused by the pressure to prioritize...profit over patient needs.” Gurley further highlighted that a key priority of this doctor’s union is “combating excessive corporatization,” in healthcare.

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

We explore how young people have made meaningful careers and lasting change working in the public interest with Sam Simon, editor of “Choosing the Public Interest: Essays From the First Public Interest Research Group” and Lisa Frank, Vice President and D.C. Director at The Public Interest Network and also Executive Director in the Washington Legislative Office at Environment America. Plus, the indomitable Chris Hedges stops by to report on his interviews with college students protesting the genocide in Gaza, which he chronicled in a Substack piece titled “The Nation’s Conscience.”

Sam Simon is an author, playwright, and attorney who co-founded the Public Interest Research Group with Ralph and the other Nader’s Raiders in 1970. He compiled and edited the new book Choosing the Public Interest: Essays From the First Public Interest Research Group.

This is something that every one of these themes have and that this movement has had—that the consumer, the user, the student, the pensioner have equal voice in our systems to help create the systems that are intended to benefit them, and not leave that power in the hands of corporate entities and profit-making enterprises. And that idea needs to continue to exist. And I'm glad that the Public Interest Network and PIRGS still thrive on many campuses.

Sam Simon

What I want to come out of this book is that average kids from average backgrounds ended up doing amazing things with their entire lives, because of the opportunity and the vision that they could do that.

Sam Simon

Lisa Frank is Vice President and D.C. Director at The Public Interest Network. She is also Executive Director in the Washington Legislative Office at Environment America, where she directs strategy and staff for federal campaigns. Ms. Frank has won millions of dollars in investments in walking, biking and transit, and has helped develop strategic campaigns to protect America’s oceans, forests and public lands from drilling, logging and road-building.

The particular types of problems we're focused on at [PIRG] are ones that really have been created in a sense by our success as a country in growing. We’re the wealthiest country the world has ever seen. We figured out how to grow more than enough food than we can eat, we produce more than enough clothing than we can wear, certainly more than enough plastic…And all of this abundance is leading to new types of problems…The problems that have either come about because of the progress we've made as a society and now we've got the ability to tackle them, or problems where—clean energy is an example—where there are problems that we newly have the ability to solve.

Lisa Frank

You have Congress that passed these five laws that are being violated, with the result of huge death and destruction overseas— and not just in Gaza, but places like Iraq and Libya in the past. And they’re talking about students trespassing at their own university, and nonviolent protests? The problem starts in Congress. They’re the funders, the enablers, the surrenderers of their constitutional rights of oversight and war-making powers.

Ralph Nader

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is the host of The Chris Hedges Report, and he is a prolific author— his latest book is The Greatest Evil Is War.

[Students] understand the nature of settler colonial regimes. The expansion or inclusion of students from wider backgrounds than were traditionally there at places like Princeton…has really added a depth and expanded the understanding within the university. So they see what's happening in Gaza, and they draw—rightly— connections to what we did to Native Americans, what the British did in India, what the British did in Kenya, what the French did in Algeria, and of course, they are correct.

Chris Hedges

[Students] have defied, quite courageously, the administrations of their universities, who are—kind of like the political class—bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, and in particular wealthy donors and the Democratic Party. And that is why these universities have responded to these nonviolent protests the way they have, with such overwhelming and draconian use of force.

Chris Hedges

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 5/15/24

1. The New Republic reports the Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against Scott Sheffield, former CEO of oil and gas giant Pioneer Resources alleging that “voluminous evidence” suggests Sheffield “collaborated with fellow U.S. producers and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in order to keep crude oil prices ‘artificially’ high.” As Matt Stoller explains in his newsletter, “after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, [American oil producers] got tired of competing on price with…the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the [e]ffect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.” Stoller claims that this price-fixing scheme between the OPEC cartel and the American oil oligopoly caused 27% of all inflation-related price increases in 2021. Progressive lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders who tried to raise the alarm about what he dubbed “greedflation” were dismissed at the time, but like so many times before, have been vindicated by the simple fact that American corporate greed always exceeds expectations.

2. Tal Mitnick and Sofia Orr, the two Israeli teenagers conscientiously objecting to being drafted into Israel’s campaign of terror in Gaza, have sent a letter to President Biden excoriating him for his unconditional support of the Netanyahu regime, per the Intercept. The two heroic peaceniks write “Your unconditional support for [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s policy of destruction, since the war began, has brought our society to the normalization of carnage and to the trivialization of human lives…It is American diplomatic and material support that prolonged this war for so long. You are responsible for this, alongside our leaders. But while they’re interested in prolonging the war for political reasons, you have the power to make it stop.” These kids wrote this letter before reporting for their latest round of prison sentences, which have reached unprecedented lengths. As the article notes, “The refuseniks are not alone in their opposition, nor in the treatment they face. Throughout the war, Israelis have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to protest the war and Netanyahu’s government. This past week, Israeli police arrested and beat protesters and hostage family members calling for an end to the war, just the latest example of Israelis being punished for voicing dissent or sympathy with the people of Gaza.”

3. Al Jazeera reports yet another Biden Administration official has made public his resignation over the genocide in Gaza. Army Major Harrison Mann, who resigned in November, posted a letter Monday wherein he expressed “incredible shame and guilt” over the United States’ “unqualified support” for Israel’s war. Explaining why he waited so long to come forward with the reasoning behind his resignation, Mann wrote “I was afraid. Afraid of violating our professional norms. Afraid of disappointing officers I respect. Afraid you would feel betrayed. I’m sure some of you will feel that way reading this,” yet he noted “At some point – whatever the justification – you’re either advancing a policy that enables the mass starvation of children, or you’re not.”

4. At long last, Egypt has announced its intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Al Arabiya reports. In a statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry said this decision comes on the heels of the “worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip,” likely referring to the terror bombing campaign in Rafah, which the United States had previously identified as a “Red Line” in terms of material support. Egypt has faced international embarrassment over its soft line towards its militaristic neighbor and alleged mistreatment of Palestinian refugees trying to flee into Egypt. The country has also “called on the UN Security Council and countries of influence to take actions to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and halt military operations in Rafah, according to the statement.”

5. On Wednesday, May 8th, the State Department report on whether Israel has violated U.S. international law was due to Congress. Instead, it was delayed. As POLITICO reported “The State Department has been working for months on the report, which will issue a determination on whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law since the war in Gaza began. If so, the U.S. would be expected to stop sending Israel military assistance.” When the report was finally released, it stated “it is ‘reasonable to assess’ that US weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are ‘inconsistent’ with international humanitarian law,” but the report stopped short of officially saying Israel violated the law, per CNN. The report goes on to say that investigations into potential violations are ongoing but the US “‘does not have complete information to verify’ whether the US weapons ‘were specifically used’ in alleged violations of international humanitarian law.” This equivocation in the face of genocide – using American weapons — will leave an ineradicable black mark on the already spotty human rights record of the U.S. State Department.

6. Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University reports “Columbia…is under federal investigation for anti-Palestinian discrimination and harassment.” According to the group, Palestine Legal is representing four Palestinian students and the group itself. Senior attorney for Palestine Legal Radikah Sainath said in a statement “The law is clear— if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters, they will risk losing federal funding.”

7. On May 8th, the D.C. Metro Police Department cleared the protest encampment at the George Washington University, using pepper spray and brute force. According to the Associated Press, the police arrested 33 protesters. The AP quoted Moataz Salim, a Palestinian student at GW with family in Gaza, who said the authorities merely “destroyed a beautiful community space that was all about love.” He went on to say “Less than 10 hours ago, I was pepper sprayed and assaulted by police…And why? Because we decided to pitch some tents, hold community activities and learn from each other. We built something incredible. We built something game-changing.” The police broke up the encampment in the wee hours of the morning, just before D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was slated to appear before hostile Republican lawmakers in Congress, leading many to believe she acted when and how she did out of sheer cowardice and political expediency. After the encampment was cleared, the hearing was canceled. Undeterred, these courageous students have continued to protest their institution’s support of Israel’s criminal war and per the American University Eagle, have now set up a second encampment. We urge Mayor Bowser not to bow to pressure from bloodthirsty Congressional Republicans a second time.

8. The Seattle Times reports “The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner after the company disclosed that employees in South Carolina falsified inspection records.” As the paper notes, “This is the latest in a long litany of lapses at Boeing that have come to light under the intense scrutiny of the company’s quality oversight since a passenger cabin panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight in January.” That is to say nothing of the safety lapses leading to the Lion Air and Ethiopia Airlines crashes in 2019, that resulted in the deaths of all aboard both flights. Incredibly, “This new 787 quality concern is unrelated to the 787 fuselage gaps described as unsafe in an April congressional hearing by Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour.” As these critical safety failures and lies continue to come to light, the only question remaining is when is enough enough?

9. Bloomberg labor reporter Josh Eidelson reports “The US government [has] raised concerns with Germany about alleged union-busting in Alabama by Mercedes, an unusual move that escalates scrutiny on its handling of the high-stakes union vote.” Mercedes is facing a momentous union election at its Alabama plant, led by the United Autoworkers, fresh off of unionizing the first ever foreign-owned auto plant in the country. Eidelson goes on to say that members of the European Commission have raised the matter with Mercedes as well, raising the heat on the company as the election kicks off. Among other union busting tactics, Labor Notes reports Mercedes has tried enlisting a pastor to tell workers via text “Here in Alabama, community is important, and family is everything. We believe it’s important to keep work separate. But there’s no denying, a union would have an impact beyond the walls of our plant.”

10. Finally, the Chicago Sun-Times is out with a story on the success of Illinois’ experiment with ending cash bail for pre-trial detention. As the article puts it, “Despite all the anguish over the Pretrial Fairness Act, [Cook County Judge Charles] Beach says he has been struck by how proceedings have significantly changed for the better in his courtroom. ‘I think we’ve come a very long way in the right direction…Things are working well.’” This piece describes how “Under the old system of cash bail, Beach — a supervising judge in the pretrial division — was often tasked with setting a dollar figure a person would have to post before being released, a decision that could force a family to skip the rent to post a bond. It was a process that could seem arbitrary, depending on the judge, the time of day and where in the state the hearing was held.” Beach himself goes on to say “There’s a sense in the courtroom that taking money out of the equation has leveled the playing field.” The success of this reform should be taken very seriously by other states, particularly New York where Democrats have sought to roll back the state’s attempts at ending cash bail following pressure from conservatives. Turns out, it works.

This has been Francesco DeSantis.

Ralph welcomes labor journalist Hamilton Nolan to discuss his latest book, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor". They'll get into why some of the biggest names in organized labor have gotten so bad at organizing labor, and they'll highlight the labor organizers who are effectively wielding power. Then, Ralph is joined by child advocate and original Nader's Raider Robert Fellmeth to discuss the dangers of online anonymity. Plus, a creative call to action from Ralph!

Hamilton Nolan is a labor journalist who writes regularly for In These Times magazine and The Guardian. He has written about labor, politics, and class war for The New York Times, the Washington Post, Gawker, Splinter, and other publications. He was the longest-serving writer in Gawker’s history, and was a leader in unionizing Gawker Media in 2015. His new book is The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

A quality of the labor movement that I think makes the labor movement special and distinct from other movements and other political parties is that the labor movement acts to give people power. The labor movement does not necessarily tell people what to do. The labor movement instills people with power. 

Hamilton Nolan

More and more non-unionized workers know that a lot of what they get positively in the workplace is due to the few workers who are unionized. And the companies—wanting to avoid being unionized—up the wages, improve the working conditions, maybe fulfill more of the pension reserve requirements. So the second–order effects of unionism—which has been so long misunderstood, largely due to propaganda— has been sinking in the minds of more and more non-union workers, and the approval of unions and the number of American workers who want to join unions has resurged. 

Ralph Nader

You know, it turns out that a half century of rising inequality does in fact piss people off at a certain point. And causes tens of millions of American workers to say that they want something better—that they want what the labor movement has to offer.

Hamilton Nolan

For many, many years, organized labor has had a very unhealthy relationship with electoral politics. You're in a two-party system and the [Republican] Party wants to destroy unions and crush them off the face of the earth. And the Democratic Party's attitude has basically been—we're the only game in town and so give us money, and we won't try to kill you, but we won't really do too much to help you either. 

Hamilton Nolan

Another thing unions can do with their money is— instead of sending it to Joe Biden's campaign—use it to organize workers. The choice is not just between Democrats and Republicans. We can take those resources and use it to organize workers, which will increase our political power in its own right.

Hamilton Nolan

Robert Fellmeth is the Price Professor of Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego and the Executive Director of the Center for Public Interest Law. He is also Executive Director of the Children's Advocacy Institute, which authored The Fleecing of Foster Children: How We Confiscate Their Assets and Undermine Their Financial Security.

The First Amendment is not just the right of the speaker to belch whatever…the audience has some rights there. The audience has a right to hear, to listen, to understand, and to know something about the speaker, because the idea behind speech is not simply making noise. It's to advance understanding, to advance knowledge. And therefore there should be a requirement that speakers identify who they are. And that allows the audience who are listening to decide whether they want to listen. 

Robert Fellmeth

Ralph welcomes back medical journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Jean Carper, to elaborate on her latest book, “100 LIFE OR DEATH FOODS: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.” Plus, the latest news about Boeing and the UAW.

Jean Carper is a medical journalist, and wrote “EatSmart” (a popular weekly column on nutrition, every week for USA Weekend Magazine)  from 1994 until 2008; she is still a contributing editor, writing health and nutrition articles. Ms. Carper is also a former CNN medical correspondent and director of the documentary Monster in the Mind. She is the best-selling author of 25 books, mostly on nutrition and health. Her latest book is 100 LIFE OR DEATH FOODS: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.

The reason I wrote the book was that I knew there is no other book like this. Nobody has taken a scientific look at all the studies that are being done on specific foods with conclusions as to how they are going to affect longevity. It is a totally new field. It really only started several years ago where scientists are getting interested in this. I thought of all the things that would be the most interesting about a food, and whether or not you wanted to eat it would be, “Oh, how long does it prolong my life? Or on the other hand, is it likely to shorten my life?”

Jean Carper

Less-developed countries with their natural food from over the history of their cultures are very often far superior [in longevity studies] to the so-called corporatized Western diet.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

1. The International Criminal Court at the Hague is preparing to hand down indictments to Israeli officials for committing war crimes. The Guardian reports the indicted are expected to include authoritarian Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, among others. These indictments will likely focus on Netanyahu’s strategy of intentional starvation in Gaza. Yet, lest one think that the United States actually believes in the “rules based international order,” they have touted so frequently, the Biden administration will not allow these indictments to be effectuated, baselessly claiming that the ICC does not have jurisdiction in Israel. Democracy Now! reports State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told the press “Since this president has come into office, we have worked to reset our relationship with the ICC, and we are in contact with the court on a range of issues, including in connection to the court’s important work on Darfur, on Ukraine, on Sudan, as well. But on this investigation, our position is clear: We continue to believe that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Palestinian situation.” Former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth – who has faced retribution for his past criticism of Israel – called this “the height of hypocrisy.”

2. Even as the United States shields Israel from international legal consequences for its crimes, an internal state department memo indicates the American diplomatic corps is increasingly skeptical of the pariah state. Reuters reports “senior U.S. officials have advised Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they do not find ‘credible or reliable’ Israel's assurances that it is using U.S.-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.” This memo includes “eight examples of Israeli military actions that the officials said raise "serious questions" about potential violations of international humanitarian law…[including]  repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure; "unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage"; taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm and "killing humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate."” The State Department however will only release a “complete assessment of credibility” in its May 8th report to Congress.

3. On Tuesday, the Guardian reports, an army of NYPD officers – including hundreds of armed officers in riot gear and heavy vehicles such as police busses, MRAPs, and “the Bear,” a ladder truck used to breach upper story windows – stormed the campus of Columbia University and carried out mass arrests at the college’s Hamilton Hall – which had been non-violently occupied by students and renamed Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a six-year old Palestinian girl murdered by the IDF. Hamilton Hall was among the buildings occupied by anti-Vietnam War Protesters during the Columbia Uprising of 1968. Mayor Eric Adams used as a pretext for this militarized police action a claim that the student protest had been “co-opted” by “outside agitators”; there has been no evidence presented to support this claim. The NYPD also threatened to arrest student journalists, and the Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb, per Samantha Gross of the Boston Globe, and videos show the cops arresting legal observers and medics. Columbia University President, the Anglo-Egyptian Baroness Minouche Shafik, has requested that the NYPD continue to occupy the Morningside Heights campus until May 17th.

4. At the University of California Los Angeles, the New York Times reports “U.C.L.A. asked for officers after a clash between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and counterprotesters grew heated overnight.” This misleading report fails to clarify that, as Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law puts it “the police stood aside and let a pro Israeli lynch mob run wild at UCLA. They did nothing for two hours as violent Zionists assaulted students, launched fireworks into the encampment, and sprayed mace on students.” The accompanying videos must be seen to be believed. This is yet another glaring example of media manipulation on behalf of Zionist aggression against non-violent student protesters.

5. In the nation’s capital, a peaceful pro-Palestine encampment at the George Washington University continues to hold in the face of increasing pressure. The Washington Post reports that the university requested the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to clear the encampment last week, but the cops demurred. The Post article cites an unnamed D.C. official who “said they had flashbacks to June 2020, when images of mostly peaceful protesters being forcefully shoved out of Lafayette Square by U.S. Park Police officers with batons and chemical irritants made national news.” The university has issued temporary suspensions and did attempt to clear the encampment over the weekend, but failed to do so. Now however, congressional Republicans are heaping pressure upon the university and District of Columbia Mayor Bowser. According to the GW Hatchet, “[Representatives] Virginia Foxx and James Comer — who chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively — wrote [in letter to Bowser and MPD Chief Pamela Smith] that they were “alarmed” by the Metropolitan Police Department’s reported refusal to clear the encampment.” and threatened to take legislative action. Senator Tom Cotton, infamous for his New York Times op-ed calling for the deployment of the national guard to shut down Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, sent a letter to Bowser on Tuesday, writing “Whether it is due to incompetence or sympathy for the cause of these Hamas supporters, you are failing to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens by letting a terrorist-supporting mob take over a large area of a university…Your actions are a good reminder of why Washington, D.C. must never become a state.” So far, the District’s leadership has exercised a rare and commendable restraint. One can only hope that continues.

6. Looking beyond individual campuses, the Appeal reports over 1,400 students and staff have been arrested at “protest encampments or…sit-ins on more than 70 college campuses across 32 states during the past month.”  This piece followed up on these arrests by contacting prosecutors and city attorneys’ offices in every one of these jurisdictions – and found that “only two offices said they would not charge people for peacefully protesting.” These were “ Sam Bregman, the prosecutor for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, [which] includes the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque campus….[and] Matthew Van Houten, the prosecutor overseeing Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.” Incredibly, this piece was published even before the recent mass arrests at Columbia and the City College of New York, which are estimated at nearly 300, per CNN.

7. Bringing the civil war within the Democratic Party on this issue into full view, the College Democrats of America – the official student outreach arm of the DNC – has issued a statement commending the “heroic actions on the part of students...for an end to the war in Palestine…[and] for an immediate permanent ceasefire.” This statement goes on to say “Arresting, suspending, and evicting students without any due process is not only legally dubious but morally reprehensible,”  and excoriates the White House for taking “the mistaken route of a bear hug strategy for Netanyahu and a cold shoulder strategy for its own base,” noting that “Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent ceasefire…more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party.”

8. Moving beyond Palestine, hard as that is, the American Prospect is out with a chilling new story on Boeing. This report documents how the late Boeing whistle-blower John “Swampy” Barnett – who died under deeply mysterious circumstances during his deposition against the aviation titan last month – was ignored, mocked, and harassed by his corporate overlords. When he tried to raise the alarm that Boeing’s practices could be in violation of Section 38 of the United States Criminal code “The whole room…burst out laughing.” When he found planes riddled with defective and nonconforming parts and tried to report it, a supervisor emphatically declared “We’re not going to report anything to the FAA.” Yet even more than Boeing’s rancid corporate culture, this piece takes aim and corporate criminal law – specifically the Y2K era AIR 21 law which “effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers…from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.” Per this law, “the exclusive legal remedy available to aviation industry whistleblowers who suffer retaliation for reporting safety violations involves filing a complaint within 90 days of the first instance of alleged retaliation with a secret court administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that lacks subpoena power, takes five years or longer to rule in many cases, and rules against whistleblowers an astounding 97 percent of the time, according to the Government Accountability Project.” No wonder Boeing acts as though they are above the law.

9. The United Auto Workers union continues to rack up victories. On Tuesday, More Perfect Union reported “ Mercedes-Benz has abruptly replaced its U.S. CEO in an effort to undercut the union drive at Mercedes's plant in Alabama…In a video shown to workers…new CEO Federico Kochlowski admits that ‘many of you’ want change and [promised] improvements.” As Jonah Furman, Communications Director for UAW, notes “Mercedes workers have already:

-- killed two-tier wages

-- gotten their UAW pay bump

-- [and] fired their boss

and they haven't even voted yet!

If that's what you get for just *talking* union, imagine what you can win when you *join* the union.”

Moreover, UAW President Shawn Fain issued a statement decrying the mass arrests of anti-war protesters, writing “The UAW will never support the...intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice…This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong…if you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war.”

10. Finally, the New York Daily News’s Chris Sommerfledt reports “[New York City’s] largest cop union [the Police Benevolent Association] is suing Police Commissioner Ed Caban and Mayor Adams for implementing a new “zero tolerance” policy on NYPD officers using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.” The fact that the PBA is suing this ardently pro-cop mayoral administration is alarming enough, but the fact that enough NYPD officers are using steroids to warrant this policy – and enough for the union to step in on their behalf – raises an even more alarming question: how many roid-rage fueled NYPD cops are terrorizing marginalized people on the streets of New York City? Perhaps this could explain some of the NYPD’s outrageous, disproportionately violent behavior in recent years.

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

Ralph welcomes Professor Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT. We discuss the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/ Palestine and breakdown what the weaponry being used in both conflicts tells us about the intentions and capabilities of all parties involved. Plus, Ralph answers listener questions!

Theodore 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.

We have a very complicated situation. In some ways, there's no right or wrong. There are different groups of people with deep ethnic commitments, and a central government in Kiev that has acted in a way that's completely intolerant of a significant fraction of its own citizens who happen to be of Russian descent. And right from the beginning, there was hostility from the West.

Theodore Postol

There's a long history of the central Ukrainian command not supporting their troops at the battlefront. This is a real problem with the troops. The morale of the troops has been tremendously affected in an adverse way by the sense that their military leadership is not concerned about their life. It's one thing to ask a soldier to go risk their lives or lay down their life for their country and be providing everything you can to protect them and make it possible for them to fight. It's another thing when you're sending them to a certain death just because it looks good.

Theodore Postol

The people in leadership roles are clueless, to a point that it's astonishing. The last situation that I know of historically where the leadership was so clueless was Tsar Nicholas II in 1917.

Theodore Postol

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 4/23/24

1. According to AP, the United States has vetoed Palestine’s latest bid for full membership in the United Nations. The vote in the 15-member U.N. Security Council was 12 in favor, including close U.S. allies like France, Japan, and South Korea, with the U.K. and Switzerland opting to abstain. Only the United States voted against the resolution. If U.S. had not blocked the resolution, the question would have gone to the full U.N. General Assembly, where no country holds veto power. While the U.S. claims this vote “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood,” these words obviously ring empty. Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination…The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real.” 140 countries recognize Palestine. Palestine currently sits as a non-member observer state at the U.N.

2. Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a prominent Palestinian-American academic, was arrested at her home in Jerusalem last week, Democracy Now! reports. According to this report, Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian “was suspended by Hebrew University last month after saying in an interview Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.” Sarah Ihmoud, a co-founder of the Palestinian Feminist Collective who teaches at College of the Holy Cross is quoted saying “We see this as yet another example of Israel attacking Palestinians wherever they are, whoever they are. It underscores that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s racist apartheid rule.” Now, Ryan Grim of the Intercept reports that Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian is communicating trough family that she is being tortured in Israeli custody. Maddeningly, it appears unlikely that President Biden will hold Israel to account for the possible torture of an American citizen.

3. Left-wing Israeli journalist Nimrod Flaschenberg reports Israeli refusenik Tal Mitnick and Sofia Orr “were both sentenced this week by the Israeli army to prison terms of 45 days+15 days probation. This will bring Sofia to a total of 85 days and Tal to 150. The Israeli army is relentless. But these brave kids are not about to give up.” This is Mr. Mitnick’s 4th term in military prison and Ms. Orr’s third, accoring to Pressenza. The international press agency further reports “probation is unprecedented and aims at deterring the refusers by enabling the military court to extend their next sentence beyond the 45-day limit…[and] In addition to Mitnick and Orr, conscientious objector Ben Arad is serving his first term of 20 days in prison.”

4. Much has been made of the recent pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University. Prem Thakker of the Intercept reports, organizers of these protests say over 50 Barnard students and over 30 Columbia students have been suspended, with Barnard students losing access to dining and housing services. Reports on the ground show the universities dumping students belongings in the street. At the protests themselves, organizers emphasize that Jewish and Muslim students shared prayer space, and stress “Columbia wants you to believe we are enemies to protect their genocidal investments, but there is no deeper solidarity."

5. Following SUNY Binghampton’s adoption of a BDS resolution, New York State Legislators sent a letter to SUNY Chancellor John B. King calling for the expulsion of the student leaders behind that campaign. Moreover, this letter calls for “the ouster of any faculty and committee members who played a role in promoting or supporting this resolution.” This letter was signed by both Republican and Democratic state legislators in Albany. As prominent DSA member Aaron Narraph aptly put it, this campaign against the student activists constitutes “our very own mccarthyism.”

6. In more campus news, The Lens, a New Orleans based outlet, is out with a blistering report on LSU’s pay-for-play arrangement with fossil fuel companies. They write “For $5 million dollars, Louisiana’s flagship university will let an oil company help choose which faculty research projects move forward. Or, for $100,000, a corporation can participate in a research study, with ‘robust’ reviewing powers and access to resulting intellectual property.” This report links to documents that outline LSU’s fundraising pitch to oil and chemical companies, and “Records [which] show that after Shell donated $25 million in 2022 to LSU…the university gave the fossil-fuel corporation license to influence research and coursework for the university’s new concentration in carbon capture, use, and storage.” It is telling that, like pro-Palestine speech, the so-called campus free speech defenders are not standing up to corporate capture of research institutions.

7. Against the backdrop of escalating diplomatic tensions in Latin-America over Ecuador’s raid on the Mexican embassy, Progressive International reports “Ecuador [has voted] NO in the referendum on investor-state arbitration…rejecting President Noboa’s underhanded efforts to override the Constitution to protect foreign investors over labor rights, Indigenous communities, and environmental regulations.” The Investor-State Dispute System – which places international corporations on the same legal footing as sovereign governments and hands over adjudication to the World Trade Organization – has come under heavy fire by left-wing skeptics of so-called ‘free trade’ in recent years, contributing to the ultimate demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal engineered in the late Obama era. The ISDS has had a particularly troubling history in Latin-America, with tobacco companies suing Uruguay over anti-smoking legislation to name just one example. At the same time however, Ecuador overwhelmingly passed an anti-gang referendum in a victory for Noboa, per Reuters. Expect to see more about Ecuador in the coming weeks.

8. Techcruch reports “Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks that it has shipped to date, due to a problem where the accelerator pedal can get stuck, putting drivers at risk of a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” This article goes on to say “The recall caps a tumultuous week for Tesla. The company laid off more than 10% of its workforce on Monday, and lost two of its highest-ranking executives.” The Guardian now reports that Tesla plans to cut prices on the Cybertrucks, which cost over $100,000 each. We beseech our listeners to be wary of these vehicles and to do thorough research on Tesla’s auto safety record.

9. In more transportation news, transportation blog Second Ave. Sagas reports “The feds are threatening to sue [New York City] if city vehicles [such as NYPD patrol SUVs] do not stop parking on sidewalks and crosswalks in ways that ‘impede the access of people with disabilities to pedestrian pathways.’” According to the Justice Department’s letter, “The City of New York (and, more specifically, the NYPD) has failed to ensure that the pedestrian grid is ‘readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities,’... NYPD vehicles and the personal vehicles of NYPD employees frequently obstruct sidewalks and crosswalks in the vicinity of NYPD precincts…a recent study identified parking behaviors at 91% of the NYPD’s precincts that resulted in obstructions to sidewalks and crosswalks with the potential to render those pathways inaccessible.” We commend the Justice Department for taking action to ensure the ADA is enforced, even against the NYPD which routinely behaves as though it is above the law.

10. Finally, the United Autoworkers have prevailed in their union election at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant, winning by an overwhelming 2,628 to 985 margin, per the Guardian. This marks the first time workers have unionized a foreign-owned auto plant in the South and serves as a repudiation of the anti-union campaign backed by Republican Governors such as Tennessee’s own Bill Lee. UAW President Shawn Fain responded to this campaign, saying “They’re liars…These politicians are showing that they’re just puppets for corporate America, and they don’t give a damn about working-class people. They don’t care about the workers being left behind even though the workers are the ones who elect them.” Seizing on the momentum of victory,  said “The workers at VW are the first domino to fall. They have shown it is possible…I expect more of the same to come. Workers are fed up.” UAW now plans to target a Mercedes plant in Alabama; according to the union, “A supermajority of Mercedes-Benz workers have filed a petition with the…NLRB…for a vote to join the UAW.” As the Guardian notes, “Mercedes has been considerably more outspoken against the union than VW was, with a top Mercedes official telling workers: ‘I don’t believe the UAW can help us to be better.’” Yet Fain is confident, saying “At the end of the day, I believe that workers at Mercedes definitely want a union…and I believe a big majority there will vote in favor.”

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

Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent the last forty-two of his seventy years on Earth behind the bars of a Pennsylvania state prison, twenty-nine and a half of those on Death Row based on a dubious and extremely flawed and biased conviction for murder. Today, we explore his story and what it tells us about what Ralph calls our “criminal injustice system.” We speak to Noelle Hanranah, the founder and legal director of Prison Radio for which Mumia has done thousands of commentaries, and Professor Joy James, political philosopher, academic and author, who has studied America’s carceral state. Plus, we get the rare opportunity to speak to Mumia himself, who answers our questions from prison.

Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. Professor James has published numerous articles on: political theory, police, prison and slavery abolition; radicalizing feminisms; diasporic anti-black racism; and US politics. She is the author and editor of several books including The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings, Imprisoned Intellectuals, Resisting State Violence, and Warfare in the American Homeland.

[Mumia’s] a treasure. And I don't want to make him an isolate. I think there are a number of people who have been incarcerated for decades who study and struggle—that's a phrase people use in terms of books reaching the incarcerated, but also the writings of the incarcerated coming out of prisons. They enable us to be able to learn and study with them. If not physically in the same space, definitely with the same ethics and the same commitments.

Joy James

The way that I see what we're struggling against—which I believe echoes what Mumia has been writing about and talking about—is very complex, overlapping systems of containment and control in which poor- and working-class people are going to be the most negatively affected.

Joy James

Noelle Hanrahan is the founder and legal director of Prison Radio, a multimedia production studio that brings the voices of incarcerated people into the public debate. Since 1992, she has produced over 3,500 multimedia recordings from over 100 prison radio correspondents, including the critically acclaimed work of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

[Mumia Abu-Jamal is] facing a system in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, which literally does not privilege the U.S. Constitution. It's more interested in finality…So they privilege procedure over merit.

Noelle Hanrahan

Mumia Abu Jamal is an award-winning broadcast journalist, essayist, and author of 12 books. Most recently, he’s completed the historic trilogy Murder Incorporated (Perfecting Tyranny, Dreaming of Empire, and America’s Favorite Pastime.) In the late 1970s, Abu-Jamal worked as a reporter for radio stations throughout the Delaware Valley. In 1981, Abu-Jamal was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists’ Philadelphia chapter. Since 1982, Abu-Jamal has lived in state prison (28 of those years were spent in solitary confinement on death row.) Currently, he’s serving life without parole at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA. Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial and its resultant first-degree murder conviction have been criticized as unconstitutionally corrupt by legal and activist groups for decades, including by Amnesty International and Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, and Desmond Tutu.

I love it when I hear or read about so-called conservatives talking about “two tiers of justice.” Justice if anything is at least three tiers— it's one tier for white people, another tier for black folks, and a third tier for the very rich. Now guess who gets sweetest deals? I mean look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, right? If you're rich in this country, you can get every break that you can afford. You can get the best justice, the best lawyers, and they will fight wars.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

When prisoners use the phone or go to the commissary—every item you buy, every call you make, it's taxed. So what about taxation without representation, in this so-called democracy, where every voice should be heard, and every person should be allowed the opportunity to vote?

Mumia Abu-Jamal

In prison, the most important thing, the one thing that stops guys from coming back is education. The most important thing is education. I would even say what people need is a de-colonial education, especially in prison.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

I never succumbed to calling our system a criminal justice system—it's a criminal injustice system, because it reflects raceand class bias to an extraordinary degree. The studies have been overwhelming on this. You don't see many corporate criminals in jail these days. You don't see many prosecutions. You don't see many investigations of the corporate crime wave that takes a far greater toll in lives, injuries, and property than street crime does. But then, the system reflects the power structure.

Ralph Nader

Ralph welcomes Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss what's motivating anti-Palestinian extremism in Israel, how the U.S. has been complicit in Israel's theft of Palestinian territory and genocide against the Palestinian people, and what the United Nations can do to help achieve a lasting peace. Plus, we share Ralph's recent column: "Israeli Leaders’ Objective All Along Has Been the Expulsion of Occupied Palestinians and Seizure of Their Remaining Land."

Jeffrrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the rank of University Professor (the university’s highest academic rank) and he served as Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016. Mr. Sachs has also served in numerous positions at the United Nations, including as President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

The reason that diplomacy is not happening is perfectly obvious. Which is that the core of this government does not want diplomacy, even if it were to deliver security. Their aim is not security through diplomacy. Their aim is “Greater Israel.”

Jeffrey Sachs

I have lived through…watching the U.S. government abandon so many projects, from Southeast Asia through the Americas—these have been terrible projects often—but the U.S. loses interest, it moves on. And Israel needs to actually live in its neighborhood if it's going to survive. And counting on military might to do that is a profound mistake. It's eating away at its own fundamental capacity to act as a society—the idea that you can stand alone in the world community and have no one support you. This is a huge mistake. So I've tried to say to my counterparts in Israel…that this path is not only wrong and immoral, but doomed to fail as well.

Jeffrey Sachs

The Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates—97 % — in the world. Under dire conditions, they have accomplished farmers, physicians, scientists, engineers, poets, musicians, novelists, artists, and a deep entrepreneurial tradition carried on by the Palestinian diaspora around the world. It is no accident that Israeli bombers directly target Palestinian cultural and educational institutions in their recurrent assaults on Gaza. Israeli militarists have to degrade all Palestinians… to expel them from their ancestral lands.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 4/10/24

1. An unsettling story in Business Insider recounts how the Israeli military uses an AI system – chillingly called “Where’s Daddy?” – to track Hamas militants to their homes. As one IDF officer put it, “We[‘re] not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they…[are] engaged in a military activity…On the contrary, the IDF bomb[s] them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home.” This policy of bombing family homes “as a first option” is a major factor in why so many Palestinian families have lost unimaginable numbers of relatives in Israeli strikes. IDF officers added “human input in the target identification process…[is] essentially [to] ‘rubber stamp’ the machine's picks after little more than ‘20 seconds’ of consideration — which was largely to double-check the target is male.”

2. As we know from the recent polling on the issue, only 22.5% of Democrats now support military aid to Israel, while 83% want a permanent ceasefire. More surprising is that only 41% of Republicans want  the U.S. to send military aid to Israel, and 58% want a permanent ceasefire. This poll is now joined by a similar poll from the United Kingdom, showing 56% of the British public – including 74% of Labour Party voters – support their government refusing to sell more weapons to Israel, with only 17% in support of continuing such sales. Pressing on this issue, progressive members of Congress Mark Pocan and Jan Schakowsky have penned a letter to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken “strongly urg[ing them]…to reconsider [their] recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the [World Central Kitchen] airstrike is completed…to continue withholding these transfers until those responsible are held accountable [under U.S. or international law and]…to withhold these transfers if Israel fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza, including aid workers, and if it fails to facilitate – or arbitrarily denies or restricts – the transport and delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.” This letter was signed by 37 additional Democratic members of Congress – mostly the typical progressives, though with one extremely notable addition: Nancy Pelosi, signifying how mainstream this position has become.

3. In yet another sign of the shifting political winds, Delaware Senator Chris Coons – a consummate moderate and perhaps President Biden’s closest ally in the Senate – has come out in favor of conditioning military aid to Israel, Axios reports. Coons added “I've never said that before, I've never been here before.”

4. Yet even as the Democratic Party shifts., Biden has continued his blind support for Israel – resulting in continued success for the “Uncommitted” electoral protest movement. In Wisconsin, the “uninstructed delegation” option won nearly 50,000 votes statewide – over 8% of the vote – and over 30% of votes in the precincts representing the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And it hasn’t stopped with Wisconsin. In Connecticut, “uncommitted” won over 11%; in New York, blank ballots accounted for 12%; and in Rhode Island, “uncommitted” won a whopping 14.5% of primary voters statewide. John Nichols at the Nation tabulates that as of now, over half a million Democratic primary voters have given Biden a clear message: “Save Gaza!”

5. The controversy surrounding Oscar-winning Zone of Interest Director Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech continues to drag on. This week, over 150 major Jewish creatives signed an open letter supporting Glazer, per Variety. These signatories include many household names, such as Joaquin Phoenix, Elliott Gould, Joel Coen, David Cross, Amy Berg, Boots Reilly, Hari Nef, Ilana Glzazer, Wallace Shawn, and many, many more. This letter states “We are Jewish artists, filmmakers, writers and creative professionals who support Jonathan Glazer’s statement from the 2024 Oscars. We were alarmed to see some of our colleagues in the industry mischaracterize and denounce his remarks…Their attacks on Glazer are a dangerous distraction from Israel’s escalating military campaign which has already killed over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation. We grieve for all those who have been killed in Palestine and Israel over too many decades...We honor the Holocaust by saying: Never again for anyone.”

6. In some positive news, the National Labor Relations Board reports union election petitions are up 35% in the first half of Fiscal Year 2024, with unfair labor practice charges up 7%. The NLRB is quick to note that this increased caseload coincides with a long-term funding crunch that has seen their offices shrink by 50% over the past 20 years. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo writes “Congress needs to fully fund the NLRB to effectively and efficiently comply with our Congressional mandate when providing quality service to the public in conducting hearings and elections, investigating charges, settling and litigating meritorious cases, and obtaining full and prompt remedies for workers whose rights are violated.”

7. In Ecuador, a diplomatic crisis is unfolding with Mexico after Ecuadorian forces stormed the Mexican embassy to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who had sought – and been granted – asylum at the Mexican embassy. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, decried this as a “flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico.”  CNN reports this provocation prompted AMLO to suspend diplomatic relations with Ecuador and pursue a case against Ecuador at the International Court of Justice. For its part, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying “The United States condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions.”

8. NBC4 Washington is out with a blockbuster report on gun running within the D.C. Metro police department. Put simply, “For at least seven months in 2020 and 2021, the D.C. area’s largest police department was…the only place D.C. residents could legally get a handgun.” Incredible as that may seem, that much was already public knowledge. Now, federal documents have been uncovered showing that a remarkable number of these guns ended up at crime scenes. In fact, “So many guns [were] recovered at crime scenes, in such a brief period, that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives placed D.C. police into a program designed to give extra scrutiny to dealers with higher levels of so-called crime guns.” In other words, D.C. cops, far from getting guns off the street, were in fact releasing so many guns on to the street that federal firearms regulators had to step in. So much for police improving safety.

9. According to CNBC, “Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes initiated an investigation into tech magnate Elon Musk on Sunday…concern[ing] possible obstruction of justice by Musk, who said over the weekend that he would defy the court’s orders to restrict or suspend some popular accounts on its platform.” This comes as part of a larger investigation into “so-called digital militias, a term applied to people accused of spreading misinformation online to attack democratic institutions in Brazil.” While the list of accounts flagged by the Brazilian government is not public, Wired reports this list includes “the fugitive far-right influencer Allan dos Santos, a supporter of president Jair Bolsonaro. (Dos Santos fled the country in 2020 to avoid investigation for disseminating disinformation.)… [and] right-wing YouTuber Bruno Aiub, known as Monark, who has over 1 million followers on X and has argued that Brazil should recognize the Nazi party, and Brazilian billionaire and Bolsonaro-supporter Luciano Hang.”

10.  Finally, you might have heard that Amazon is shutting down the “Just Walk Out” technology at its grocery stores. This technology supposedly relied on an entirely automated system of cameras and sensors to track what people picked up at the stores and charge that to their Amazon accounts. Yet, Gizmodo reports “Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.” This genre of story has become all too common – companies trumpeting ‘automation’ when in fact all they’re doing is outsourcing with extra steps. Just another reminder to remain skeptical of claims by big corporations. Often flashy new tech is just a smokescreen for regular old labor exploitation.

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