Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph and team spend the entire hour with Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, a singular voice in an otherwise compliant domestic press to discuss his book “The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe” a series of columns written before and after the October 7th, 2023 attacks that put this ongoing tragedy in historical context. Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is the author of the weekly “Twilight Zone” feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as the writer of political editorials for the newspaper. He is the author of The Punishment of Gaza, and his latest book is The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. If you talk with me about a very broad scheme—not ending this war now in Gaza, but really for a long range, a real vision—the vision is only the choice between an apartheid state between the river and the sea, or a democracy between the river and the sea. There is no third way anymore, unfortunately. And we have to choose, and the world has to choose: Is the world ready to accept a second apartheid state, or is the world ready to act for having an equal democracy for Palestinians and Israelis living between the river and the sea? Gideon Levy We have to stick to global, universal values: occupation is illegal, apartheid is immoral, and war is always cruel. Gideon Levy After the 7th of October, an iron curtain fell between Israel and any kind of human sentiments toward Gaza— the people of Gaza, the victims of Gaza, we don't want to hear, we don't want to know, we are not bothered, and we have the right to do whatever we want. Gideon Levy We hear about the hundred hostages held by Hamas underground a great deal in the US media, but we don't hear much about the torture and the other mistreatment of thousands of Palestinians—some of them women and children—who were arrested, just arbitrarily kidnapped, and sent to Israeli jails. Ralph Nader News 12/18/24 1. Our top story this week comes from Public Citizen Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool, who reports that the Biden Department of Justice has opted to not prosecute McKinsey, the consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales even as the opioid crisis reached its peak. Instead, the DOJ announced they would enter into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the firm; in other words, the Biden administration is giving McKinsey a get out of jail free card for their role in perhaps the most expansive, destructive, and clear case of corporate crime this century. Claypool rightly calls this deal “Pathetic” and “A slap in the face to everyone who lost a loved one to the crisis.” 2. On December 10th, a federal judge blocked Kroger’s proposed $20 billion acquisition of Albertsons supermarkets, per the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson sided with the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued to stop the merger, agreeing that this consolidation in the grocery store sector would “erode competition and raise prices for consumers.” This argument was particularly poignant given the soaring cost of groceries since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the aftermath of this decision, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger alleging that the larger supermarket chain had resisted calls to “divest itself of a larger number of stores,” in order to stave off the inevitable antitrust actions federal regulators would bring against this merger. Albertsons filed this lawsuit, which seeks at least $6 billion in damages less than 24 hours after the ruling, per the Journal. 3. On December 14th, the BBC reported 26-year-old OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. In October, Balaji exposed that OpenAI had flagrantly violated US copyright laws while developing its flagship AI program ChatGPT. Balaji’s revelations form the underpinnings of lawsuits against OpenAI by news...

Ralph welcomes retired diplomat Ambassador Chas Freeman to discuss the United States' disregard for international law, the incoming Trump administration's approach to foreign policy, and the decline of the American Empire (among other topics). Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who has negotiated on behalf of the United States with over 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. Ambassador Freeman was previously a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok and Beijing. He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. In addition to Chinese, Ambassador Freeman speaks French and Spanish at the professional level and can converse in Arabic and several other languages. He concluded his thirty years in public service as Assistant Secretary of Defense, responsible for managing defense relations with all regions of the world except the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ambassador Freeman is the author of several well-received books on statecraft and diplomacy, including The Diplomat’s Dictionary, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, and America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East. I think it's fair to say that our country led the drive for international law, a world order that was based on rules established by consensus and legitimized at the United Nations. But we have also led the drive away from the rule of law, both internationally and domestically. And I think the connection is contempt for procedural justice or due process. Chas Freeman That whole area of international law—which was a stabilizing force in the world—has gone [when Trump removed us from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement in Europe.] And the UN Charter is disrespected—not just the US Constitution is—in its fundamentals. We invade the sovereignty of other countries with no serious regard for the legal prohibitions against that. And in fact, those legal prohibitions—which once were something that smaller countries could rely upon when they confronted the great powers—are no longer effective. Therefore, we see at the local level, the regional level, a proliferation of weapons designed to counter and defend against attack by greater powers. So the whole world is in effect arming itself. This is very good for arms manufacturers, but it's very bad for the prospects for our species. Chas Freeman There are no realistic threats against the United States—except those that we are provoking. Our view seems to be that the best way to deal with the hornet’s nest—I’m speaking of West Asia, the Middle East here—is to go and poke the hornets in their nest. Chas Freeman The real risk now…is Israel has so much power in the US that it could create incidents which would flip the United States into a blazing barrage of empire expansion— and suppression in the United States domestically. And they have an incoming president who is ripe for that kind of manipulation to begin with. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 12/11/24 1. On December 4th, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated in broad daylight in Midtown Manhattan. Clues indicated that the killing was political; most notably, the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were each written on one of the three bullets fired at the scene. As AP notes, “The messages mirror the phrase ‘delay, deny, defend,’ which is commonly used by lawyers and critics about insurers that delay payments, deny claims and defend their actions.” Following nearly...

Ralph welcomes international human rights lawyer and activist, and former senior United Nations human rights official Craig Mokhiber to discuss Israel and Gaza—if Israel should be thrown out of the UN, how Trump's positions will compare to Biden's, and whether we're starting to see cracks in Israel's wall of impunity. Plus, Ralph shares a possible ray of light in Trump's cabinet, a warning about the cost of credit cards for small businesses, and some tough love for AARP. Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist, and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York. In October of 2023, he left the United Nations, penning a widely read letter criticizing the UN’s human rights failures in the Middle East, warning of unfolding genocide in Gaza, and calling for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on international law, human rights, and equality. Gaza is now the world capital of child amputation. And that doesn't even cover the true horror, because Israel blocks any anesthesia from entering Gaza as a means of imposing further agony on the population that they are subjecting to genocide. Which means those amputations are being carried out on children and adults without anesthesia and often without sterile equipment or adequate hospitals, such that even if they survive the excruciating agony of an amputation without anesthesia, they may well not survive the side effects. They may well not survive the infection. Craig Mokhiber The irony is that in November, the UN announced that Israel had paid its dues in full in order to preserve its membership and to continue to fund the UN— an organization that the Israelis say is a terrorist, anti-Semitic organization dedicated to its destruction, is an organization that they have decided to be a member of and to fund. So when you look at the kind of propaganda that they distribute…You can see how ironic and how outrageous it really is. I've said that it would be hard to imagine any country in the history of the organization more deserving—at a minimum—of suspension from the UN General Assembly. No country in history has violated the principles of the UN Charter more than Israel, and it has done so from the moment of its admission in 1948. Craig Mokhiber We can certainly expect a dangerous four years under Trump. There's no denying it…But we shouldn't forget that we've just had a four-year term under Biden and Harris in which they undid none of those policies, and in which they actually supported horrific international crimes being perpetrated by Israel. And Biden and his administration were at the helm of the brutal repression of human rights defenders here in the United States, on college campuses and workplaces and the streets and in media places. So we're going to go from genocide abroad and repression at home under Biden to more genocide abroad and repression at home under Trump. The only difference is that Trump won't waste his time on the kind of mendacious pretense of civility and humanitarian concern that was peddled by Biden and Harris as it murdered babies in their thousands. Craig Mokhiber AARP has maybe 18 million members. That's a big, big organization, and we want it on our side. We want it on the side of single-payer, universal insurance, full Medicare for all. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 12/4/24 1. On Tuesday, right-wing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to stage a coup, declaring martial law and stationing troops outside of the South Korean National Assembly in an attempt to block lawmakers from assembling and voting to overturn his decree. Reuters reports that while Yoon used the pretext of cracking down on “North Korean anti-state forces," he “did not cite any specific threat”...

Ralph welcomes Marc Rotenberg, founder and president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy to fill us in on the latest international treaty aimed at putting guardrails on the potential Frankenstein monster that is Artificial Intelligence. Plus, as we get to the end of the Medicare enrollment period, we put out one last warning for listeners to avoid the scam that is Medicare Advantage. Marc Rotenberg is the founder and president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a global organization focused on emerging challenges associated with Artificial Intelligence. He serves as an expert advisor on AI policy to many organizations including the Council of Europe, the Council on Foreign Relations, the European Parliament, the Global Partnership on AI, the OECD, and UNESCO. What troubles me is the gap between an increasingly obscure, technical, and complex technology—abbreviated into “AI” —and public understanding. You know, when motor vehicles came and we tried to regulate them and did, people understood motor vehicles in their daily lives. When solar energy started coming on, they saw solar roof panels. They could see it, they could understand it, they could actually work putting solar panels on roofs of buildings. This area is just producing a massively expanding gap between the experts from various disciplines, and the power structure of corporatism, and their government servants and the rest of the people in the world. Ralph Nader The difference between these two types of [AI] systems is that with the old ones we could inspect them and interrogate them. If one of the factors being used for an outcome was, for example, race or nationality, we could say, well, that's impermissible and you can't use an automated system in that way. The problem today with the probabilistic systems that US companies have become increasingly reliant on is that it's very difficult to actually tell whether those factors are contributing to an outcome. And so for that reason, there are a lot of computer scientists rightly concerned about the problem of algorithmic bias. Marc Rotenberg [The sponsors of California SB 1047] wanted companies that were building these big complicated systems to undertake a safety plan, identify the harms, and make those plans available to the Attorney General…In fact, I work with many governments around the world on AI regulation and this concept of having an impact assessment is fairly obvious. You don't want to build these large complex systems without some assessment of what the risk might be. Marc Rotenberg We've always understood that when you create devices that have consequences, there has to be some circuit breaker. The companies didn't like that either. [They said] it's too difficult to predict what those scenarios might be, but that was almost precisely the point of the legislation, you see, because if those scenarios exist and you haven't identified them yet, you choose to deploy these large foundational models without any safety mechanism in place, and all of us are at risk. So I thought it was an important bill and not only am I disappointed that the governor vetoed it, but as I said, I think he made a mistake. This is not simply about politics. This is actually about science, and it's about the direction these systems are heading. Marc Rotenberg That's where we are in this moment—opaque systems that the experts don't understand, increasingly being deployed by organizations that also don't understand these systems, and an industry that says, “don't regulate us.” This is not going to end well. Marc Rotenberg In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco Desantis News 11/27/24 1. Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. According to a statement from ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, the international legal body found reasonable grounds to believe that each has committed war crimes and crimes against...

Ralph welcomes Vani Hari, also known as “The Food Babe,” to tell us about her campaign against Kellogg’s to stop using artificial dyes in their cereals that have been linked to various health problems and have been banned in Europe. Plus, noted labor organizer, Chris Townsend gives us his take on the AFL-CIOs obeisant relationship to the Democratic Party. Vani Hari is an author and food activist. A former corporate consultant, she started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and she is the co-founder of the nutritional supplement startup Truvani. It is a game of whack-a-mole because we get these corporations to change, or they announce that they're going to change, and then they go back on their commitment. And that is what's happened with Kellogg's. Vani Hari Chris Townsend is a 45-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW. These workers who have been betrayed, lied to, wrecked, destroyed, poisoned, all of these things—this becomes the breeding ground for Trumpist ideology. And the Democrats won’t face this. Chris Townsend Our media largely ignores the labor movement. Our small labor press—left press—generally subscribes to the “good news only” school of journalism. So these endemic problems and even immediate crises are never dealt with. Now, some of that is because the existing labor leadership generally is not fond of criticism or is not fond of anyone pointing out shortcomings (or) mistakes. Chris Townsend We’re a cash cow—and a vote cow— to be milked routinely and extensively by this Democratic machinery… The leadership today in the bulk of the unions is an administrative layer, business union through and through to the core. The historic trade union spirit that always animated the unions in various levels is not extinguished, but in my 45 years, I would say it is at a low ebb. In the sense that we just have been sterilized because of this unconditional and unholy alliance or domination by the Democratic Party. And there's no room for spark. There's no room for dissent. There's no room for anyone to even raise the obvious. Chris Townsend [Leaders of the AFL-CIO are] basically bureaucrats in that building on 16th Street, collecting their pay and their nice pensions. Completely out of touch with millions of blue collar workers that have veered into the Republican Party channels—the so-called Reagan Democrats, which have spelled the difference in election after election for the Senate, for the House, for the Presidency. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 11/20/24 1. In his new book Hope Never Disappoints, Pope Francis writes “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” and called for the situation to be “studied carefully…by jurists and international organisations,” per the Middle East Eye. These comments come on the heels of a United Nations committee report which found that Israel’s actions are “consistent with characteristics of genocide,” and alleged that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Catholic pontiff has long decried violence in all forms and has previously criticized Israel’s “disproportionate and immoral” actions in Gaza and Lebanon, per AP. 2. On November 14th, the AP’s Farnoush Amiri reported that more than 80 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden on October 29th, urging the administration to sanction Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Only made public after the election, this letter called for sanctions on these individuals “Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the...

First on today's show, Ralph welcomes author, statistician, and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and give us his take on the election results. Then, Ralph and journalist Ryan Grim speak about President-Elect Trump's cabinet appointments and what we can expect from the upcoming Trump Administration. Finally, we're joined by constitutional law expert Bruce Fein for a post-election Donald Trump legal roundup. Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent twenty-one years as a derivatives trader before changing careers to become a scholar, mathematical researcher and philosophical essayist. Mr. Taleb’s works focus on mathematical, philosophical, and practical problems with risk and probability, as well as on the properties of systems that can handle disorder. He is the author of many essays and books about risk and uncertainty including the New York Times bestselling The Black Swan and his latest Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. The supporters of Israel are getting smaller in relative economic and financial size—and of course, in technological size as well. So it's getting smaller while at the same time, Israel relies more and more on their support. So that's not a robust situation. In other words, the strategy of Israel being continuously confrontational has led to more and more confrontation, and the strategy of relying on the West is not going to pay off. Nassim Nicholas Talib Israel has been behaving like a child with a strong personality and been capable of winning concessions from her or his parents continuously. So that's what has been happening. But the problem is— not finding any resistance, they kept going, they kept going, and one day they realized that, ah, they went too far but it was too late. So you can rely on AIPAC to do a bunch of things, but at some point, the strategy is not going to work. Nassim Nicholas Talib Ryan Grim is co-founder of Drop Site News, host of the podcast Deconstructed, and co-host of the show Counter Points. He was previously D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and the Washington bureau chief for HuffPost, and he has been a staff reporter for Politico and the Washington City Paper. He is the author of the books This Is Your Country on Drugs, We’ve Got People, and The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution. [The incoming administration of Trump and his Trumpsters] are very aggressive. They think they're above the law. They are greedy. They want to turn the U .S. government into a honeypot for their commercial paymasters—which include their own businesses, by the way, like Elon Musk. And when that happens—when you have greed and almost total power with the Supreme Court on your side, with the Congress under Republican control—you're inevitably going to get serious examples of corruption. You're inevitably going to get blatant corruption. Ralph Nader So far, to a lot of people's great disappointment, Democrats have been pretty terrible at [going after corruption]. So on the one hand, they angered the entire support base for Donald Trump and whipped them up into a frenzy accusing Democrats of prosecuting their enemies, while at the same time not actually prosecuting them for any corruption…Now, because the Trump movement has been able to argue to its base that it feels persecuted, they are probably going to spend a significant amount of their energy going after those who they see as their persecutors. Ryan Grim Time is one of [Donald Trump’s] restraints and incompetence is another. He's up against those two elements—and in-fighting. There are a number of competing factions for his attention and for his agenda and they are going to relentlessly work to undermine each other. So that factor will restrain him. Ryan Grim Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for...

Ralph and the team invite cofounder of RootsAction, Norman Solomon, to autopsy the carcass of the Democratic Party after Donald Trump’s decisive defeat of Kamala Harris in the presidential election. They dissect what happened on November 5th and report what needs to be done about it. Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. The Democrats couldn't even get their base vote out that they got out in 2020. And what are they looking at? Are they looking at themselves in the mirror for introspection? Are they cleaning house? Do they have any plan whatsoever— other than collect more and more money from corporate PACS? This is a spectacular decline. Ralph Nader We kept being told that party loyalty über alles, we had to stay in line with Biden. And…that lost precious months, even a year or a year and a half, when there could have been a sorting out in vigorous primaries. We were told that, "Oh, it would be terrible to have an inside-the-party primary system." Well, in 2020, there were 17 candidates, so there wasn't space on one stage on one night to hold them all—the debates would have to be in half. Well, it didn't really debilitate the party. Debate is a good thing. But what happened was this party loyalty, this obsequious kissing-the-presidential-feet dynamic allowed Biden to amble along until it became incontrovertible that he wasn't capable. Norman Solomon A lot of people on that committee—and of course, running the DNC—they and their pals had this pass-through of literally millions of dollars of consultant fees. Win, lose, or draw. It's like General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, they never lose a war. And so, these corporate donors, they never lose a presidential race. They didn't lose what happened with Harris and Trump. They cashed in, they made out like the corporate bandits that they are. Norman Solomon One reality as an activist that I've come to the conclusion on in the last couple of decades is that progressives tend to be way too nice to Democrats in Congress, especially those that they consider to be allies. Because they like what some of the Democrats do…and so they give too many benefits of the doubt. It's like grading them on a curve. We can't afford to grade them on a curve. Norman Solomon In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 11/6/24 1. As of now, Donald Trump is projected to win the 2024 presidential election by a greater margin than 2016. In addition to winning back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona, Trump also appears to have flipped Nevada – which went for both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Most shocking of all, Trump has won the national popular vote, something he failed to do in 2016 and 2020 and which no Republican has done in 20 years. Democrats also faced a bloodbath in the Senate elections, with Republicans on track to win a 54 seat majority in the upper chamber. 2. Bucking tremendous party pressure, Representative Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse Kamala Harris at a United Autoworkers rally in Michigan just days before the election, POLITICO reports. Tlaib urged attendees to turn out but “kept her speech focused on down-ballot races.” Tlaib is the only member of “the Squad” to withhold her support for Harris and the only Palestinian member of Congress. She has been a staunch critic of the Biden Administration’s blind support for Israel’s campaign of genocide in Palestine and voted Uncommitted in the Michigan Democratic primary. 3. Along similar lines, the Uncommitted Movement issued a fiery statement on the eve of the election. According to the group, “Middle East Eye ran a story…[which] contains unfounded and absurd claims, suggesting that Uncommitted made a secret agreement with the Democratic Party to not endorse a third-party...

Ralph welcomes Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. They'll discuss the crucial role that the Postal Service plays in our democratic process, and how organized labor is impacting this year's elections. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist James Bamford to talk about his latest article in The Nation: "Israel Is Killing Whole Families in Gaza—With Weapons Made in America." Plus, how candidates' positions on Israel may win or lose them voters on Election Day. Mark Dimondstein is the President of the American Postal Workers Union. Since 2013 when Mr. Dimondstein was elected, he has turned the APWU into a fighting activist organization. Mr. Dimondstein advocates for the rights of postal workers as well as the right of the American people to a vibrant public Postal Service. The American Postal Workers Union supports Medicare for All and belongs to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The APWU believes in paying a living wage and providing benefits to all workers. We have about 200,000 members. And we definitely represent people throughout the entire political spectrum and throughout the whole country. So we represent people from right to left, left to right, everybody in between, and we represent people from the most rural outpost in the country to the urban centers. So first, the way we handle it is we don't try to tell people how they should think and how they should vote. We're all adults, we vote for what we think is in our best interest as workers, as family members, as community members, as citizens and so on. So we don't try to dictate to our members how to vote, but we do have a responsibility to lead…So I think leadership has a responsibility to educate our members, to activate our members, and to get our members to be involved in the political electoral process. Mark Dimondstein I'm a proud Jewish American. Jewish Americans should be the first to say “never again” when it comes to genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and when it comes to war crime. And we're not going to solve all the problems of the Middle East and the complicated history of the Middle East on this radio show. But let's at least be clear that the crimes committed against the Jewish people should never be allowed to be committed against anybody else—no matter who's doing it. Mark Dimondstein Kamala Harris sent her two closest advisors to Wall Street about a month ago to get advice on her economic and tax policies and not connecting with the Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a progressive proposal. She doesn't connect with citizen groups. She goes around campaigning with Liz Cheney…It's quite amazing that the most popular incumbent elected politician in America today is Bernie Sanders…And she's ignoring Bernie Sanders and going into one state after another with people like Liz Cheney. Ralph Nader Whatever happens next Tuesday, our work isn't done. The divisions that have been created by white supremacy, by this anti-immigrant fervor out here—these things aren't going away. Issues that divide workers instead of unite workers—the growing bigotry, the attack on women's rights to reproductive freedom and health, the attacks on voting rights—these are issues that are going to be here with whoever wins the election. So the working people and the trade union movement have a lot of work to do, whatever the outcome. Mark Dimondstein James Bamford is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker for PBS, award-winning investigative producer for ABC News, and winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting for his writing in Rolling Stone on the war in Iraq. He is the author of several books, including Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence. The reason I wrote [my article] was because people read about the bombs blowing up schools and refugee camps and hospitals and killing scores and scores, hundreds, thousands of people… But few people realized that it's...

As the Medicare enrollment period gets underway again, we welcome Dr. Adam Gaffney to remind us the ways all those heavily advertised Medicare Advantage programs are ripping you off. Then we receive another house call from Dr. Marty Makary, author of Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health about the effect of medical groupthink on all kinds of accepted treatments from peanut allergies to opioid addiction. Finally, founder of Media Matters, David Brock stops by to discuss his latest book, Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America. Dr. Adam Gaffney is a physician, writer, public health researcher, and advocate. Dr. Gaffney practices at the Cambridge Health Alliance and is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A member of the Cambridge Health Justice Lab, his research focuses on healthcare financing, reform, and equity, and disparities in lung health. He writes about the policy, politics, and history of health care, and is the author of To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History. The reality is we don't need Medigap. We could plug those holes with public coverage. There's no reason to have a role for private insurers to cover a slice of our healthcare when all seniors need the same thing—which is comprehensive universal care. There's no need for these private stopgap measures, when what we need is a public system of universal care. Dr. Adam Gaffney I do think there’s growing interest among physicians in change. Their bosses are increasingly these for-profit companies whose mission is not really medicine. Their mission is money. And what we need to do is to rethink our healthcare system, so it serves communities, is owned by communities, and it returns us to the underlying reason why we went into this profession—which is to help patients, and not to pad the pockets of shareholders. Dr. Adam Gaffney Dr. Marty Makary is a Johns Hopkins professor and member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, Unaccountable and The Price We Pay. Dr. Makary has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he has published more than 250 scientific research articles. He served in leadership at the W.H.O. and has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools. His latest book is Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health. For most of human history, doctors were respected, but maybe like you would respect your hairdresser, or maybe a clergy member in the community. And we didn't have many tools as doctors. We had a lancet, we had a saw to do amputations, we had a couple of drugs that didn't work or were counterproductive like digoxin. And then what happened in 1922 is Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. And by the post-World War II era in the 1940s and '50s, we saw the mass production of antibiotics. That ushered in the white coat era of medicine. Doctors began to wear a white coat. They now had the power to prescribe a magical pill that could cure disease, make childbirth safe, enable surgeons to do procedures safer. And this ushered in this new unquestioned authority. And what happened was, physicians as a class took advantage of this unquestioned authority. Dr. Marty Makary David Brock is a Democratic activist and founder of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group. Following the 2010 elections, Mr. Brock founded the Super PAC American Bridge, which works to elect Democrats. He is a New York Times best-selling author, and his books include the memoir Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, Killing the Messenger: The Right Wing Plot to Hijack Your Government, and his latest book is Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America. The Federalist Society was originally founded by three rightwing law students. And it was pitched as a debating society. So I don't...

Ralph welcomes back William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They'll discuss the Cost of War Project's latest reports on US military spending in support of Israel, and the humanitarian costs of the war in Gaza. Then, Ralph is joined by Palestinian writer and analyst Sumaya Awad to discuss the mass civil disobedience at the New York Stock Exchange, which was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace to protest the weapons manufacturers that are making millions off the genocide in Gaza. William Hartung is an expert on the arms industry and US military budget, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War. In all my years of watching the operations of Washington—including the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq—I have never seen such a servile position by top officials of an administration to a foreign power. Not even close. They are humiliating the United States of America. They are jeopardizing the United States of America—because as you know, the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA have studies and scenarios of blowback. So this war in the Middle East is gonna come back to the US in terms of reprisal and retaliation. And we are not able to anticipate that because we think, as the ruling empire in the world, that we're invulnerable. But we're not invulnerable. Ralph Nader The Biden administration is living in the past. They’ve got this “Israel, right or wrong” ideology. They think it's a political detriment to criticize Israel, and the fact that the younger generation is not locked into that point of view. But I think they’re going to hurt themselves more by enabling the war crimes that Israel is committing than they would by taking a stand. And of course, they keep trying to say that they're pushing for a ceasefire…But as long as they're doing the weapons and the financing, that is laughable. William Hartung It's just stunning. Given the record of this century—two failed wars, $8 trillion spent, hundreds of thousands killed—and yet they could say with a straight face, “We need a dominant military.” As if that’s the tool that's gonna solve any of these problems, rather than make them worse. William Hartung Sumaya Awad is a Palestinian writer and analyst based in New York City, and she is the spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace’s mass civil disobedience event at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Awad directs strategy and communications for the Adalah Justice Project, and she is a cofounder of the Against Canary Mission Project, which defends student activists targeted by blacklists for their Palestinian rights advocacy. She is the co-author of Palestine and Elections and co-editor of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction. There were over 200 arrests—the majority of them anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorkers, who want to send a clear message both to the US government and the American people that Israel weaponizes their identity in order to justify crimes against humanity and that they are not okay with this. That they refuse for their identity and Jewish people to be weaponized in this way. And that in fact, what Israel is doing and what the US government is funding and politically backing is actively making this country and certainly the rest of the world unsafe not just for Jewish people, but for others. Sumaya Awad We are strategizing about how to push back against the role of AIPAC and the grip of AIPAC. I think the reality is that there are many people in Congress that are actually benefiting financially from what is happening in Gaza. We know that at least 50 members of Congress have links to the military-industrial complex—whether that's through stocks or other things. And so it's about unraveling this network, these connections between our government, the way it's profiting from the genocide and...

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (retired) joins us once again to give his unvarnished view of the now yearlong ethnic cleansing of Gaza, an assault that has now extended into Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Plus, our resident constitutional expert, Bruce Fein stops by to give us a quick take on how U.S. material support of the Israeli aggression in Lebanon, an ally of ours, is a clear violation of The Neutrality Act. Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum. The Jewish state in the Levant is finished. Now, if it wants to be a liberal democracy— if it wants to become a real democracy, it could possibly remain. But this Jewish state, especially in its current manifestation, which is the ultimate manifestation, has ended. It's through. The rest of the world, if nothing else, will terminate it just as it did the South African apartheid state. And it will happen—and it will happen despite the Empire's (The U.S.) protestations to the contrary. In fact, I predict ultimately when the Empire smells the tea leaves, it will probably join the crowd and tell them they have no choice but to be a liberal democracy—to invite what that means, which is ultimately a Palestinian Arab majority, and to even change their name to Israel-Palestine or Palestine-Israel or whatever. That's the future. The future is not Bibi Netanyahu. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Netanyahu talks about Joshua who moved on after Moses had given him instructions, and after the leadership had sort of fallen apart, and Joshua takes over. And they go in, and under God's instructions they are to kill everything in sight— leave no human being alive. And that's Netanyahu. Netanyahu thinks he's a latter-day Joshua, and that's what they're doing. They brought a thousand years of history's most rude, most bloodthirsty, most unbelievable procedures in waging war against another state or another people back into vogue again. And we're supporting it. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. The Neutrality Act of 1794 in substance prohibits anyone in the United States from directing or supplying arms or assistance— or otherwise engaging in war—that is against a country with which the United States is formally at peace. The United States at present is at peace with Iran. It's at peace with Lebanon. Indeed, Lebanon's an ally. We already know that President Biden had ordered Navy ships to use their Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense in collaboration with Israel to shoot down Iranian missiles—an act of war. And now they basically said we are combatants with Israel and probably planning covertly to join military forces on the next initiative that Israel takes against Iran. So it's a clear violation of the Neutrality Act. Bruce Fein Listeners, you have your Senators and Representatives campaigning, as we speak, in your communities. You ask them to come to your town meetings where they can hear you out, and where you require them to respond. This is their moment of vulnerability before the election. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco...

First on today's show, Ralph welcomes back Dr. Bandy Lee to discuss her recent conference, "The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership—The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump". Then, Ralph is joined by Professor Ted Postol to talk about the missiles and rockets (and other weapons) being used in the expanding war(s) in the Middle East. [Nadia Milleron] went down to Springfield, the state capitol, and met with every assembly member, saying—for future wrongful death, you should give people in Illinois the opportunity to file for punitive damages against these corporate defendants, or other similarly-positioned defendants. And she got it through—it was considered impossible to beat Boeing, and she got it through and the governor signed it. That's the determination of a parent who loses a child to corporate crime Ralph Nader Dr. Bandy Lee is a medical doctor, a forensic psychiatrist, and a world expert on violence who taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years before joining the Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law. She is currently president of the World Mental Health Coalition, an educational organization that assembles mental health experts to collaborate with other disciplines for the betterment of public mental health and public safety. She is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul. Let me clarify that there's a distinction among the evaluations that mental health experts do—one is diagnostic, the other is functional. And the diagnostic exam is the one that mental health professionals have no business doing on a public figure because that's what you do in private therapy sessions, and you diagnose someone in order to outline their course of treatment. But a functional assessment is something you do for the public—and that includes unfitness or dangerousness—and these kinds of comments are not only permitted, they are part of our societal responsibility because we are responsible not just for private individual patients, but for the public, for society. Dr. Bandy Lee Donald Trump is not an isolated phenomenon. He is a product of the system that has come before him and he is an accelerator of the dangers that succeed him. I do not believe that a Biden presidency would have been this dangerous without a Trump presidency preceding him. Dr. Bandy Lee Ted Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. He previously worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations. In 2016, he received the Garwin Prize from the Federation of American Scientists for his work in assessing and critiquing the government’s claims about missile defenses. I do not want to appear like I don't think it matters, but at the same time, it's been provoked to the point that it's amazing that the Iranians have restrained themselves to this point. But the Iranians know that they're going to suffer heavy damage from Israel. They have not wanted to go to war. They have shown great wisdom and restraint in spite of the situation. Ted Postol What the Israelis want—this guy Netanyahu in particular, who I think is delusional besides being psychopath—what Netanyahu wants, he wants a decisive victory. Again, let me underscore that—a decisive victory against Iran and also Hezbollah and Gaza, these poor victims of his genocide in Gaza. He can't do that. He's going to kill God knows how many more people in his effort—which is already a crime against humanity that's beginning to look like the Holocaust—but he's not going to defeat Hezbollah in...

Ralph welcomes Middle East expert and executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi, to fill us in on the consequences of Israel boobytrapping pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and how those tactics have the potential to blow back on us in the United States. Then we welcome back surgeon and humanitarian, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who has worked in Gaza during the Israeli assault, to update us on his efforts to get the Biden Administration to convince Israel to stop the killing. Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the co-founder and former President of the National Iranian American Council. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East, and has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, where he served in the Security Council, handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan, and Western Sahara, and in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Iraq. He has authored three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel— Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. We're in a very sad situation in which we have a president who has been sitting on the front lines of American foreign policy for one-fifth of America's history, who thinks that he knows everything best, and clearly doesn't seem to be listening to anyone. And there's plenty of discontent inside the Biden administration itself—and people appear to have just given up and are waiting for the elections—but there's no clear signs yet that there won't necessarily be much of a change even after that. Trita Parsi Let's first remember that if any other entity had done this to Israel—or to us—we would not have hesitated for a second. We would have called it an act of terrorism, and we would have called it an act of war. Trita Parsi Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma and critical care surgeon as well as a Northern California Veterans Affairs general surgeon, and he is Associate Professor of Surgery at the California Northstate University College of Medicine. Dr. Sidhwa served at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in March and April of this year, and he has done prior humanitarian work in Haiti, the West Bank, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Dr. Sidhwa and 45 other American doctors and nurses who have served in Gaza recently sent a letter exhorting President Biden, VP Harris, and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to effect an immediate ceasefire. It's hard to appreciate, but really literally everything in Gaza that makes a place a society has been destroyed. I think of it in three levels— at the very base is agriculture, food production, and housing, at the level above that is healthcare, and at the level above that is things that are for a higher level of society, education, arts, industry, whatever. That top level is gone. Literally every university in Gaza has been obliterated, physically destroyed…The hospital system is almost completely useless right now…the functionality of the hospitals is very little more than a four walled space in which people can walk into and ask for a doctor to put bandages on them. And then even the lowest level…something like 85 or 90 % of the water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa This is just outrageous. I mean, why are we doing this even to ourselves? Is it worth corrupting the entire executive department of the United States so that we can murder more children? Is that what Americans want? I don't think so. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa Let's talk about Lebanon itself, not just Hezbollah. This is war on Lebanon—that has a dysfunctional government, to be sure— but it is a state that the U.S. is allied with...

Ralph welcomes back Hassan El-Tayyab, the Legislative Director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation to talk about the FCNL's recent lobbying efforts in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the recently-introduced bill to restore funding to UNRWA. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist Rachel Corbett to discuss her recent article for the NY Times Magazine "The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down" about Próspera, the private, for-profit city off the coast of Honduras. Finally, our resident international-law expert Bruce Fein stops by to discuss Israel's recent coordinated attacks in Lebanon. Hassan El-Tayyab is Legislative Director for Middle East policy and Advocacy Organizer at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Previously, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he worked to reassert Congressional war authority and promote human rights in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition’s war in Yemen. I've been reading a recent statement that the Friends Committee has put out on the Gaza situation. They just can't seem to keep up with the massive expansion of Israeli state terrorism and the death and destruction that's being wrought on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, families, children, mothers, fathers, and the civilian infrastructure. [Their] effort on Capitol Hill—which is a longstanding feature of the Friends Committee on Legislation—seems hopelessly overwhelmed by the AIPAC-led Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby. Ralph Nader We try to find common ground. As you know, the Quaker way is to believe that there's a spirit and light in everybody—whether we agree with them or not, we want to engage. And that's just a philosophy that we've had for over 80 years as an organization, and much longer than that as Quakers doing peace advocacy work going back hundreds of years. So we try to engage with everybody. Maybe we don't agree on the weapons shipments, but we can agree on sending US Navy hospital ships to the region. Hassan El-Tayyab If we care about peace, we have to throw down for peace. And not just support humanitarian aid, but actually get involved in the political end of this as well. Because we are spiraling. We're spiraling into a dark place if we don't get our act together. Hassan El-Tayyab Rachel Corbett is a journalist who has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and New York Magazine, among other publications. And she is the author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin which won the 2016 Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing. On the one hand, you could almost laugh at something like this. There's so many silly anecdotes that come out of it. And on the other hand, it seems incredibly serious, like something that may be happening underneath the surface that has actually been intentionally happening underneath the surface. I think there's a concerted effort to keep things quiet while these cities get built and become almost too big to tear down… Although they're not that advanced, the sheer money behind them and the influence of the people behind them is serious, and this tribunal case alone proves it could have really serious effects on the actual world. Rachel Corbett Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall. There is no way that Israel was able to limit the distribution of the pages to Hezbollah, so they knew that they were taking a very high risk that civilians would be killed or injured—which is a violation of the Geneva Convention...

Ralph welcomes back Jack Dangermond, co-founder of Esri—Environmental Systems Research Institute, the leader in GIS mapping technology to open up his book, “The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges.” Then John R. MacArthur, journalist, author and publisher of Harper’s returns to discuss a recent study by neuroscientists that concluded that students absorb and retain information better on paper than they do on screens and what this means for the future of education and society as a whole. Jack Dangermond is President of Esri—Environmental Systems Research Institute—and is recognized as one of the most influential people in the field of geographic information system—GIS—technology. Jack, along with his wife Laura, founded Esri in 1969. He is the author of The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges. NatGeo Mapmaker Geography is everything. It's what happens, when it happens, in some cases why it happens, but most importantly, where it happens. Jack Dangermond I believe geography and maps—the language of geography—are a new kind of way to understand the complexity of our world. Our world is complex. All these relationships—the world is hard to fathom. And using these interactive mapping tools, people can learn a lot in a short amount of time. They can see context, as well as all the content that they're learning in their various disciplines. Jack Dangermond Years ago, Jack called up and said—help us apply GIS to civic action, civic advocacy…We used GIS techniques, applied federal government data, and in a report we came out with in the 1990s—it was called “Racial Redlining: A Study Of Racial Discrimination By Banks And Mortgage Companies In The United States”—the map showed the worst-case lending pattern as prima facie evidence of unlawful discrimination against low-income areas in mortgage lending. And so, the applications for civic work still need a lot of attention. I don't think the potential has been reached anywhere near what it could be, especially as the field and the technology just explodes with innovation. Ralph Nader John R. MacArthur is the president of Harper’s, a journalist, and the author of several books, including Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War Common sense tells you just instinctively—well, if somebody's looking at a page in a book or in a newspaper, there's less distractions and there's more focus on what you're actually reading, whereas on a screen you have a tendency to get distracted and the lighting is not good and so on and so forth. But now the obvious has been proven. And I get the sense that they're almost ashamed. They just don't want to address it. Or they're in so deep with big tech. John R. MacArthur In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 9/11/24 1. Zeteo reports “Israeli forces allegedly shot and killed US citizen Ayşenur Eygi…at a demonstration in the West Bank village of Beita…The 26-year-old was there alongside other Americans who have been demonstrating against illegal settlement activity and providing a nonviolent protective presence for Palestinians…Ayşenur…was shot at the same weekly demonstration where American teacher and volunteer Amado Sison was shot last month.” This piece also notes that Eygi was in the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement, the same group that American activist Rachel Corrie was affiliated with when she was murdered by an IDF bulldozer in 2003. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken decried this incident as “unprovoked and unjustified,” saying “No one…should be shot and killed for attending a protest. No one should have to put their life at risk just for expressing their views,” per CNN. According to Yahoo News, President Biden has not talked to Eygi’s family, and neither he nor Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have issued a statement on Eygi’s death. 2. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was...

Ralph welcomes former TV writer turned grass roots organizer, Jason Berlin, who explains how his group, Field Team 6, uses the latest data and analytics to identify and reach out to potential Democratic voters in order to register them to vote and how that could turn the tide in purple, flippable states. Jason Berlin is a former TV writer and co-founder of Field Team 6, a national voter-registration project that organizes voter drives to register Democrats in the most flippable states across the country. The fact is you can't get out the vote if those voters don't exist to begin with. It's like no one had a talk with people about where a voter comes from. So we concentrate on that first half of the equation—getting people over that biggest hurdle, getting them registered, generating this river of new Democrats and Independents who can then get into the system and be targeted by the massive get-out-the-vote machinery. Jason Berlin The Democratic Party over the years has exhibited serious symptoms of masochism. It’s like they've written off half the country, where they don't even compete. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 9/4/24 1. On August 28th, the Israeli Defense Forces targeted United Nations World Food Programme vehicles with “repeated gunfire,” per CNN. According to the agency, “Despite being clearly marked and receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach, the vehicle was directly struck by gunfire as it was moving toward an…IDF…checkpoint.” Photos show at least ten bullet holes in the vehicle windows. As this piece highlights, “ongoing airstrikes and repeated evacuation orders by Israeli forces have forced many of the agency’s food warehouses and community kitchens to shutter…The IDF-designated ‘humanitarian zone’ in Gaza is also steadily shrinking; in the past month alone, the IDF has reduced this zone by 38%.” This incident is reminiscent of the Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen workers in April, when the IDF killed three Britons, a Palestinian, a US-Canadian dual citizen, an Australian, and a Pole via multiple airstrikes. Two days after the World Food Programme incident, CNN reported that the IDF killed four in a humanitarian aid vehicle affiliated with the American Near East Refugee Aid organization. 2. On Monday, the Israeli labor federation, Histradrut, called a general strike in order to “pressure Netanyahu’s government into changing its approach to cease-fire negotiations,” per NPR. This action was taken in response to the death of six hostages who would have been released had Israel agreed to the ceasefire proposed in early July. According to NPR, “Many schools and government buildings were shut…[and]…Ben Gurion airport…paused flights for several hours.” Yet, Israel’s Labor Court quickly ordered the strike to end and the union obeyed; the action lasted less than one business day. This incident illustrates the deep discontent with the Netanyahu government’s handling of the hostage negotiations, but also the impotence of Israeli civil society to change course. 3. In more positive news related to labor and Israel, Democracy Now! reports Jimmy Williams Jr. president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, says his union is “directing its massive international pension fund to divest from the Gaza genocide.” According to left-wing British outlet Skwakbox, the Painter’s Union receives $330 million dollars in new contributions from union members each year. 4. The Middle East Monitor reports “Ray Youssef, CEO of the Bitcoin marketplace platform, Noonesapp…[alleges that cryptocurrency giant Binance] ‘has seized all funds from all Palestinians as per the request of the IDF. They refuse to return the funds. All appeals denied.’” Responding to this allegation, a Binance spokesperson claimed that this seizure of assets only covers a limited number of accounts linked to “illicut funds,” though “Binance did not specify the extent or value...

Ralph welcomes back Dr. Michael Osterholm for a COVID check-up. They'll discuss the latest vaccines, what we know about long-haul COVID, updated testing guidelines, and some of the key lessons we can take from COVID and apply to future outbreaks. Plus, a call to action from Ralph. Dr. Michael Osterholm is a professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. In November 2020, Dr. Osterholm was appointed to President-elect Joe Biden's 13-member Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. He is the author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and he has a weekly podcast called The Osterholm Update which offers discussion and analysis on the latest infectious disease developments. I think what we're trying to do today is use this vaccine to target those high-risk people in particular to say—you know what, you need to get it at least every four to six months, and that, unlike the flu vaccine, this is not going to be a once-a-year vaccine. If you did that— by just reducing serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths—it would be a big accomplishment. Dr. Michael Osterholm The last time you had me on, Ralph, we actually talked about the need for a panel to actually do a post-pandemic review. Not to point fingers, not to blame people, but—what should we have learned from that pandemic? And what I think is, for me, still a real challenge is we haven't seemed to learn through any of this. But more importantly—we haven't realized what happened with COVID could be child's play compared to what we could see, if this was anything like a “1918-like” pandemic of influenza. Dr. Michael Osterholm We are using, today, virtually the same technology to make flu vaccines that we did in 1940. Now, that should wake everyone up. Dr. Michael Osterholm, on why we need to invest in vaccine development We have, as a society, a cultural aversion to foreseeing and forestalling omnicides. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 8/28/24 1. Last week, the Uncommitted movement staged a sit-in at the DNC after the Democratic Party barred any Palestinian-American from speaking at the convention. According to Mother Jones, Uncommitted co-leader Abbas Alawieh, a delegate to the DNC, had been requesting a speaking slot for a Palestinian-American for two months in advance, and was only officially denied on the third night of the convention. Alawieh said he was “stunned” by the refusal, and added “We just want our voices to be heard.” As the article notes, “At the DNC, Republican staffers have been offered the chance [to speak]. An Uber lawyer who is high in the campaign got a prime-time slot. But not a single Palestinian has been given even five minutes on that stage.” Uncommitted gave the DNC an extensive list of potential speakers, including a physician just back from Gaza, and a Palestinian elected official from Georgia named Ruwa Romman. Her speech, available at Mother Jones, ended with the lines “To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not…endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us…together.” This was deemed unacceptable by the power brokers of the Democratic Party. 2. In more bad news from the DNC, the New Republic reports that despite major progress in the party’s foreign policy platform in 2020, “the center of gravity appears to have shifted almost as far—right back to where it had previously been.” Not only does the 2024 foreign policy platform include nothing about ending the sale and shipment of arms to Israel, the Democrats actually removed sections about ending the support for the Saudi war in Yemen, moving away from misguided forever wars, and cutting military spending – as well as criticizing Trump for being too soft on Iran. This article goes on to...

On his show, Phil Donahue never shied away from questioning those in power, be they government officials or corporate CEOs. And there was no more frequent guest on his program than Ralph Nader. Along with guests Joan Claybrook, Michael Jacobson and Jeff Cohen, we pay tribute to a man Ralph calls “the greatest enabler and defender of the First Amendment right of free speech in American history.” Joan Claybrook is one of the public interest champions of the modern consumer movement, and she is president emeritus of Public Citizen. Prior to becoming president of Public Citizen, Ms. Claybrook was head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981. Before serving as NHTSA administrator, she founded and ran Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and worked for the Public Interest Research Group, the National Traffic Safety Bureau, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. [Phil Donahue] had the deepest understanding of the First Amendment of anybody I've ever met. And the reason is that not only did he have these voiceless leaders and victims on a show that other media would avoid like the plague—it would upset their advertisers, who would upset their corporate bosses—he would have people on whose views he vehemently disagreed with. Ralph Nader Phil [Donahue] knew that it wasn't just important to reach people on his show—that he had to have them accessible to materials that elaborated it in greater detail. And he did that for lots of people. But it all started with his sense of the purpose of the media and a public philosophy of justice for all. Ralph Nader Donahue was a great source of help to get information out to the public that they really wanted. And no one else would publicize it. Joan Claybrook Michael Jacobson holds a PhD. in microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he co-founded and then led the Center for Science in the Public Interest for four decades. Dr. Jacobson is the author of Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet. And he is the founder of the National Food Museum. Phil really was one of a kind— where he studied up on the topic, he knew it thoroughly, he was smart, he was generous, kind, thoughtful, asked good questions. So it was just a wonderful, positive experience for various reasons to be on his terrific daytime TV show. Dr. Michael Jacobson Jeff Cohen is Co-Founder and Policy Director at RootsAction. He is a media critic, columnist, documentary filmmaker, and retired journalism professor who founded the media watch group FAIR—Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting— in 1986. For years, he was a regular pundit on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC discussing issues of media and politics, and he is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He was senior producer of MSNBC's Phil Donahue Show until it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war. Management wrecked the show, and then they terminated the show three weeks before the invasion of Iraq. And remember, they terminated us right after the biggest anti-war marches in global history up until that point. And obviously there was a huge audience— if they had allowed Phil Donahue to be Phil Donahue and put on the experts that we wanted to put on. And we would have gotten huge ratings—but they ruined the show, they hurt our ratings. [And] when we were terminated—in spite of all of management's interference—we were still the most-watched program on MSNBC. Management doesn't usually cancel their most-watched television show, but they did it at MSNBC. Jeff Cohen In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 8/21/24 1. Last week, the Kamala Harris campaign announced their first major policy proposal: “a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries,” per the New York Times. In a statement to reporters, the campaign said this policy would “[set]…rules of the road to...

On today's program Ralph welcomes Kshama Sawant—teacher, activist, organizer, socialist, and former Seattle City Council Member— to talk about the labor movement, her organization Workers Strike Back, and how she achieved so many victories for Seattle's working people. Then, Ralph welcomes the Washington Post's Marc Fisher to discuss his reporting on the "return to office" issue. Kshama Sawant is a teacher, activist, organizer, and socialist. Ms. Sawant helped organize demonstrations for marriage equality, participated in the movement to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a visible presence in the Occupy Movement. She served in Seattle’s City Council from 2014 to 2023— defeating a 16-year incumbent Democrat to become the first socialist elected in a major US city in decades. She has taught at Seattle Central Community College, Seattle University, and the University of Washington Tacoma—and she has been an activist in her union, the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789, fighting against budget cuts and tuition hikes. She is co-founder of Workers Strike Back and the host of their news and analysis broadcast On Strike. It should be extremely energizing for anybody on the Left who wants to aim to provide leadership that we actually have a historic shift going on in American working-class consciousness, where there is a willingness to fight back— a real hunger for strategy. I would say that what's overwhelmingly clear to me as somebody who's been a socialist, a Marxist, and an activist for well over a decade, is that what working people are parched for is real leadership that can actually garner the kind of victories that ordinary people are looking for. Kshama Sawant Business unionism is this idea that the role of the labor leader is to negotiate—to make peace between the bosses and the workers. It's completely wrong. It's exactly the opposite. The role of labor leadership is to organize a fight by mobilizing rank-and-file members against the bosses, with the understanding that the interests of the bosses—the greed of the bosses—is diametrically opposed to the needs of workers. Kshama Sawant If we as working people want to win Medicare for all, we will need mass action— organized independent of the Democrats and Republicans. Kshama Sawant Marc Fisher is an associate editor of the Washington Post, where he writes a column on Washington— the city, its suburbs, and the people— and issues of big-city America. For 37 years, Mr. Fisher worked as a reporter and editor across various news sections at the Post, most recently focusing on Donald Trump and major breaking-news events. He previously created and led the Metro staff's enterprise reporting group, spent a decade as local columnist and blogger, served as the paper's special reports editor, wrote about politics and culture for the Style section, worked as Central Europe bureau chief on the Post’s Foreign staff, and covered D.C. schools and D.C. politics for the Metro section. Most people who work with their hands are carrying on as they always did. But since COVID, we've seen that offices have emptied out in downtowns across the country. And Washington is particularly hard hit because 15-20% of the workers work for the federal or city governments. So there's been this emptying… out of downtown Washington, which has had an enormous impact on the economy. So this is a multi-level issue and problem. And yet for many— if not most—workers, they don't see it as a problem. They see it as a benefit. Marc Fisher In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis News 8/14/24 1. A shocking report from the Libertarian magazine Reason exposes “Operation Rolling Thunder,” an annual “five-day law enforcement blitz,” in which 11 different agencies – ranging from local police departments to the federal Department of Homeland Security – collude to confiscate as much cash as possible on a “20-mile stretch of freeway between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta,...

So far this year, the city of Boston has recorded a grand total of 8 homicides while the similarly populated city of Washington D.C has had 110. Professor Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction explains what Boston is doing right. Plus, noted nutrition expert, Michael Jacobson reveals his latest project, The National Food Museum, to promote critical thinking about food’s impact on health, the environment, farm animal welfare, social equity, global and domestic hunger, and how the food industry and politics affect what we eat. Thomas Abt is the founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction (VRC) and an associate research professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Professor Abt is the author of "Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets" His work is cited in academic journals and featured in major media outlets, both print and video. His TED talk on community violence has been viewed more than 200,000 times. Here's the important thing to remember. It's not just about police, and it can't just be about police… It's also important to have balance… So, while you're engaging these high-risk individuals, these people who are most likely to shoot or be shot, you need to back up those warnings of enforcement with offers of support and services. And that's something that's happening in Boston. Thomas Abt When you look at correlations between the restrictiveness of state laws and about how many guns there are, it's about the access to guns. And when access to guns is particularly easy, that's when you have higher rates of violence. Now, in D.C. they have restrictive gun laws, but they're closer to states that have much more permissive laws, particularly in the South. And no city is an island. Thomas Abt While you're hearing a lot of fear mongering out there about violent crime. The truth is that we have erased that massive surge that happened during the pandemic. And that's very good news. Thomas Abt Michael Jacobson holds a PhD. in microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he co-founded and then led the Center for Science in the Public Interest for four decades. Dr. Jacobson is the author of “Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet.” And he is the founder of the National Food Museum. Some of the exhibits will focus on how healthier diets could improve our health, how better farming techniques could improve the climate. And there’s that intersection between climate and health. I thought of making a cow a symbol for the museum. Or maybe an anti-symbol, because meat-eating is a major contributor to disease; and it’s a major contributor to climate change and other environmental issues and animal welfare issues, of course. The museum will get into those. Michael Jacobson There are so many fascinating issues related to food. You know, I think about the history of the human diet, going back to the Stone Age, say 10 or 12 ,000 years ago, and the future of the human diet. It would be wonderful to have an exhibit, showing how diet has changed and may well change in the next 75 years, when many kids just growing up will still be alive. Michael Jacobson And in addition to all the wonderful improvements that you're going to exhibit and inform people about once this museum gets underway, you want people to enjoy it and have fun. That's what you've always been about, Mike. Ralph Nader In Case You Haven’t Heard with Franceso DeSantis News 8/7/24 1. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz who presided over the passage of an impressive list of progressive priorities in Minnesota, arrayed a broad coalition of Democratic leaders behind his bid for the VP slot, including organized labor, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Speaker Emerita Nancy...