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Category: Ralph Nader

  • Live Taping w/ the Father of Bad Faith Insurance Law

    Not a lot of lawyers can say that they helped create a whole new legal field, but William Shernoff can. On this week’s episode, Ralph welcomes trailblazing attorney William Shernoff to discuss predatory insurance practices, and how consumers can protect themselves. This special episode was co-presented by The American Museum of Tort Law, and was recorded in front of a live virtual audience.

    William Shernoff is the founding partner of Shernoff Bidart Echeverria, a law firm specializing in insurance bad faith litigation. A longtime consumer advocate, he has made a career of representing insurance consumers in their cases against insurance companies. Often called the “father” of bad faith insurance law, in 1979, Mr. Shernoff persuaded the California Supreme Court to establish new case law that permits plaintiffs to sue insurance companies for bad faith seeking both compensatory and punitive damages when they unreasonably handle a policyholder’s claim (Egan v. Mutual of Omaha).

    A frequent lecturer and writer, Mr. Shernoff co-authored the legal textbook, Insurance Bad Faith Litigation, which has become the field’s definitive treatise, as well as How to Make Insurance Companies Pay Your Claims . . . . And What To Do If They Don’t, Fight Back and Win – And How To Make Your HMO Pay Up, and Payment Refused. 

    Under bad faith law in California and in most states, you not only could get the benefits you deserve under the insurance policy—whether it be life insurance or disability insurance or health insurance. But you can also get damages over and above the policy limits, which are emotional distress damages…Not only can you get the emotional distress damages, but any aggravation of your medical condition. And then punitive damages are on top of that. And attorney’s fees are on top of that. So all of these damages are coming from insurance bad faith if the insurance bad faith law applies. And punitive damages are designed to punish the insurance company so that they correct their wrongful conduct in the future, and deter them from unfair claims practices. 

    William Shernoff

    Most people, if they get a letter from an insurance company—which they consider to be an authoritative source— and the insurance company says, “Your claim is denied because…” and then they cite all kinds of fine print in the insurance policy, most people accept that and don’t do anything. They don’t see a lawyer. They just accept what their insurance company told them because it sounded quite official to them.

    William Shernoff

    Insurance regulation is state-controlled. The federal government has been blocked for decades and the Congress has imposed itself on the federal Federal Trade Commission and said that they can’t even investigate the insurance companies without being allowed to by a committee in the House or the Senate that has jurisdiction over such matters. So the privileges of the insurance lobby are quite extraordinary even by comparison with other corporate lobbies.

    Ralph Nader 

    More people should know about bad-faith cases rights—and use them. And not take whatever is dealt to them by insurance companies—denials, rescission of insurance policies, refusing to renew, other delays, or other crazy obstructions. Learn about your rights.

    Ralph Nader 

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 3/27/24

    1. CNN reports the United Nations Security Council has passed a Gaza ceasefire resolution. The resolution itself is imperfect, calling only for a ceasefire during the month of Ramadan, but this watered down language paved the way for the United States to allow the resolution to pass. The U.S. has vetoed every previous ceasefire resolution before the Security Council and disputes the extent to which this resolution is legally binding. For its part, Israel’s Foreign Minister stated unequivocally that Israel “will not cease fire,” per CNN.

    2. Following the passage of the Security Council resolution, Prime Minister Netanyahu canceled a planned high-level Israeli delegation visit to Washington, per CNBC. The planned visit, which would have included an address to Congress, was staring down scathing criticism from Congressional Progressives. Axios reports Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress and the most outspoken on the Israeli campaign of terror, said “[Netanyahu] shouldn’t come to Congress, he should be sent to the Hague.”

    3. In another sign of the rift between the Biden Administration and Netanyahu, Haaretz reports that Congressional Democrats are sending formal warnings to the administration stating that Israel is not in compliance with U.S. laws governing the dispensation of military aid.  Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, said “Congress and [the] White House need to make clear to Israel that we will enforce US law to protect Palestinian children from starvation in Gaza.”

    4. Professor Jana Silverman, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America International Committee, reports “After a totally last-minute, ad-hoc, no-budget campaign, 13.2% of voters in the Democrats Abroad primary said no to genocide in Gaza and voted Uncommitted!” This impressive performance signals that the Uncommitted electoral protest movement isn’t going anywhere. The next major test for the movement will be Pennsylvania, where Uncommitted PA is aiming for at least 40,000 votes in the state’s April primary, per Lancaster Online.

    5. In an open letter, over 100 prominent American Jews condemned AIPAC. The letter reads “We are Jewish Americans who have…come together to highlight and oppose the unprecedented and damaging role of AIPAC…in U.S. elections, especially within Democratic Party primaries. We recognize the purpose of AIPAC’s interventions in electoral politics is to defeat any critics of Israeli Government policy and to support candidates who vow unwavering loyalty to Israel, thereby ensuring the United States’ continuing support for all that Israel does, regardless of its violence and illegality.” Signatories include the Ralph Nader Radio Hour’s own Alan Minsky, celebrated academic Judith Butler, Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, and the actor Wallace Shawn among many others. The full letter is available at USJewsOpposingAipac.org.

    6. Oscar winning director Jonathan Glazer continues to be the target of phony outrage by pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League. Coming to the defense of the filmmaker however are other prominent Jewish organizations, like Jewish Voice for Peace and the Auschwitz Memorial, whose director said “In his Oscar acceptance speech, Jonathan Glazer issued a universal moral warning against dehumanization,” per the Guardian. Decorated Jewish playwright Tony Kushner, a signatory on the anti-AIPAC letter, told Haaretz “There’s been a concerted attempt by right wing American Jews to sort of sell the idea that American college campuses are awash with virulent antisemites – professors and students and so on. And the Jewish students are walking these campuses in terror for their lives. I think this is nonsense. I see no evidence of it.”

    7. Both the Gannett and McClatchy newspaper companies have announced they will no longer use AP journalism in their publications, AP reports. This is yet another indication of the dire financial straits the news business finds itself in. The AP notes “Gannett’s workforce shrank 47% between 2020 and 2023 because of layoffs and attrition…The company also hasn’t earned a full-year profit since 2018… Since then, it has lost $1.03 billion.”

    8. In Honduras, the Intercept reports “an almost-impossible-to-believe scenario: A group of libertarian investors teamed up with a former Honduran government — which was tied at the hip with narco-traffickers and came to power after a U.S.-backed military coup — in order to implement the world’s most radical libertarian policy, which turned over significant portions of the country to those investors through so-called special economic zones. The Honduran public, in a backlash, ousted the narco-backed regime, and the new government repealed the libertarian legislation. The crypto investors are now using the World Bank to force Honduras to honor the narco-government’s policies.” While this story has certain unique angles – crypto and narco-trafficking chief among them – the key element is actually quite familiar: international ‘free trade’ regimes superseding sovereign governments. We offer Honduras solidarity against these contemporary crypto-filibusters.

    9. On March 11th, Congressmen Jimmy Gomez and Joaquin Castro sent a letter to the heads of the CIA and FBI demanding disclosures of surveillance efforts on Latino civil rights leaders during the 1960s and ‘70s, citing the well-documented pattern of surveillance on Black civil rights leaders during that period and the wealth of circumstantial evidence indicating that these organs of national security did the same toward prominent Latino figures such as Cesar Chavez. The following day, in a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Castro pressed CIA Director Bill Burns on the matter, and Burns committed to working with his office to bring these activities to light. We hope that further transparency will beget further transparency and that some day the complete account of the CIA and FBI’s domestic surveillance programs will be a matter of public record.

    10. Finally, in Mississippi, CBS reports that authorities have successfully convicted all six members of a police gang calling themselves the “Goon Squad.” These six white officers plead guilty to “breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men…The assault involved beatings, the repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth in a mock execution.” Lawyers representing the criminal cops allege that “their clients became ensnared in a culture of corruption that was not only permitted, but encouraged by leaders within the sheriff’s office.” If true, then a federal investigation – and likely more than a few exonerations of individuals victimized by this “Goon Squad” – are in order. Justice demands it.

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Apartheid Education/Gas Station Heroin

    Legendary public school reform advocate, Jonathan Kozol, joins us to discuss his latest book “An End To Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America.” Then, we do a deep dive into the scourge that is kratom, the dangerous so-called pain relief supplement our guest, lawyer Matt Wetherington, calls “gas station heroin.”

    Jonathan Kozol is a leading advocate for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools, and he travels and lectures about educational inequality and racial injustice. Mr. Kozol is the author of nearly a dozen books about young children and their public schools, including Death at an Early Age (for which he received the National Book Award), Savage Inequalities, and The Shame of the Nation. His latest book is An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America.

    I still give [Jonathan Kozol’s book Death at an Early Age] out to people to show them what indignant writing backed by irrefutable evidence is like. There’s too much cool writing in America today about ghastly situations.

    Ralph Nader

    The Brown decision is now like the Ghost of Christmas Past.  Most school officials have pretty much turned their back on the legacy of Brown and the dream of Dr. King, who was very explicit in his condemnation of segregated schools. I find it particularly heartbreaking that segregation is now at its highest level since the early 1990s. And many of the schools I visit are far more deeply segregated than the one that I described in Death in Early Age.

    Jonathan Kozol

    We hear a lot about the “school-to-prison pipeline,” but this is a case where the prison is already there. It’s right there. They don’t have to wait 20 years. Children get a taste of our racist penal system when they’re barely out of diapers.

    Jonathan Kozol

    The excuse, of course, we always hear in the big cities is that finances are scarce— “We would love to make these corrections. We would love to build new buildings. We would love to clean out the lead. But we just don’t have enough resources to do this.” I call it the myth of scarcity. It’s starvation funding for minority children in one of the richest nations in the world.

    Jonathan Kozol

    I’m always asked, “Why don’t you come up with upbeat suggestions?” I always say I’m not going to be forced into a phony optimism to please my critics. The fact is, right now, we have a racist and autocratic education system teed specifically to the historic victims of American society. And it’s not gonna change until teachers can expand their reach politically to the parents of their children, to the surrounding communities, to the unions—not only the teacher unions, but other unions of all sorts—in order to transform the political leadership of this nation.

    Jonathan Kozol

    Matt Wetherington is ​​a nationally-recognized lawyer focused on high-stakes cases involving personal injury, wrongful death, and class actions. He currently represents plaintiffs in a wrongful death lawsuit against more than a dozen defendants, including manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of Kratom products.

    Under the guise of safety, the [American Kratom Association] have tricked legislatures— and now they’re trying to do it on the federal level—into making a product that is dangerous, deadly, and has absolutely no proven medicinal purpose, de facto legal.

    Matt Wetherington

    The kratom industry is trying to put the burden on safety advocates to prove that kratom is unsafe. Rather than going through the normal model that literally every other drug has gone through, which is to prove a medicinal purpose before it can be sold anywhere. They’ve put the cart ahead of the horse here by saying, until you can prove that it’s unsafe, you can get this heroin-like drug at any gas station. So I reject the premise that we have to be the ones that come out and prove that this is unsafe. And the reality is that they have the burden of proving that it has a medicinal purpose.

    Matt Wetherington

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 3/19/24

    1. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, delivered a watershed speech on the Senate floor last week calling for the United States to use its influence to rein in the Israeli government as it continues to commit genocidal atrocities in Gaza. Listen to Michigan highlighted an excerpt of Senator Schumer’s speech, wherein he said “if Prime Minister Netanyahu…continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.” While a mere baby step, this movement of the Overton Window – allowing even the discussion of conditioning military aid to Israel – is a radical departure from decades of unquestioning U.S. assistance and co-belligerency in Israel’s wars. This is also undeniable evidence that the massive protest movement against U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal campaign, including the “Uncommitted” electoral campaign, has worked. In other words, keep it up, they are feeling the heat.

    2. Schumer’s speech comes amid a growing realization from the Biden campaign that this issue is not going away. A raft of media reports suggest that the president has been “incensed to the point of shouting and swearing,” per Business Insider, over his low poll numbers in critical swing states, attributed to his handling of the slaughter in Gaza. And just this week, Palestinian-American as well as other Arab- and Muslim-American leaders refused to meet with senior White House officials in Chicago, instead publishing a letter via CAIR stating “There is no point in more meetings. The White House already knows the position of the aforementioned groups and our allies across the nation…They know because we have made it abundantly clear, including in prior meetings with the White House, but also in press statements, letters to our elected leaders, media interviews, and enormous street action within earshot of the Oval Office.” According to the Huffington Post, “The rejection comes after a string of refusals across the country from Arab and Muslim groups over longstanding frustrations over the war in Gaza…Several members of the Palestinian American community refused to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month in Washington…[and] In Michigan, Arab and Muslim community leaders canceled a listening session in February with…Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez.”

    3. More suspicious details have emerged regarding the death of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett. Yahoo Finance reports that Barnett was planning to drive home to Louisiana following his deposition on Friday March, 8th. Boeing lawyers then asked him to stay an extra day to finish his testimony, and Barnett was found dead the morning of March 9th. Additionally, ABC News 4 in Charleston reports that shortly before his death – allegedly by suicide – Barnett told a close family friend “I ain’t scared, but if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.’”

    4. In more Boeing news, the New York Times reports “The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration,” following the Alaska Airlines door plug incident. The Times piece goes on “The F.A.A. said it could not release specifics about the audit because of its active investigation into Boeing in response to the Alaska Airlines episode. In addition to that inquiry, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused the door panel to blow off the plane, and the Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation.”

    5. A disturbing NBC story chronicles how the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) – a nationwide group of clinics which effectively helped autistic children to “cope, learn and communicate” – was purchased and deformed by the Blackstone Group, resulting in abuse of the children in their facilities. The founder of CARD is quoted in this article saying “[under Blackstone’s ownership] the company added costly executives, increased CARD’s debt and struck expensive contracts with third-party providers. The new CEO had no experience in autism services…he had run a kidney dialysis company.” This story has a bit of a happy ending – after running CARD into the ground, Blackstone actually sold the company back to the founder who is setting things right. As she says in the piece “You have to watch over the company…It is an entity, not an endless bank account.” This story highlights the human cost of private equity gobbling up the economy while regulators are overwhelmed or asleep at the wheel.

    6. In some positive news, Nikkei Asia reports “Japan’s largest labor confederation [The 7 million-member Japanese Trade Union Confederation, or Rengo] said Friday that its [771] member unions won an average 5.28% increase in wages this year, the biggest raise since 1991.”

    7. In more positive labor news, CNN reports that the United Auto Workers (UAW) has filed for a union election for the over 4,000 workers at the Chattanooga, Tennessee Volkswagen facility. This is the first major test of UAW’s campaign to unionize autoworkers at foreign-owned plants in the United States. The union intends to organize workers at BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Volvo and Volkswagen as well as the non-union EV companies like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid. UAW has previously said that they would not file for an election until they had won 70% support among the workers, with this filing implying they have reached that threshold. President Biden has publicly come out in support of this campaign, issuing a statement on March 18th reading “I congratulate the Volkswagen autoworkers in Chattanooga who filed for a union election with the UAW. As one of the world’s largest automakers, many Volkswagen plants internationally are unionized…I believe American workers, too, should have a voice at work.”

    8. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to establish a standard 32-hour workweek. In a press release, Sanders wrote “Today, American workers are over 400 percent more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago…The financial gains from the major advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology must benefit the working class, not just corporate CEOs and wealthy stockholders on Wall Street. It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life.” This legislation was announced ahead of a HELP Committee hearing on the same topic, featuring Shawn Fain, President of the UAW and Dr. Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College and Lead Researcher for Four Day Week Global Trials.

    9. A story in the American Prospect has to do with a study by the Center for Working Class Politics. This study looked at all 966 Democratic candidates who ran in House or Senate primaries in 2022. What did they find? “Candidates who used economic populist rhetoric won higher vote shares in general elections, especially in working-class, rural and small-town districts.” In other words, broad-base, left-wing economic populism. It works.

    10. Finally, NBC reports that the DNC is assembling an anti-third party squad in an attempt to force voters into a binary choice between Biden and Trump in November. This team will be led by the infamous political operator Lis Smith, who helped cover up Andrew Cuomo’s serial sexual harassment. Another prominent member is Pat Dennis, president of Democratic opposition research firm American Bridge, who is quoted saying “A lot of people, including me, regret that we didn’t go after [Jill Stein] further,” blaming Stein for costing Hillary Clinton states in the midwest despite numerous missteps by the Clinton campaign – like not visiting Wisconsin in the entire course of the general election. Yet to figures like Smith and Dennis, the Democratic Party cannot fail, it can only be failed.

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • America, Stop Trying to Make Nuclear Power Happen. It’s Not Going to Happen.

    Ralph is joined by Tim Judson from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (N.I.R.S.) to discuss the growing support for nuclear power in Congress, and the persistent myths that fuel nuclear advocates’ false hopes for a nuclear future. Then, Ralph pays tribute to Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who died unexpectedly this week in the middle of giving his deposition for a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against Boeing. Plus, Ralph answers some of your audience feedback from last week’s interview with Barbara McQuade. 

    Tim Judson is Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (N.I.R.S.). Mr. Judson leads N.I.R.S.’ work on nuclear reactor and climate change issues, and has written a series of reports on nuclear bailouts and sustainable energy. He is Chair of the Board of Citizens Awareness Network, one of the lead organizations in the successful campaign to close the Vermont Yankee reactor, and co-founder of Alliance for a Green Economy in New York.

    Listeners should know that this very complex system called the nuclear fuel cycle—that starts with uranium mines out west piling up radioactive tailings, which have exposed people downwind to radioactive hazards…And then they have to enrich the uranium—and that is often done by burning coal, which pollutes the air and contributes to climate disruption. And then they have to fabricate the fuel rods and build the nuclear plants. And then they have to make sure that these nuclear plants are secure against sabotage. And then you have the problem of transporting—by trucks or rail—radioactive waste to some depositories that don’t exist. And they have to go through towns, cities, and villages. And what is all this for? It’s to boil water. 

    Ralph Nader

    In 2021 and 2022, when the big infrastructure bills— the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act—were being passed by Congress, the utility industry spent $192 million on federal lobbying in those two years. That’s more than the oil industry spent in those two years on lobbying. These are the utility companies that are present in every community around the country. And their business is actually less in selling electricity and natural gas, and more in lobbying state and federal governments to get their rates approved…The utility industry (and the nuclear industry as a subset of that) have been lobbying Congress relentlessly for years to protect what they’ve got.

    Tim Judson

    Fusion is one of these technologies that’s always been 30 years away. Whenever there’s an announcement about an advancement in fusion research, it’s still “going to be 30 years before we get a reactor going.” Now there’s a lot more hype, and these tech investors are putting money into fusion with the promise that they’re going to have a reactor online in a few years. But there’s no track record to suggest that that’s going to happen. It keeps the dream of nuclear alive— “We could have infinite amounts of clean energy for the future.” It sounds too good to be true. It’s always proven to be too good to be true.

    Tim Judson

    One of the lines that they’re using to promote theAtomic Energy Advancement Act and all of these investments in nuclear… is that we can’t let Russia and China be the ones that are expanding nuclear energy worldwide. It’s got to be the US that does it.

    Tim Judson

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 3/12/24

    1. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, has released a report claiming that “employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention [were] pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the October 7 attacks,” per the Times of Israel. These supposed admissions of guilt led to the United States and many European countries cutting off or delaying aid to the agency. The unpublished report alleges that UNRWA staffers were “detained by the Israeli army, and…experienced…severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.” The report goes on to say “In addition to the alleged abuse endured by UNRWA staff members, Palestinian detainees more broadly described allegations of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence, and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment.”

    2. Continuing the genocidal assault on Gaza, Israel has been bombing the densely populated city of Rafah in the South. Domestically, this seems to be too far for even Biden’s closest allies, with the AP reporting just before the assault that “[Senator Chris] Coons…of Delaware, called for the U.S. to cut military aid to Israel if Netanyahu goes ahead with a threatened offensive on the southern city of Rafah without significant provisions to protect the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there. [And Senator] Jack Reed, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, appealed to Biden to deploy the U.S. Navy to get humanitarian aid to Gaza. Biden ally Sen. Tim Kaine challenged the U.S. strikes on the Houthis as unlikely to stop the Red Sea attacks. And the most senior Democrat in the Senate [Patty Murray of Washington] called for Israel to ‘change course.’” Hewing to these voices within his party, President Biden declared that an invasion of Rafah would be a “red line.” Yet POLTICO reports that Israeli PM Netanyahu “says he intends to press ahead with an invasion.” POLTICO now reports that Biden is threatening to condition military aid to Israel in response to Netanyahu’s defiance, but it remains to be seen whether the president will follow through on this threat.

    3. POLITICO also reports that CIA Director Bill Burns is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying “The reality is that there are children who are starving…They’re malnourished as a result of the fact that humanitarian assistance can’t get to them. It’s very difficult to distribute humanitarian assistance effectively unless you have a ceasefire.” This is obviously correct, and illustrates how out of touch the Democratic Party is that they are getting outflanked on peace issues by the literal director of the CIA.

    4. Whether unwilling – or unable – to change course on Gaza, President Biden is paying the electoral price. In last week’s Super Tuesday primaries, the Nation reports “Uncommitted” won 19 percent of the vote and 11 delegates in Minnesota, 29 percent and seven delegates in Hawaii, and 12.7 percent in North Carolina. This week, the New York Times reports Uncommitted took 7.5% – nearly 50,000 votes – in Washington State. Biden also lost the caucus in American Samoa, making him the first incumbent president since Carter to lose a nominating contest, per Newsweek.

    5. In yet another manifestation of opposition to the genocide in Gaza, Jewish director Jonathan Glazer used his Oscar acceptance speech to “[denounce] the bloodshed in the Middle East and [ask] the audience to consider how it could ‘resist…dehumanization,’” per NBC. Glazer’s award winning film “The Zone of Interest” examines how “[a] Nazi commandant…and his family…attempt to build an idyllic life right outside the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust.” Glazer said “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, ‘Look what we did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst…Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many people.” Glazer was the most forthright in his criticism of the Israeli campaign, but NBC notes “Billie Eilish, Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef wore red pins on the Oscars red carpet symbolizing calls for a cease-fire.”

    6. Aware that they are losing the public relations battle, pro-Israel lobbying groups like the UJA-Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council have enlisted Right-wing messaging guru Frank Luntz to help with their Hasbara PR, the Grayzone reports. Leaked talking points from his presentation run the gamut from playing up unsubstantiated claims of systematic sexual violence committed by Hamas to acknowledging that “’The most potent’ tactic in mobilizing opposition to Israel’s assault…‘is the visual destruction of Gaza and the human toll’… [because] ‘It ‘looks like a genocide’.”

    7. Turning from Palestine to East Palestine, Ohio Cleveland.com reports that during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing, National Transportation Safety Board  Chair Jennifer L. Homendy told Ohio’s junior Senator JD Vance that “The deliberate burn of rail cars carrying hazardous chemicals after last year’s crash…wasn’t needed to avoid an explosion because the rail cars were cooling off before they were set on fire.” In a statement, Ohio’s senior Senator, progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown, called the testimony “outrageous,” and said “This explosion – which devastated so many – was unnecessary…The people of East Palestine are still living with the consequences of this toxic burn. This is more proof that Norfolk Southern put profits over safety & cannot be trusted.”

    8. In positive labor news, Bloomberg reports that “About 600 video game testers at Microsoft…’s Activision Blizzard studios have unionized, more than doubling the size of labor’s foothold at the software giant, according to the Communications Workers of America.” This brings the unionized workforce at Microsoft to approximately 1,000. To the company’s credit, Microsoft has been friendly towards unionization, a marked difference from other technology companies – namely Amazon and Tesla – which have gone to extreme lengths to prevent worker organizing.

    9. In not so positive labor news, Matt Bruenig’s NLRB Edge reports “The ACLU Is Trying to Destroy the Biden NLRB.” In a narrow sense, this story is about the ACLU fighting its workers to preserve its internal mandatory arbitration process. More broadly however, Bruenig illustrates how the ACLU is seeking to oust Biden’s NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo – arguing her appointment was unconstitutional – which “could potentially invalidate everything the Biden Board has done.” This is yet another example of the non-profit industrial complex run amok, doing damage to progressive values and opting to possibly inflict economic harm on workers nationwide rather than treat their own workers fairly.

    10. Finally, according to the Corporate Crime Reporter, “Boeing whistleblower John Barnett was found dead in his truck at a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina after a break in depositions in a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit.” Barnett’s lawyer Brian Knowles told the paper “They found him in his truck dead from an ‘alleged’ self-inflicted gunshot.” Barnett had gone on record saying “[Boeing] started pressuring us to not document defects, to work outside the procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected. They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configurement control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non conforming parts –  they just wanted to get the planes pushed out the door and make the cash register ring.” The timing and circumstances of Barnett’s death raise disturbing questions; we hope an exhaustive investigation turns up some answers.

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tribe Over Truth

    Ralph speaks to law professor, Barbara McQuade, who specializes in national security issues and has written a book that outlines the very real threat to American democracy, “Attack From Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.” Also, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson sums up Israeli goals in its war on the Palestinians with three words “eradication, elimination, and expulsion.”

    Barbara McQuade is a professor from practice at Michigan Law School. Her interests include criminal law, criminal procedure, national security, data privacy, and civil rights. From 2010 to 2017, Professor McQuade served as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. As US attorney, she oversaw cases involving public corruption, terrorism, corporate fraud, theft of trade secrets, civil rights, and health care fraud, among others. She also serves as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Barbara McQuade is the author of Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.

    I think people are still bewildered about how to respond to Donald Trump. I think the media is bewildered because we’ve never seen anything like him—he’s an absolute disruptor of how our system works. And so, he’s a big bully who runs around and says all kinds of mean things and nobody knows how to deal with it. I think the media still struggles to decide how do you cover someone—when we’ve been trained to get both sides of an argument which presumes that both sides are engaging in good faith—when instead you have someone who is not engaging in good faith, engaging in lies, making inconsistent statements.

    Barbara McQuade

    We need to demand truth. We can’t allow ourselves to engage in fiction, even if we believe it is to advance our ends. The ends can never justify the means. Our country is built on integrity in the rule of law and we need to demand truth if we are going to have a democracy and effective self-government.

    Barbara McQuade

    You don’t want to go down in the mud with people. But when the national press begins and continues to be [Trump’s] bullhorn, verbatim, repeating it, repeating it, giving no right of reply, there’s no way you can simply say, “I don’t want to go to his level,” because the press has raised it to a level that is devastating to our democracy.

    Ralph Nader

    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 media is an Israeli agent when they do give some kind of deference to “the other side,” as it were, it’s always in words and terminology and short sentences that make you know that “they are balanced.” “They are fair and balanced.” They’re about as fair and balanced as my left foot. That’s the way it is. The purpose here is eradication, elimination, or expulsion, period. Eradication, elimination, or expulsion.

    Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

    We all need to wake up, and we need to start taking actions such as we can locally—whatever’s within our purview and power to do. Because we’re losing this country. We’re losing it to the moneyed oligarchy. We’re losing it to the unprecedented amount of money, because of Citizens United, that’s pouring into the political coffers of people who have no interest in what you want…These people are basing their decisions on money. Money—not you. They’re not the people’s representatives… They’re the representatives of the deep state, which is the oligarchy. 

    Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

    It’s all these people with these unprecedented amounts of money who can influence anything, anytime they want to with a few telephone calls. That’s what’s running your country. And the predatory capitalism that they’re advancing is running the world into the ground.

    Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 3/6/24

    1. Just before the Michigan primary, President Biden implied that a ceasefire in Gaza was imminent. However, many believed at the time that Biden was simply trying to blunt the potency of the “Uncommitted” vote in that contest. The promised ceasefire never materialized, apparently confirming those suspicions. Yet, with “Uncommitted” winning over 100,000 votes in Michigan, the administration has begun using ceasefire language – a major rhetorical shift, but seemingly one without much corresponding action. Phyllis Bennis, writing in Al Jazeera, argues that “Whatever the language of Washington’s proposed UN Security Council resolution and likely the possible temporary truce deal as well, the words of National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby continue to resonate as a better reflection of the Biden administration’s policy: ‘We’re going to continue to support Israel… and we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities to do that.’”

    2. Following the self immolation of Aaron Bushnell, activist Talia Jane has shared a letter from active duty U.S. Military personnel calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In this letter, the anonymous signatories write “it is undeniably evident that the Israeli Defense Forces are repeatedly and systematically committing war crimes in Gaza. Support for the conduct of the IDF is unacceptable and inconsistent with our values in the US Armed forces.” Talia Jane reports that “over 100 active duty military across Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, as well as reservists and National Guard, and their families, have endorsed this open letter.”

    3. J Street, the preeminent liberal Zionist group, has finally begun using the word ceasefire – while still only supporting a temporary truce. In a note to their members, J Street wrote “This move is not a change in policy. It is a decision to begin using a word that is fraught with meaning and implications in the context of the Gaza War,” Daniel Marans of the Huffington Post reports. J Street has deep ties to the administration, so whether they are taking their cues from the administration in characterizing a temporary truce as a ceasefire – or vice versa – it is significant that this is the new line from mainstream liberal Zionists.

    4. Max Tani of Semafor reports that the NewsGuild of New York has sent a letter to the New York Times accusing the ‘Grey Lady’ of racially profiling their staff as they seek to hunt down the source of a leak exposing their shoddy – possibly completely false – reporting on sexual violence committed by Hamas. Per the letter, “Management’s investigators have questioned employees about their involvement in The Times’ internal Middle Eastern and North African Times Employee Resource Group (known as the MENA Collective), ordered them to hand over the names of all of the MENA Collective’s active members involved in group discussions, and demanded copies of personal communications between colleagues about their shared workplace concerns…The Guild intends to vigorously defend our members and their rights, and ensure that all our members are protected in a workplace free from harassment and racial profiling.”

    5. According to NBC News, “The biggest labor union in Washington state endorsed voting ‘uncommitted’ in the state’s Democratic presidential primary next month, citing concerns about President Joe Biden’s political strength and his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.”  UFCW Local 3000 has over 50,000 members, making it the largest state chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. NBC also reports that “The Stranger, a prominent alt-weekly publication based in Seattle, also endorsed the idea of voting ‘uncommitted,’ expressing disappointment in the options of  Trump and Biden, whom it referred to as the ‘two genocidal geriatrics leading the polls.’”

    6. Amid humiliatingly low poll numbers, Democratic-turned-Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema has dropped out of the 2024 Arizona Senate race, the Arizona Republic reports. Senator Sinema, you will not be missed.

    7. In Manhattan, over two-thirds of houses sold last quarter were purchased in cash, rather than via mortgage, per the Financial Times. In other words, the preponderance of homes were purchased by the very rich. Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of real estate brokerage firm Corcoran, told the paper “High mortgage rates are creating a real void for people who don’t have the strong finances that are required to buy in cash…It’s driving people who would be home buyers in New York into renting.” This piece further notes that “rents rose to an all-time median high of $3,950 [per month].”

    8. West Virginia News reports “Kroger union members have voted in favor of authorizing a strike at 38 stores in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.” As this piece notes, this vote gives the bargaining committee authorization to call a strike at any time, but the workers are not currently on strike. In a statement, UFCW Local 400 said “This vote has sent a powerful message to Kroger that they must do better if they expect us to ratify a contract…Now, we are ready to sit down with the company and negotiate an agreement that we can recommend for ratification. If not, we are ready to continue to do whatever it takes to get a fair contract. By sticking together, we will win.”

    9. Family Dollar has been hit with a $42 million fine in a food safety case after the company was found to have been “storing food, drugs, and cosmetics in a rodent-infested warehouse in Arkansas,” according to More Perfect Union. An FDA investigation revealed “live rodents, dead and decaying rodents, rodent feces, urine, and odors, and evidence of gnawing and nesting throughout the facility.” Family Dollar had been aware of the infestation since 2020, and continued shipping merchandise – often eaten into by the rodents – to 404 stores throughout the region. This is the largest ever criminal fine in a food safety case.

    10. Finally, on February 27th MyHighPlains.com reported that a nuclear weapons factory in Texas was forced to cease operations in light of the state’s massive wildfires. According to Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, “This is America’s main nuclear weapons factory. Nearly 20,000 plutonium cores are stored there [and] full-scale production of B61-12 bomb & W88 Alt370 warheads are underway.” While this critical situation was resolved without injury, it highlights the interrelation between climate change and national security. We urge military and civilian leadership to view this near-miss as a chance to finally take the climate crisis seriously.

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bishop William Barber

    Ralph welcomes Bishop William Barber from the Poor People’s Campaign to discuss their March 2nd mass moral march on State Assemblies and their efforts to mobilize millions of poor and low-wage voters. Then, Ralph is joined by Washington Post health reporter Dan Diamond to discuss his team’s recent report on a $2 billion Medicare fraud scheme. 

    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.

    The biggest mistake people who are not poor can make is [thinking] that helping poor and low-wage people in this country doesn’t improve their life. Total nonsense. And we’re going to see how a greater turnout of poor and low-wage people in the elections can transform politics in this country at the national, state, and local level.

    Ralph Nader

    You cannot, in a democracy, let your power sit on the shelf. If folk are not recognizing that, you must force them. And we now have this power— we don’t even know what battleground states are. Because if poor and low-wealth people voted at the same percentage rate as middle class and others, it would change all of the political calculations. And it is the fear of the greedy aristocracy. It is time for us to realize their fear.

    Bishop William Barber

    Bad policy is mean, it is violent, and it is deadly. Because now we live in a reality… [where] poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in this country. If you are not for ending policies that perpetuate poverty and low wages, then you are an accessory to the crime of human beings’ lives being taken

    Bishop William Barber

    Dan Diamond is a national health reporter for The Washington Post, focused on accountability, federal agencies and public health. He joined the Post in 2021 after covering the Trump administration for Politico, where he won a George Polk award for investigating political interference in the pandemic response.

    One would think that somewhere at Medicare, there was the alert that this was a scheme to be looking out for. On the state level, several states began last year to issue warnings—the state of Hawaii, the state of Oklahoma, among others—saying, “Watch out, Medicare beneficiaries, for these catheter-fraud schemes.” So that was nine months ago at this point. Medicare itself—nationally—were not aware of any similar warnings or action, at least publicly. Again, they may have been doing things behind the scenes. They may have been wanting to bait the trap for these potential fraudsters,and maybe that’s why they didn’t say anything. But still it raises real questions—why they have waited so long to do anything, and why it takes news coverage in February 2024 to put a spotlight on something that’s been going on for eighteen months.

    Dan Diamond

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 2/28/24

    1. The Michigan primary was held on Tuesday. On the Republican side, Donald Trump cruised to victory over Nikki Haley, but on the Democratic side, all eyes were focused not on the candidates themselves but on the “Uncommitted,” ballot line. In recent days, activists and prominent progressive elected officials urged voters to register their opposition to President Biden’s support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza by voting Uncommitted. The campaign set a goal of 10,000 Uncommitted votes; according to the New York Times they won over 100,000. The success of this protest vote movement in a key swing state should be setting off major alarm bells within the Biden campaign and hopefully will force the president to reckon with dissent to his Gaza policy from within his party.

    2. On Sunday, U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell self immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, registering the ultimate protest against the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Just before igniting himself, Mr. Bushnell shouted “Free Palestine,” yet that did not stop mainstream outlets like the New York Times and NPR from obfuscating the motives of his sacrifice, with their coverage featuring lines like “NPR was not able to independently verify the man’s motives.” As Ryan Grim of the Intercept put it, “what more could he have done to make a point NPR would hear.” Rest in Power, Aaron Bushnell.

    3. A new Institute for Social Policy and Understanding or ISPU poll, conducted between December 2023 and January 2024, found that majorities of all religious groups favor a ceasefire in Gaza. Support for a ceasefire is strongest among Muslim and Catholic Americans, with both groups reporting over 70% support. Support is weakest among Jewish Americans, yet 50% still favor a ceasefire, with only 34% opposed. In other words, President Biden giving a blank check to Israel is alienating Americans of all religious persuasions, including American Jews.

    4. Signaling another troubling omen for Biden, a new poll of Black voters in Michigan, conducted by Howard University, shows the president’s support among African-Americans has dropped from 94% in 2020 to just 49% today. This is coupled with a tripling of support for Donald Trump, who now attracts 26% of Black voters.

    5. On February 22nd, Representatives Jerry Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Dan Goldman, and 10 more Jewish members of Congress took the first step toward calling for a ceasefire, sending a letter urging the Biden Administration to “Facilitate [a] ceasefire in Gaza.” Many of these liberal members, including Nadler, Goldman, Raskin, and Becca Balint of Vermont have been the subjects of pressure campaigns by pro-Palestine activists to push them toward support for a ceasefire. Contrary to the headline however, this letter only calls for a temporary pause of hostilities.

    6. Democracy Now! reports “Ireland’s senate unanimously voted last week to impose sanctions against Israel, prevent the passage of U.S. weapons to Israel via Irish airspace and advocate for an international arms embargo against Israel.” Ireland has been among the most vocal countries condemning the Israeli campaign of terror in Gaza, particularly in Europe. Irish Senator Frances Black is quoted in this piece saying “I remember one woman…she said that she was…from a human rights organization…And she said, ‘Why have the international community abandoned us?’ And those words stay with me.”

    7. Lauren Kaori Gurley, who covers Labor for the Washington Post, reports that last week baristas at 21 Starbucks stores around the country filed for union elections. This is “the largest single-day filing since the campaign’s launch in 2021.”  The location of these stores ranges from Brooklyn and Chicago to Grand Forks, North Dakota and Sulfur, Louisiana – demonstrating the popularity of unions throughout the nation. Starbucks has now agreed to recognize the union and work with their employees to forge a master contract.

    8. In more labor news, the United Auto Workers union has announced they are allocating a stunning $40 million for new organizing through 2026. By contrast, the AFL-CIO pledged only $11 million annually for new organizing in 2022. UAW Region 9A leader Brandon Mancilla adds that “The UAW will provide material support to Mexican autoworker organizing and their independent union reform movement. We need to end the international race to the bottom. The Mexican working class is our ally, not our enemy.” And Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes reports that “Workers at Mercedes-Benz’s largest plant in the U.S. announced that a majority of their co-workers have signed union cards in support of joining the @UAW. Workers at Mercedes Benz’s Alabama plant launched their organizing committee 60 days ago.”

    9. In a major loss for local journalism, WAMU – Washington DC’s NPR member station, run out of American University – has shuttered it’s flagship publication, DCist. Per Washingtonian magazine, “DCist was originally owned by the company Gothamist. Joe Ricketts, the billionaire who bought it in 2017, shut down the site that same year after employees voted to unionize…The next year, two anonymous donations allowed WAMU to buy DCist.” The University said in a statement that this move represents “a new strategy to deepen engagement with Washingtonians…centered around audio and live experiences.”

    10. Finally, St. Louis Public Radio reports that local Girl Scouts Troop 149 “decided to raise money for the humanitarian nonprofit Palestine Children’s Relief Fund…inspired by other Girl Scouts troops that raised money for war victims in Ukraine.” Yet, instead of backing this effort, the  Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri responded with a legal threat, writing “Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri and Girl Scouts of the United States have no other choice than to engage our legal counsel to help remedy this situation and to protect the intellectual property and other rights of the organization.” Discouraged, the troop leaders opted to disband the troop. The national organization later apologized for their threat of legal action, but the troop leadership intend to remain disaffiliated from the group, and instead function as an independent troop. So far, they have raised over $10,000 for the PCRF.

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Girl Scouts Threatened for Supporting Palestinian Children

    Guess who threatened them? The Girl Scouts of the United States.

    Stories abound of retaliation against those who express concern over Israeli ethnic cleansing – from censoring news reports to reprimanding faculty, mass arrests, and suppressing students’ right to protest. A well-orchestrated campaign against Palestine’s right to exist is spreading like Covid across the US. Now, it has hit a new low.

    The national Girl Scouts are threatening legal action against a St. Louis troop for the crime of making bracelets to raise money for Gaza’s children.

    A story in the March 25, 2024 St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Aisha Sultan documents that the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri and the Girl Scouts of the United States have written scout leader Nawal Abuhamdeh of her failure to follow proper procedure and “sent her instructions on how to leave the organization.”

    For four years Abuhamdeh had coordinated the group’s cookie sales. But after witnessing what happened to her parents’ Palestinian homeland she brought the idea of raising money to the diverse group of girls whose families are from Somalia, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and India.

    Not just these countries, but most others around the world are horrified at the Zionist “final solution” against Palestinians.

    With reports of IDF forces summarily killing captive Palestinians, Ralph Nader’s question of the scarcity of reports on Israeli POW camps becomes salient. Has Netanyahu given the order for “No prisoners” even after Palestinians have surrendered?

    Though there are now reports of 30,000 Palestinian deaths, Israeli efforts to block food, water and human waste management means that death by starvation, thirst and infectious diseases may vastly exceed deaths via weapon annihilation.

    As of February 21, US representatives have stymied efforts to have the UN call for a cease-fire four times. While Biden calls for “restraint” by Israel out of one side of his mouth, the other side continues to order that weapons of mass destruction be sent.

    The targeting of hospitals continues as the deaths of children mount. These facts are consistent with a Zionist goal of obliterating the future of Palestinians as a people.

    These scenes are not lost on the girls in Abuhamdeh’s troop. Videos of the war crimes are highly disturbing.

    One video shows a Palestinian father using a shopping bag to collect pieces of his slaughtered children. Another depicts a doctor who must amputate a leg of his 16-year-old niece on the dinner table without anesthesia. In one, viewers see that “A wailing 4-year-old tried to get up and look for his parents — both of whom were killed, and his own legs amputated.”

    Particularly revealing are the comments published at the bottom of the Sultan article. Though most were supportive of the St. Louis scouts, several identified with Zionist disdain for Palestinians. A person self-identifying as “kuuindhater” wrote “Helicopter Mom with an article dripping in victimology.” “medi8r” added “I fear this sort of one sided propaganda leads to misplaced hate toward Israel and Jews.”

    One called “billikenforever” exuded general dislike: “What a crock! The Girl Scouts have partnered with Planned Parenthood for years in promoting the elimination of innocent babies.”

    The St. Louis scout troop had posted on social media that supporters could buy bracelets for $5 or $10, with the funds going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). The Girl Scouts of the US then wrote to them that it was impermissible to raise money for “partisan politics.” Agreeing with them, “lucygirl” posted in the comments “Does the PCRF fund Hamas? The Girls Scouts are correct in not wanting their organization accused of having members donate to an organization that fund terrorist groups.”

    Interestingly, the Girl Scouts had no problem with raising money for those injured in Ukraine. Abuhamdeh pointed out the similarity and the absence of reprisals for that effort. Defending this double standard, “MOgal2” commented that “This is a political war unlike Ukraine. Ukraine was invaded by an unprovoked army. They are fighting back on their own land. Israel was attacked in a heinous way.”

    Yes, the propaganda machines control millions of minds in colonizing countries. Slicing through the Gordian knot of twisted logic, “zap973” simply noted “It’s obvious that Ukrainians are perceived as white westerners therefore deserving of compassion. Palestinians are not. End of story.”

    The post Girl Scouts Threatened for Supporting Palestinian Children first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Practical Radicals

    Ralph welcomes Professor Stephanie Luce of the City University of New York, who has co-authored “Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World,” and together they outline the challenges and the strategies that face underdogs trying to change the system. Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, joins us to discuss the death of Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny.

    Stephanie Luce is Professor of Labor Studies at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, and Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center at City University of New York. Professor Luce is best known for her research on living wage campaigns and movements. She is the author of Fighting for a Living Wage and co-author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy, and The Measure of Fairness. Her latest book, co-authored with Deepak Bhargava, is Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World.

    We find it’s actually hard to get people to imagine really liberatory worlds because we’re so dominated by corporate culture and consumer culture and undemocratic functioning that it is hard to imagine a world that’s different. So even just getting people to dream of a different possibility is a good start, and then we have to think about what kind of power it’s going to take to make those changes.

    Stephanie Luce

    A lot of people critique [collective care as a strategy]. They think it’s just about taking care of one another as part of life—that’s what we do. We’re arguing it can also be strategic because when done well, it enables people to engage in a fight in the long term. You can’t go on strike if you don’t have someone to watch your children, or if you don’t have a strike fund. You can’t risk arrest if you don’t know if you have bail. So collective care is a way of taking care of one another, doing the things that enable us to take risks and to know people have our back. And that helps us up our militancy and strategy because we can take bigger risks and build the capacity for other kinds of struggle.

    Stephanie Luce

    There’s such a thing as the civic personality that is a huge Achilles’ heel of the drive to train people civically. You can train people civically… but if they don’t have a civic personality, if they don’t have fire in their bellies, so to speak, emotional intelligence, if they don’t have a framework of a public philosophy, if they don’t have a capacity for resilience to learn from their last mistakes, if they haven’t controlled their ego so they can give credit to other people in their circle and set an example and motivate, if they’re not willing to read and stay up to date with what’s going on in their fields and in the area of their opponents, it doesn’t matter how many skills they learn from our efforts.

    Ralph Nader

    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.

    [Alexei Navalny] was free. He knew he could have left [Russia]. He probably could have won a Nobel Peace Prize. He returned anyway. And the pride which I can express in such a human being is beyond words.

    Bruce Fein

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 2/20/24

    1. A diplomatic row is brewing between Israel and Brazil. On Sunday, leftist Brazilian President Lula compared Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews during an address to the African Union. In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared that until he retracts his comments, Lula is “persona non grata in Israel.” Yet Lula does not intend to retract these comments, and has instead recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel. The Israeli campaign against Gaza has forced nearly all of its over 2 million inhabitants from their homes. This from Reuters.

    2. On Monday, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights issued a report alleging “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” According to this report, “Palestinian women and girls in detention have…been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence…photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.” Experts say “Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute.”

    3. The anti-Biden “uncommitted” protest vote campaign in Michigan continues to pick up steam. On Valentine’s Day, the New York Times reported that Our Revolution – the Bernie Sanders legacy political operation – has endorsed the campaign. Our Revolution joins other prominent new boosters, such as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and former Representative Andy Levin. In her video endorsing the campaign, Tlaib says “It is important…not only to march against the genocide, not only make sure we’re calling our members of Congress … it is also important to create a voting bloc, something that is a bullhorn to say enough is enough.”

    4. On February 15th, the African Methodist Episcopal, or AME Church Council of Bishops issued a statement calling for the “Immediate Withdrawal of Financial Support from Israel.” This major step from a prominent Black faith group is an indication that the genocidal Israeli campaign in Gaza is alienating significant factions of the Democratic Party coalition. The statement reads “Since 1954, Israel has shown a willful disregard for the human dignity of Palestinians. Since October 7, 2023, in retaliation for the brutal murder of 1139 Israeli citizens by Hamas, Israel has murdered over 28,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The United States is supporting this mass genocide. This

    must not be allowed to continue.

    There must be an immediate and permanent ceasefire between these two communities. We call for a solution to be negotiated by genuine representatives of the people of Israel and Palestine and condemn all violence as a means of resolving this conflict. Surely there is a grassroots solution that affirms the dignity and humanity of all God’s people in Palestine and Israel. The tools of empire, colonialism, and domination will not solve the problems they created. The cycle of violence between historically wounded peoples will not be dissolved by the creation of more wounds or through weapons of war. We remain in solidarity with Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jew, and the Prince of Peace.

    We weep for the suffering being inflicted upon the children of God in the Holy Land and all the earth. We cry for freedom and implore those who say they love God to demonstrate a tangible love for their neighbors. We will travail in prayer and pursue justice until freedom reigns for all.”

    5. Semafor reports that Pro-Israel groups are engaging in targeted harassment of mainstream American journalists perceived as too critical of Israel. This story focuses on Washington Post foreign correspondent Lousia Loveluck, and documents how SKDK – a D.C. PR firm close to the Biden administration – has dug into Loveluck’s background, including unrelated protests she attended before becoming a journalist. While the Washington Post defended Loveluck’s reporting, they did not defend her personally – setting a dangerous precedent for intimidation of American journalists by Israel-aligned groups.

    6. The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that “An embryo created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is a child protected by Alabama’s wrongful death act and the Alabama Constitution.” Specifically, the court ruled that the “parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic when an intruder tampered with an IVF freezer may proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic for alleged negligence.” Yet in a broader sense, this means that IVF clinics will be legally liable for the death of embryos fertilized through IVF – likely spelling the end of IVF in the state. This from 1819 News.

    7. A stunning report from the Center for Climate Integrity, published in the Guardian, reveals that the plastics industry has deliberately misled the public for years, claiming that their products are continuously and sustainably recyclable – all the while knowing that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”. Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity puts it simply: “The companies lied…It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”

    8. REI, the company given constant adulation by the liberal press, is union busting. From the REI Union SoHo, “On Feb 15, REI announced it will be withholding annual merit pay increases from our store and all unionized [REI] stores across the Co-op.” Unionized workers walked off the job in protest of this blatant anti-union move.

    9. AP reports Amazon has joined SpaceX and Trader Joe’s in arguing that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional. We have discussed this corporate stratagem on this show before and noted that more corporations, particularly those facing unionization efforts, were likely to adopt this legal argument. Seth Goldstein, a lawyer representing the Amazon Labor Union and Trader Joe’s United, said “Since [these companies] can’t defeat successful union organizing, they now want to just destroy the whole process.”

    10. Finally, in some positive labor news, Michigan has become the first state in 60 years to overturn its so-called “right to work” law, the Nation reports. Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber is quoted saying “This moment has been decades in the making…By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.” Beyond overturning right to work, Michigan has also “restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities.”

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Labor for a Ceasefire/ Trump’s Cult of Personality

    Ralph is joined by labor activist Gene Bruskin to discuss how labor leaders are joining with Progressive lawmakers to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, and the true meaning of solidarity. Then Ralph welcomes Rick Perlstein— historian, chronicler of American conservativism, and author of Nixonland—to explain Donald Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.

    Gene Bruskin is a veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, organizer, and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions.  He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and unions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War. He is also a member of the National Labor Network for a Ceasefire. 

    Never in the 140 year history of the labor movement—starting with the A.F.L. formation in 1885—has there been such a broad-scale resistance to U.S. government policy in the middle of a conflict like this. It’s just never happened before.

    Gene Bruskin

    The labor movement has to understand that there’s a lot of contradictions in the Democratic Party and we cannot allow the party to define our interests. And on foreign policy, the idea has been long time proposed in the labor movement that our national interests require us to do “this” kind of foreign policy or “this” war… But really what we did in our organization U.S. Labor Against the War during the Iraq War—where we actually built real solidarity with Iraqi workers and brought them all over the country here—was we said the national interest of the corporations is not the same as the national interest of the average worker. 

    Gene Bruskin

    Someday we will see that when unions endorse Democratic presidents, they make demands in return. They should not have simply endorsed Biden—as the U.A.W. did, and others—without demanding a public commitment.

    Ralph Nader

    Rick Perlstein is a historian and chronicler of American conservativism. He is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, and Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980.

    These feelings of dispossession, of vulnerability, of weakness really get at the darkest and most easily-manipulated parts of the human mind that are based on the most primal fears. Stuff like fears of snakes, fear of cockroaches, fear of dark things that go bump in the night. And those are there in our brains, they’re in the lowest parts of our brains. And what the Republican Party has been doing for decades… is they’re exploiting that animal part of the brain in order to aggrandize their own power. And it’s really, really scary. And one of the things that makes it, again, so scary is it is precisely not amenable to rational persuasion.

    Rick Perlstein

    The Democratic Party is not the kind of party that says, “Wow, we can use this and sustain these things that we were able to put in during an emergency to shore up our power forever.” Instead, as soon as they had the chance, they took them away.

    Rick Perlstein

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 2/14/24

    1. On Monday, the Senate voted through a mammoth $95 billion foreign aid package furnishing American assistance to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Beyond arming Israel however, this bill also bans funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, one of the key agencies providing relief to Palestinians in Gaza – even as starvation in Gaza deepens to lethal levels – and removes previous requirements that the president inform Congress of additional weapons transfers to Israel. Voting against the bill, Senator Merkley of Oregon said “The campaign conducted by the Netanyahu government is at odds with our American values & American law…I cannot vote to send more bombs & shells to Israel when they are using them in an indiscriminate manner against Palestinian civilians.” In another speech, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true, that is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.” Yet, despite correctly identifying the Israeli starvation campaign as a war crime, Van Hollen voted in favor of the arms package. The bill now moves to the House, which failed to advance it just last week. House Speaker Mike Johnson has gone on record saying he opposes the package because it does not address immigration at the southern border.

    2. In Michigan, a movement is underway to deny Joe Biden the state’s delegates, by encouraging voters to check the box for “uncommitted” in the upcoming Democratic primary. So far, over 30 Democratic elected officials in the state have cosigned this movement, including Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud of Dearborn and Representative Abraham Aiyash, Majority Leader in the Michigan House. This list is expected to grow as Biden’s untempered support for Israel puts Michigan Democrats on increasingly perilous footing. More information is available at ListentoMichigan.com.

    3. If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you may have seen the pro-Israel propaganda the streamer has been running. Put simply, the ad – created by Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate – begins like a tourist ad for Gaza – using AI-generated images – and then shifts to showing the reality on the ground there, ascribing all blame for conditions in Gaza to Hamas, with no mention of the fact that Israel has blockaded Gaza and turned it into what major human rights groups call “the world’s largest open air prison.” With this ad running constantly, locals in Los Angeles have mobilized to protest Hulu’s offices, a rare escalation that the company would be wise not to ignore. This from Vice.

    4. Two stunning stories on Boeing: in an LA Times article, Ed Pierson – a former Boeing senior manager – is quoted saying “I would absolutely not fly a Max airplane…I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them to shut down before the first crash.” Joe Jacobsen, a former engineer at Boeing and the FAA, said “I would tell my family to avoid the Max. I would tell everyone, really.” Meanwhile, the American Prospect reports that the lawyer who exposed Epstein’s sweetheart deal with Alex Acosta has sued the Department of Justice, in an attempt to force disclosure of what is in the Deferred Prosecution Agreement reached by Boeing and the Trump administration following the 737 MAX crashes. We hope this recidivist corporation finally gets its comeuppance.

    5. The Federal Communications Commission has issued a rule banning AI-generated voices in robocalls. Specifically, the commission expressed grave concern about the potential for manipulation of voters in the upcoming presidential election. AI-generated voices in these calls would likely be capable of deceiving voters into thinking that public figures had endorsed a particular candidate when they have not.

    6. Gothamist reports at least 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority have been arrested on bribery and corruption charges. According to the report, “superintendents, assistant superintendents and other NYCHA officials accepted more than $2 million in kickbacks from contractors in exchange for over $13 million in NYCHA business across at least 100 developments.” These corrupt bureaucrats manipulated no-bid contracts in a “pay-to-play” scheme to grant these contracts to contractors that paid them off. Federal prosecutors are calling this “the largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the justice department.”

    7. According to More Perfect Union, “Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont says his state will purchase $1 billion of residents’ medical debt for just $6.5 million. Then he will cancel it all, abolishing medical debt for 250,000 people. This is the first time a state has forgiven medical debt at a massive scale.” This demonstrates what is possible for Democrats at the state and federal level. No excuses.

    8. UFCW Local 400 reports that the FRESHFARM workers have ratified their first contract. This marks the culmination of the first-in-the-nation successful farmer’s market unionization effort. Among other provisions, this contract includes “Higher wages…Vacation time…Improved workplace conditions and safety standards…[and] Grievance and arbitration procedures.” Yuval Lev, a market operator who was on the union’s bargaining committee said “We’re proud to codify these hard-fought gains in this historic contract and continue doing the work we love to serve the community.”

    9. VOX reports the U.S. has been pressuring Mexican President AMLO to help stem the flow of migrants across their northern border. But, signaling that Mexico will no longer blindly do the bidding of the United States, AMLO has demanded certain conditions from the U.S. if they want his help. These include “suspending the US blockade of Cuba, dropping all sanctions against Venezuela, and giving work permits and protection from deportation to at least 10 million Hispanic people living in the US.” Yet, this eminently reasonable set of demands is considered a non-starter within the Washington foreign policy consensus.

    10. Finally, Pope Francis has responded to conservative critics blasting him for allowing the church to bless same-sex marriages. Speaking to Italian newspaper La Stampa, Pope Francis said “No one is scandalized if I give my blessing to an entrepreneur who perhaps exploits people: and this is a very serious sin. But they get scandalized if I give it to a homosexual….This is hypocrisy!”

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 1 US Worker Dies on the Job Every 96 Minutes, Latest Data Shows

    Current workplace fatality figures, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in December 2023, show that on-the-job deaths in the United States have jumped significantly, reaching their highest level in ten years. The results, obtained as part of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), analyzed information collected over the course of 2022 — and documented a notable 5.7…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Slanted Opinions on Gaza/One Family’s Tragedy

    Ralph welcomes Janine Jackson, of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and producer and host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show “CounterSpin” to give us her take on the corporate media landscape and in particular how the major outlets are opining on the crisis in Gaza. Then, Palestinian American, Dr. Tariq Haddad, cardiologist and member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights joins us to recount the tragic story of how he has lost nearly one hundred family members in the current Israeli bombardment.

    Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and she is the producer and host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. Ms. Jackson contributes frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra!, her articles have appeared in various publications, including In These Times and the UAW’s Solidarity, and in books including Civil Rights Since 1787 and Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism.

    What I like to say is: we hear a lot from the people we hear a lot from. The conversation becomes kind of insular, and it’s very much a pro-U.S. and whatever the U.S. is doing position, with some criticism around the edges. But the point is, you’re not hearing from the people who are recipients/victims of U.S. policy. You’re hearing overwhelmingly from the people who make that policy.

    Janine Jackson

    If you just read the New York Times and the Washington Post, the U.S. is the world. We’re the only good country in the world. Anything we do is democracy. Anybody we bomb, we’re bombing in service to democracy. And you’re just supposed to keep swallowing that. And I feel that elite news media don’t understand that people are not buying it. We’re not buying it anymore.

    Janine Jackson

    What [Dr. Tariq Haddad] relates is not going to be easy to take for our listeners, but bear with us, listeners. We have to face up to it because it’s your tax dollars, it’s your US weapons… and cover—diplomatic and political—that is what Netanyahu wants and gets. The rest is just deceptive rhetoric.

    Ralph Nader

    Dr. Tariq Haddad is a cardiologist and member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights— a broadly based, growing coalition of 19 organizations, with over 10,000 Virginians from diverse backgrounds, who advocate for Palestinian human rights. Dr. Haddad grew up in Gaza. 

    For the last four months, my routine has been basically every morning finding out who’s died, who’s survived, who’s suffering, who needs help, and it’s been a constant daily thing starting from October.

    Dr. Tariq Haddad

    I couldn’t bring myself as a human being—forget as a physician—couldn’t bring myself to meet with somebody (Secretary of State, Antony Blinken) for a photo op as a grandstanding opportunity, knowing full well what this administration has done to cause suffering and death in my family. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I just—especially given three minutes. How am I, in three minutes, going to describe everything that’s happened to my family and all my fellow Palestinians in Gaza?

    Dr. Tariq Haddad

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 2/7/24

    1. Eminent scholar Professor William Youmans, working with the Arab Center Washington DC, has published a study examining media bias on Gaza in the context of Sunday talk shows – including NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’ Face the Nation, ABC’s This Week and Fox News Sunday. This study found significant “patterns of bias in guest booking, in the range of views expressed by guests, and in the framing of issues,” signifying “an abandonment of the ideal that news media’s purpose is to scrutinize government policies and the actions of those in power and to inform the public so it can forge independent opinions.”

    2. A groundbreaking report from the Lever has revealed many of AIPAC’s top donors, including such shady characters as Leonid Ravinsky, the billionaire behind the amateur pornography site OnlyFans, and Leslie Wexner, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret and a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. This information came from a donors-only call that Lever journalists infiltrated. Also on that call was New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who said pro-ceasefire members of Congress are being misled by misinformation from “TikTok and China and Russia and our other adversaries.”

    3. 19 student activists at Brown University have begun a hunger strike, demanding that the university divest “its endowment from companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza,” the Providence Journal reports. The group, called Hunger Strike for Palestine, includes both Jewish and Palestinian students. Brown has invested in weapons manufacturing companies such Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, among others. In a transparent attempt to suppress this story, the University is blocking media access to the campus.

    4. Over 1,000 constituents of Representative Dan Goldman have signed a letter excoriating the Democratic Congressman for aligning himself with Republican efforts to discredit South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, per the Intercept. The letter reads “Despite vehement and overwhelming opposition from your constituents and the alarming and escalating death toll that has now passed 26,000 Palestinians killed, including several thousand children, it is unfathomable that you persist in endorsing the U.S.’s continued support for these atrocities.” Goldman was a top recipient of AIPAC cash last month, receiving $45,400.

    5. Following a mammoth general strike against President Javier Milei’s radical capitalist economic policies in Argentina, the country’s courts have “annulled the entire labor chapter of…Milei’s mega-decree, declaring its ‘constitutional invalidity,’” Progressive International reports. Among other controversial provisions, Milei’s labor decree would have retaliated against workers who have engaged in certain forms of political protest.

    6. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim has, for some time, been covering the story of Imran Khan – Pakistan’s popular former president who has been the target of political repression and a lightning rod of civil resistance in that country. Just recently, Khan’s party was formally barred from the upcoming Pakistani elections. Interestingly, this is a similar set of facts as in Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro has also barred an opposition party from competing in their upcoming election. Yet, as Grim comments, the disparity in the American response is stark: “Pakistan…  convict[s] the main opposition leader on totally bogus charges and…ban[s] his party. State Dep[artmen]t calls that an internal matter for Pakistan. Maduro does similar, citing a coup attempt, and State instantly dishes out sanctions.”

    7. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive former teacher in Chicago public schools, now publicly supports ending the Board of Education’s $10.3 million contract with the Chicago Police Department, thereby removing cops from the city’s schools. According to research on this topic,  “students who attended a high school that had a Chicago officer stationed inside were four times more likely to have the police called on them than kids at high schools that didn’t have in-house cops. And there [is] a stark divide in the rate at which Black students [are] policed compared to their peers.” Additionally “the presence of school officers has also not proven to prevent school shootings.” This from the Chicago Sun-Times. 

    8. More Perfect Union reports “Mississippi has approved bills to give Amazon a 10-year, 100% corporate tax exemption, plus 30 years of state tax exemptions. Lawmakers also set aside $44 million to help fund Amazon’s latest project in the state.” This corporate welfare giveaway is all the more galling because, as More Perfect Union notes, “Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in America.” One can only hope this vote does not kickoff another race to the bottom for Amazon’s crumbs among the other poorest states in the union.

    9. Bloomberg reports that the United Auto Workers union has signed up a majority of employees at Volkswagen’s plant in Tennessee. Expansion of the union into plants owned by foreign auto companies has been a top priority for new UAW president Shawn Fain, and a union election at this factory would be key test for the industry and the union. Moreover, the speed at which they have organized majority support will no doubt put other non-union auto companies – namely Elon Musk’s Tesla – on notice.

    10. Finally, speaking of Elon Musk, the AP reports a Delaware judge ruled against the billionaire in a recent case, deciding that he is “not entitled to a landmark compensation package awarded by Tesla’s board of directors that is potentially worth more than $55 billion.” Lawyers for the shareholders argued that it was “dictated by Musk and was the product of sham negotiations with [non-independent] directors … [and] approved by shareholders who were given misleading and incomplete disclosures in a proxy statement.” This all begs the question, how crooked do you have to be to lose a corporate case in Delaware?

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mad as Hell

    Ralph welcomes Eva Borgwardt from the grassroots Jewish-American organization IfNotNow to bust the myth that Palestinian rights and Jewish safety are mutually exclusive. Then, Ralph is joined by CPA and corporate accountability advocate Dr. Ralph Estes to discuss his book “Fight the Corpocracy, Take Back Democracy: A Mad As Hell Guide for the 99%.”

    Eva Borgwardt is the national spokesperson for IfNotNow, a grassroots Jewish-American organization that is dedicated to ending U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demanding equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.

    It’s terrifying for Jews, for Muslims, for any marginalized community in the US—so many people would be vulnerable and under existential threat under a Trump presidency. And so I’m very clear-eyed about that. And I’m furious with President Biden, who seems to be willing to risk that scenario by insisting on sending unconditional aid and unconditional diplomatic support for this assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza led by Netanyahu’s rightwing government.

    Eva Borgwardt

    There’s a key concept that’s happening—especially among young people—which is that you can’t manufacture consent with a population that has social media and direct access to what Palestinians are experiencing…And the immediacy of that horrific situation is very, very clear for a much wider swath of the American public than has had access to that type of information before. 

    Eva Borgwardt

    Investors do not create corporations, they finance them. All corporations are created by the state. And that’s often missed by the public in the description of private enterprise. It’s viewed like it’s sui generis—someone figures out a thing to produce or a service and goes around raising capital and starts a corporation. And what Ralph Estes is saying is the essence of the corporation—the reason why it’s allowed to have limited liability for its shareholders, the reason why it has so many privileges and immunities—is because it was originally supposed to fulfill public purposes.

    Ralph Nader

    Dr. Ralph Estes is Emeritus professor of business and accounting at American University in Washington, D.C., organizer of the Stakeholder Alliance, co-founder and vice president of The Center for Advancement of Public Policy, and Emeritus Trustee at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of several books, including Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things and Fight the Corpocracy, Take Back Democracy: A Mad As Hell Guide for the 99%.

    When I was in accounting, I learned one thing…Your goodwill, your persuasion, your humanness—these things, they’ve all got the lip service for it, they’ve got the words, but it doesn’t cause action. I discovered what causes action is embarrassment. Corporate executives do not want to be embarrassed.

    Dr. Ralph Estes



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Grassroots Groups for Gaza

    Ralph welcomes leaders from two grassroots groups advocating against the war on Gaza. First, from Tel Aviv, we are joined by Ido Setter of “Standing Together” a movement aimed at mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. Then, here in America, Stefanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice For Peace, reports on their work taking action in Congress, on the streets, and in the press to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    Ido Setter works on Standing Together’s digital mobilization team. Standing Together is a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice.

    For the last two decades, the Israeli government and Israel as a state didn’t offer any kind of hope for the Palestinian. There wasn’t another serious peace process, no serious talks, and basically the Israeli government said to Palestinians, “Listen, this is how things are going to be. Deal with it.” And when you don’t offer any hope, people will go to extreme places. So what happened on October 7th was, of course, a strategic collapse. But it was also an accumulation of the past two decades, where Israel didn’t think that moving forward with a peace treaty or some kind of a peace agreement with the Palestinian people was an imperative.

    Ido Setter

    Nothing stays on one side of the border. Everything that happens on the Palestinian side of the border eventually comes back to the Israeli side of the border… We need to stop right now what’s happening at the current moment in Gaza, have compassion, and move in the opposite direction that Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish government is trying to lead us.

    Ido Setter

    Stefanie Fox is Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which is one of the largest Jewish anti-Zionist organizations in the world.

    There is a large and growing community of faith leaders, of rabbis, of synagogues, of many, many Jews who are working to build a Judaism liberated from Zionism. And so there’s probably 10 synagogues across the country that are anti- or non-Zionist. There are dozens of independent spiritual communities we call Chavurot that are connected (or not) to Jewish Voice for Peace. There’s a burgeoning and growing movement to fight for the soul of Judaism, to fight for the future of our communities. And we have millennia of Jewish tradition—that predate the founding of the state of Israel and the movement of political Zionism—to lean on and to extend into a future where we are not bound up and made complicit in support for a genocidal ethno-state.

    Stefanie Fox

    The term ‘semite’ comes out of 19th century scientific racism. It’s not really something in any moment in history that anybody has actually used to describe themselves. It’s only a racist term. And so, the term ‘antisemitism’ does refer to the bigotry and discrimination that emerged out of that racist classification system. And at its root it comes from the same white supremacy in which anti Palestinian racism and erasure and Zionism itself were born… And of course, antisemitism is real. There’s real hatred and bigotry and discrimination against Jews. The point is that antisemitism and white supremacy and Zionism emerge from the same root of exclusionary ethno-nationalist racialized state building.

    Stefanie Fox

    In order for [President Biden and the US Congress] not to ask for a ceasefire, they are engaged in hostilities now—the U.S. that is—against the Houthis in Yemen. They are bombing in Iraq and Syria. It’s quite a price the U.S. is paying…because if there were a ceasefire, there’d be no Houthi assailing of shipping in the Red Sea. There would be no missiles with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    News 1/24/24

    1. Just Foreign Policy reports that there is dissent brewing among Obama foreign policy alumni regarding President Biden’s air war on the Yemeni Houthis. Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, considered Obama’s foreign policy guru, called the campaign “a dangerous escalation,” and further stated “We have no legal basis to be doing that.” Rhodes, joined by former National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor, are thus aligned with the dozens of groups – including the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and World BEYOND War, among many others – which signed a letter calling for an end to the campaign. Representative Ro Khanna, writing in the Nation, argues that “President Biden has both the constitutional obligation and a political imperative to seek congressional authorization for proposed hostilities,” but is quick to note that “ it is…not too late to pursue a more effective approach…which happens to be wildly popular with voters—regional diplomacy and statesmanship.” Asked “Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?” President Biden himself replied “are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes,” per Just Foreign Policy.

    2. Following Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement ruling out a two-state solution, more Senate Democrats are warming up to the idea of imposing conditions on military aid to Israel. Yahoo! News reports that 18 Senate Democrats now support “an amendment that would require that any country receiving funding in the supplemental [aid package] use the money in accordance with U.S. law, international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict,” with five Senators – Tina Smith, Tammy Baldwin, Laphonza Butler, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock – adding their names after Netanyahu’s comments, per Jewish Insider. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been non-committal, with the Times of Israel reporting that he said “the Democratic caucus is still discussing the best way forward, regarding conditioning aid to Israel.”

    3. The Huffington Post reports controversial Biden Middle East advisor Brett McGurk may have earned a target on his back from Congressional Progressives. A draft letter from Congressional Democrats to Biden demanding McGurk’s resignation is already circulating, with sources saying frustration with McGurk “has reached a boiling point.” McGurk’s signature Middle East policy has been his attempted marriage of Israel and Saudi Arabia, even going so far as to push “U.S. officials to tie the future of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza to the prospective Saudi-Israel deal.” Other officials, speaking anonymously, called the plan “delusionally optimistic.” However, while Progressives may well claim McGurk’s political scalp, some worry that he could become a scapegoat for administration-wide policy on Palestine.

    4. Harvard, caving to attacks from the likes of Larry Summers and billionaire Bill Ackman, has established an “Antisemitism taskforce.” However, this has not stopped the bad-faith attacks on the university, with that same coterie now alleging that the co-chair of the task force – Professor of Jewish History Derek J. Penslar – is insufficiently Zionist, per the Crimson. Penslar has previously signed a letter stating “‘Israel’s long-standing occupation’ of Gaza [has] resulted in a ‘regime of apartheid,’” and rejects the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which includes anti-Zionism. Summers wrote that Penslar is “unsuited” to lead the task force; meanwhile the American Academy for Jewish Research writes “Professor Penslar is a prolific scholar with a stellar international reputation, whose numerous books address the historical development of many of the topics raising rancor at our universities today: antisemitism, Zionism, Jews and the military, and the history of Israel.” Responding to Summers, Professor Steven Levitsky, who is Jewish, said “Larry Summers…is not representative of a majority of Jews at Harvard,” adding “That guy is batshit crazy — and you can quote me on that.”

    5. U.S. District Judge William Young has blocked the planned merger of Spirit Airlines and Jetblue Airways, arguing the acquisition would “‘substantially lessen competition’ in violation of the Clayton Act, which ‘was designed to prevent anticompetitive harms for consumers,’” per the Hill. President Biden praised the decision in a statement, saying “Today’s ruling is a victory for consumers everywhere who want lower prices and more choices. My Administration will continue to fight to protect consumers and enforce our antitrust laws.” The Department of Justice has been fighting this merger since March 2023.

    6. The New Republic reports “Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an explosive report documenting that Donald Trump’s businesses pocketed at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during his presidency.” Yet, House Democrats are powerless to subpoena witnesses to further investigate this report because Republicans hold the majority. Ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, has been pushing Senate Democrats – who hold the gavels in that chamber – to issue subpoenas. Yet these Senate Democrats have hesitated to do so. We urge these powerful Democratic committee chairs to use their subpoena power. The American people deserve to know if their president profited from foreign dealings at their expense.

    7. Public Citizen reports “the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] plans to crack down on banks charging ridiculous overdraft fees. Their proposal would cap overdraft fees at $3 and close the loophole that allows banks to take advantage of Americans who are already struggling.” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra is quoted saying “Decades ago, overdraft loans got special treatment to make it easier for banks to cover paper checks that were often sent through the mail…Today, we are proposing rules to close a longstanding loophole that allowed many large banks to transform overdraft into a massive junk fee harvesting machine.” According to the CFPB’s statement, “The proposed rule would apply to insured financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets… The CFPB estimates that this rule may save consumers $3.5 billion or more in fees per year.”

    8. California Senate candidate Barbara Lee has picked up the endorsement of the statewide McClatchy editorial board, including major Golden State papers like the Sacramento Bee. In their announcement of the endorsement, the Bee wrote “Barbara Lee stood out from the rest. Her independence, her perseverance in fighting for the underdog and her life experiences set her apart.” Confirming this assessment, just this week Congresswoman Lee was kicked out of a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Cuba for arguing in favor of normalizing diplomatic relations.

    9. The National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint against Trader Joe’s for the company’s attempted union busting. Based on a 2022 unfair labor practice charge, the complaint alleges the company shuttered their New York City wine store in order to avoid impending unionization, in addition to “subject[ing] employees to interrogation, threaten[ing] to cut their benefits and [telling] them deciding to join a union would be ‘futile,’” Grocery Dive reports. The United Food and Commercial Workers union praised the decision, writing “Trader Joe’s shamelessly and illegally engaged in union busting to scare Trader Joe’s workers across the region and stop these workers from having a voice on the job. We applaud the NLRB’s decision …and look forward to holding Trader Joe’s accountable for their egregious anti-worker behavior.” Possible remedies the board could utilize include compelling the company to reopen the store.

    10. Finally, he Intercept reports Republicans Glen Grothman and Marco Rubio have put forward a bill to provide pensions to citizens who worked for Air America. But just what was Air America? The generically named airline was in fact a CIA cutout which “has been accused of running weapons and even…drugs in Southeast Asia.” The faux airline also played a key role in the CIA’s operations in Laos and Cambodia, among the darkest chapters in American covert ops history. Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes told the Intercept “The whole point of Air America was to kill Communists.” Ironically, as the piece points out, these are the same Republicans who decry the so-called “deep state.”

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



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight

    Ralph sits down with three guests straight out of the latest edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen. First, world-renowned food politics expert and public health advocate Marion Nestle joins Ralph to discuss America’s voracious junk food lobby. Then, Ralph speaks to legal expert Bruce Fein about Congressional staffers and the part they can play in making Congress stronger. Finally, Ralph welcomes Vishal Shankar from the Revolving Door Project to explain why President Biden is letting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy continue wrecking the Post Office. 

    Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University. She is the author of a wide range of books about the politics of food, nutrition, health, and the environment, including Eat, Drink Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, and Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics. 

    If you want to make a profit and grow your profit every 90 days, you have to sell as much food as possible. And what that food does to public health is not your responsibility, because that’s the way our system works. 

    Marion Nestle

    We have a law on the books that says that the Federal Trade Commission can do nothing to restrict the marketing of foods to children on television. They’re not allowed to do that. So what we’re talking about here is a situation in which Congress is so corrupt that it cannot take on anything that will fight the food industry.

    Marion Nestle

    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.

    You really can’t make a career anymore of being in the legislative branch as an employee or as an aide. And so everybody leaves after a couple years to go to K Street and become a lobbyist. And so with this rapid turnover, you have a lobotomized Congress. And what this letter was attempting to do was to say, listen, Congress still—when the architecture of the Constitution is honored—is the primary predominant branch among the three branches. It’s simply that you’re not exercising it.

    Bruce Fein

    Vishal Shankar is a Senior Researcher at the Revolving Door Project, which scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement. He has also worked at Inequality Media, as well as several government offices, nonprofits, and policy research projects. His work has appeared in The American Prospect and Common Dreams, and he has been quoted in The New Republic, The Lever, and the Capitol Hill Citizen.

    The crisis [with Louis DeJoy] is not as immediate to Biden, his voters, his supporters, and they very wrongly believe—in my opinion—that they can work with this man who has proven to be untrustworthy, a Republican mega-donor and partisan hack, and most importantly a committed privatizer of the United States Postal Service. 

    Vishal Shankar

    DeJoy has been one of the single biggest impediments to piloting or expanding to creative new ideas that can grow out the Postal Service for decades to come…DeJoy has very stubbornly refused to consider these great potential ideas and is doubling down on service cuts and rate hikes as the only way he thinks he can run the agency.

    Vishal Shankar

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. Democracy Now! Reports the United Autoworkers union has called for a ceasefire in Gaza. They are the largest and most mainstream labor union to publicly come out for a ceasefire, joining the American Postal Workers Union, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, the California Nurses Association and the Chicago Teachers Union. UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla said “UAW International is calling for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Israel and Palestine so that we can get to the work of building a lasting peace, building social justice, and building a global community of solidarity,” per CBS News. At the same time, UAW is “launching simultaneous, public organizing campaigns at more than a dozen automakers including Toyota… Volkswagen…and Tesla…aiming to organize nearly 150,000 employees…which would double the number of autoworkers in the union,” per Bloomberg. In short, UAW is setting a new standard for labor. We hope other unions follow their lead.

    2. A new Gallup poll shows the Israeli campaign against Gaza is underwater among key segments of American public opinion. Some top line numbers: 63% of Democrats oppose Israel’s military actions in Gaza, as do 67% of adults under 35, 64% of people of color, and 52% of women. Moreover, this poll was conducted in the first weeks of November, so it is likely these attitudes have hardened since then.

    3. Responding to the protests against Israel’s campaign, the House has passed a resolution classifying anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, even among American Jews. In a surprising move, high ranking Jewish Democrat Jerrold Nadler took to the floor to decry this resolution, saying “the resolution suggests that ALL anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That is either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong. And it unfairly implicates many of my orthodox former constituents in Brooklyn, many of whose families rose from the ashes of the Holocaust…the authors, if they were at all familiar with Jewish history and culture, should know about Jewish anti-Zionism that was, and is, expressly NOT antisemitic.”

    4. Semafor reports MSNBC has canceled Mehdi Hasan’s news program. This article implies MSNBC canceled the show because it was a “cult favorite” which never “translated to ratings successes,” though it seems likely that Hasan’s willingness to push back on Israeli talking points during this recent conflict played a role as well. Lest we forget this is the network that canceled Phil Donahue’s blockbuster news program for criticizing the Iraq War.

    5. Just Foreign Policy’s Aída Chávez reports “Sen[ator] Rand Paul is forcing a vote this week on getting US troops out of Syria. His Syria War Powers Resolution would remove all US troops – approx. 900 [US military personnel] – from Syria in the next 30 days.” Chávez highlights that “US forces have been targeted with dozens of attacks in Syria [in recent days] over US support for war in Gaza.”

    6. From OtherWorlds.org: the Pentagon has failed yet another audit. The mammoth Department of Defense has never passed an audit, and only even completed its first in 2018. In this most recent iteration, “the Pentagon was able to account for just half of its $3.8 trillion in assets (including equipment, facilities, etc)…[leaving] $1.9 trillion…unaccounted for — more than the entire budget Congress agreed to for the current fiscal year.” Congress is now set to allocate an additional $840 billion for the agency.

    7. The Intercept is out with a story that could have made headlines during the Populist Era of the 1880s and ‘90s. According to the report, Dan Osborn, a military veteran and labor leader who was a key figure in the 2021 strike against Kellogg’s, is running for Senate as an independent – and leading Republican incumbent Senator Deb Fischer in the polls. Osborn told the Intercept “Nebraskans have had it with Washington. We’ve been starving for honest government that isn’t bought and paid for…This poll shows that Nebraska’s independent streak is alive and well.” The article notes Nebraska Democrats have not yet fielded a candidate in this Senate race and are considering backing Osborn. Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said many Nebraska voters tired of one-party control in the state, arguing it “Makes politicians lazy…[and] more beholden to corporate interests since they don’t have to answer to voters.”

    8. NBC is out with a bombshell report on carbon monoxide deaths among Airbnb renters. According to the report, “NBC News has identified 19 deaths since 2013 that occurred at Airbnb properties and are alleged to have involved carbon monoxide poisoning, according to interviews with family members of victims and a review of news articles, autopsy reports, police records, and court and government documents. The company is currently facing at least three lawsuits pertaining to carbon monoxide deaths or poisonings.” Perhaps most damningly, following one carbon monoxide related death in 2014, the company made a blog post promising “By the end of 2014, we’ll require all Airbnb hosts to confirm that they have [carbon monoxide detectors] installed in their listing.” The company never made good on that promise, and that post has since been deleted.

    9. Tesla has released its long awaited Cybertruck, and along with it, videos of the vehicle’s crash testing. These are distressing to say the least. As the American Prospect notes, “the Cybertruck’s body panels…are made of stainless steel…[which] is much stiffer than…ordinary [automobile body materials], which makes it dangerous. Since the 1950s at least, automakers have understood that stiffer cars are more dangerous to people inside and outside the car, because in a crash they deliver energy to other parties rather than absorbing it. In early crash test experiments with more heavily built cars, collisions often did only minor damage to the car but turned the test dummies into paste. Since then, cars have been designed with progressively more sophisticated crumple zones to absorb impact forces. Musk’s boasts of a Cybertruck “exoskeleton,” if true, are a recipe for gruesome carnage.”

    10. Finally, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died at 100 years old. A Rolling Stone obituary, which ran under the headline “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies,” argues that while Kissinger deserves to be remembered as one of “history’s worst mass murderers,” he instead has been given a place of honor, even in death, among the American elite. One can only hope that his many, many victims will someday see justice served.

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



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  • A Strategy of Annihilation

    In our ongoing coverage of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, we invite retired U.S. Army Colonel and senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Lawrence Wilkerson, to offer his experienced and unsparing perspective. Then our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, weighs in on how in this conflict the United States violates a number of international laws.

    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.  

    * Here is former director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Josh Paul’s op-ed in the Washington Post: “Opinion: This is not the State Department I know. That’s why I left my job.”

    Bibi [Netanyahu] is very strategically allied with Hamas. Hamas does not believe in a two-state solution. They are adamantly opposed to a two-state solution. They want a Palestinian state and Israel gone. But Bibi sympathizes with that because he wants an Israeli state and the Palestinians gone. So he’s very much willing to work with Hamas— not explicitly, but certainly tacitly and implicitly.

    Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

    Netanyahu’s goal here is to stay out of jail.

    Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

    Biden doesn’t seem to distinguish between the subjugators and the subjugated… Factually, it’s pretty clear that the difference in military superpower on the side of the Israelis and the U.S., compared to the feeble weaponry of the Palestinians (if they’re even able to acquire them) it’s probably the greatest gap in modern history between the occupier and the occupied. Why doesn’t Biden recognize that? He’s supposed to be a foreign policy expert… Why doesn’t he recognize those basic facts?

    Ralph Nader

    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.

    * Here is Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein’s October 24, 2023 letter to President Joe Biden on the subject of the Biden Administration’s public response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

    You put all [the facts] together and it really is almost laughable to have the President of the United States stand up there and proclaim the fundamental principle of U.S. international foreign policy is making a rule-based international order. As he’s violating the order himself. 

    Bruce Fein

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 10/25/23

    1. High ranking State Department official Josh Paul has resigned from the agency, citing the Biden administration’s hard line on support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza, per the Huffington Post. Paul, who oversaw top-level arms sales at the State Department, said “When I came to this bureau … I knew it was not without its moral complexity and moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt … the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do…I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued – indeed, expanded and expedited – provision of lethal arms to Israel – I have reached the end of that bargain.” In a later interview with PBS NewsHour, Paul stated that human rights abuses by the IDF are tracked, but routinely ignored by the State Department’s senior leadership.

    2. Adding to this staff revolt, the Intercept reports sixteen former campaign staffers for Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania sent a letter calling on the Senator to back a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, writing “it is not too late to change your stance and stand on the righteous side of history.” Fetterman has thus far been a hawkish supporter of Israel in this war. This letter follows a similar letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren, wherein 260 of her former presidential campaign staff urged her to call for a ceasefire as well, per POLITICO. The Messenger also reports Representative Ro Khanna’s political director has resigned in protest of Khanna’s opposition to a ceasefire resolution. 

    2. The United Nations reports that on October 18th, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution, authored by Brazil’s UN delegation, won the support of 12 of the council’s 15 members, but the sole veto of the United States was enough to kill to the measure. The American UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, justified the veto by saying “this resolution did not mention Israel’s right of self-defence.” No other delegation voted against the resolution, though the United Kingdom and Russia abstained from voting.

    4. USA Today reports that Starbucks and the Starbucks workers union have filed “dueling lawsuits over [a] pro-Palestine social media post.” Starbucks claims the post – which read simply “Solidarity with Palestine!” –  “damaged the company’s reputation,” with executive vice president Sara Kelly claiming this implies the union’s “support for violence perpetrated by Hamas” On the other hand, the union alleges that this is nothing more than another tactic in Starbucks’ “illegal anti-union campaign” with the company “falsely attacking the union’s reputation with workers and the public.” Since 2021, over 330 unfair labor practice charges have been filed against Starbucks with the National Labor Relations Board.

    5. As the United Auto Workers strike continues, the union has already achieved major concessions from the auto companies. These include General Motors, Ford, Stellantis offering a 23% wage increase,  Ford agreeing to reduce the progression period to reach peak wages from 8 years to 3 – with Stellantis agreeing to 4 years – and Ford agreeing to reinstate cost of living adjustments, per the Detroit Free Press. Union president Shawn Fain continues to press the companies however, noting forcefully that even as Ford claims to be financially strained, they announced a $600 million dividend to shareholders just this week.

    6. The Hill reports that the Senators are “zero[ing] in” on national standards for name, image, and likeness rights for college athletes. Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut said in a recent hearing on the issue “The system of college athletics is in need of reform. The system all too long has been exploitative and abusive, emotionally [and] physically.” Witnesses at the hearing testified that national standards would help avoid major disparities in compensation across state lines, and would ensure protections for student athletes in sports besides football and basketball. The senators assembled largely agreed that national standards are necessary, though some – like Senator Hawley of Missouri – fretted about the possibility of student athletes unionizing.

    7. Axios reports that DC lawmakers have proposed an innovative bill that would “allocate $11 million annually to…Residents [who] could use those vouchers to support any local news outlet of their choice.” This proposal was pioneered by the Democracy Policy Network or DPN, co-founded by Pete Davis. DPN volunteer Mark Histed is said of the bill “We believe that markets are not sufficient to provide the level of journalism that we need in a democracy.” If the DC council passes the bill, the district would join New Mexico, California, and New Jersey in providing state funds for local journalism.

    8. 33 states have filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, alleging that the tech titan “routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law,” per AP. In addition, nine state attorneys general are filing lawsuits in their states, meaning nearly every single state in the nation – and Washington D.C. – are taking action. New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement, “Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted…while lowering their self-esteem.”

    9. On October 24th, the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a statement declaring the immediate suspension of permits issued to the company Cruise, which had allowed them to test and deploy driverless taxicabs in the state. The California DMV wrote “When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” further noting that there is no set time limit for a suspension, and that the suspension is effective immediately.

    10. Finally, the Minnesota Reformer is out with a story on how the Minneapolis police department and local government conspired to run a protection racket targeting small, minority-owned businesses in the city. Put simply, “Some businesses…are required by the city to have security, which until 2020, sometimes had to be off-duty Minneapolis police officers…The city doesn’t keep track of how much officers are working or how much they’re paid, or even have access to the contracts…Some officers are still paid in cash, increasing the risk of tax evasion. And, several business owners and Minneapolis officials said some small business owners — particularly those owned by immigrants — have been led to believe they must hire MPD officers, or risk getting ghosted by police.” One of the officers involved in this racket was none other than Derek Chauvin, later convicted of murdering George Floyd and setting off riots in the city that, in an ironic twist, led to the destruction of one of the businesses he had been been involved in “protecting.”

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



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

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  • Invisible Palestinians

    In our continued coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ralph welcomes James Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute and author of “Palestinians: The Invisible Victims.” Then, no-nukes activist Harvey Wasserman joins to warn us about the dangerous condition of nuclear reactors across the country, including the threat of “embrittlement” at the California reactor in Diablo Canyon. 

    James Zogby is co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and he is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. Since 1992, he has written a weekly column— “Washington Watch” —that is published in 12 countries. He is the author of several books, including Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion, The Tumultuous Decade: Arab, Turkish, and Iranian Public Opinion – 2010-2019, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters, and Palestinians: The Invisible Victims.

    There are two narratives, and we have to understand both. There’s Israeli trauma and Jewish trauma, and there’s Palestinian and Arab trauma. Both are real because there are two groups of humanity who each have histories. When we adopt one and ignore the other, then we end up creating the kind of torment the Palestinians have been living with.

    James Zogby

    This does not make Israel more secure. Taking massive amounts of Palestinian lives, evacuating them, forcing them to flee from their homes, murdering them from the air—doesn’t make them more secure. At the end of the day, when the dust settles and the tears dry, you’re going to have a whole lot more dead people, a whole lot more anger, a whole lot more frustration, and nothing else will change in Gaza or in the West Bank.

    James Zogby

    Hamas was a tiny religious organization which was fostered into a more powerful organization by the United States and Israel. They thought that if they built up a religious organization, it would undermine the PLO (the Palestine Liberation Organization). And once again, just as in Afghanistan, we create our own adversaries, blundering back and forth.

    Ralph Nader

    Harvey Wasserman is a journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy. Mr. Wasserman is the author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, and The People’s Spiral Of U.S. History. He has written and researched atomic energy since 1973, and co-authored Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Energy.

    There’s only one explanation why they’re continuing to operate these two reactors and all the other reactors in the United States. And that’s because the commercial reactor industry is now the infrastructure of the nuclear weapons industry. If you like nuclear power, you love nuclear weapons. They are joined at the hip, these two industries.

    Harvey Wasserman

    These two reactors are upwind of the entire United States. An accident at Diablo Canyon could—within four hours—send an apocalyptic radioactive cloud into Los Angeles, into the Central Valley where we get our fruits and vegetables for the winter, and into the Bay Area. The stakes could not be higher. And again, these are military facilities, masquerading as fighters of global warming, which is absolutely ridiculous.

    Harvey Wasserman

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. The Huffington Post reports that the State Department has imposed a censorship regime, directing high-level diplomats involved in Middle East affairs to refrain from using the following phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire, end to violence/bloodshed, and restoring calm.” This mirrors White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s response to a reporter’s question during a recent briefing, when she deemed calls for a ceasefire by progressives in Congress “wrong…repugnant, and…disgraceful.” Rejecting this censorious framework, Rep. Jamaal Bowman tweeted that the “Official statement from [his] office [is] De-escalate. End the violence. Restore calm.”

    2. According to Semafor, MSNBC has “quietly” pulled their Muslim anchors from the air, preventing them from covering the rapidly escalating situation in Gaza. “The network did not air a scheduled Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show…reversed a plan for Ayman Mohyeldin to fill in this week…for…Joy Reid’s 7 p.m. show… [and] the network also plans to have Alicia Menendez fill in …for Ali Velshi.” This piece goes on to quote from anonymous MSNBC sources who “[feel] all three hosts have some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.” NBC denies this is an intentional and coordinated move, instead claiming these shifts are merely “coincidental.” Meanwhile, MSNBC did prominently feature New York City Mayor Eric Adams making the extraordinarily dubious claim that “the DSA and others [were] carrying swastikas and calling for the extermination of Jewish people.” DSA members are now mulling a suit against the mayor for defamation, per City and State NY.

    3. The Intercept is out with a story about divisions within the liberal Zionist advocacy group, J Street. Per the story, J Street is supporting a congressional resolution that “pledges unconditional support to Israel’s war in Gaza,” which “makes no mention of Palestinian civilians.” In response, over 1,000 former J Street staffers and representatives are urging the organization to join calls for a ceasefire. J Street’s position mirrors that of many congressional progressives who have been hesitant to call for a ceasefire even as the civilian death toll continues to mount.

    4. Law schools have become another major venue for conflict on this issue. The Jewish Law Students Association of the City University of New York has issued a statement, expressing their “uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for self-determination,” and noting that “institutions like the UN have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness and/or inability to hold Israel accountable over its blatant disregard for international law.” Similar statements have come out of Harvard, Columbia, and NYU – leading top law firm Davis Polk to rescind job offers they had extended to students from these institutions, per NBC. Some donors have also cut ties with Harvard over the statement, including the Wexner foundation, founded by former Victoria’s Secret CEO and close Epstein associate Leslie Wexner.

    5. The Washington Post reports Venezuela and the United States have reached a breakthrough agreement in which the U.S. will ease sanctions on the country’s oil industry, and in exchange the country will hold  “a competitive, internationally monitored presidential election next year.” This agreement represents a win for both nations, with the Biden administration hoping it will ease oil and gas prices, while the Maduro administration will, at long last, have the opportunity to reaffirm its legitimacy following the Trump-backed coup attempt that began in 2019.

    6. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has called on the full Senate to expel Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey following his indictment on corruption charges and allegations by the Department of Justice that he was acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Fetterman’s statement reads “Senator Menendez should not be a U.S. Senator. He should have been gone long ago. It is time for every one of my colleagues in the Senate to join me in expelling Senator Menendez…This is not a close call.” This from the Hill.

    7. Negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have broken down yet again, this time over two specific issues. The first, according to the LA Times, is the actors’ demand for a 2% share of streaming revenue, or alternatively 57 cents per subscriber per year. The studios have called this an “overreach” which would “create an untenable economic burden.” The other major point of contention is AI, with the studios “continuing to demand ‘consent’ on the first day of employment for use of a performer’s digital replica for an entire cinematic universe (or any franchise project),” per Deadline. Meanwhile, the guild has lauded a new Senate bill – the NO FAKES Act – which would “prevent a person from producing or distributing an unauthorized AI-generated replica of an individual to perform in an audiovisual or sound recording without the consent of the individual being replicated.” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said of the bill “A performer’s voice and their appearance are all part of their unique essence, and it’s not ok when those are used without their permission. Consent is key,” per Deadline.  

    8. Finally, the Guardian reports that Indian officials have approved a trial for sedition against renowned author Arundhati Roy concerning a 2010 speech she made on Kashmir. The article notes Reporters Without Borders has warned that “press freedom is in crisis” in India. Roy herself has been an outspoken critic of the rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India, which has earned her the ire of right-wing authoritarian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



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  • The Punishment of Gaza

    Ralph welcomes Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy to discuss recent attacks by Hamas and the Israeli military in Israel and Palestine. Then, international law expert Bruce Fein speaks with Ralph about the recent violence, America’s response, and America’s historical culpability. 

    ‘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 book The Punishment of Gaza.

    I think that there was something moving in [President Biden’s] speech because he seemed very sincere. But I was really, really missing the other side, the Palestinians, the siege, the occupation, the apartheid, nothing of this exists in his world. It was really a speech of a Zionist…not of a statesman who sees the siege and sees the agony and the suffering of the Palestinians for the last decades. And doesn’t see the connection between this barbaric attack on Israel on Saturday and all those preconditions which are all of them criminal and inhuman.

    Gideon Levy

    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.

    In the international arena, justice is subordinated to power. And that’s what we have here. And when President Biden yesterday says, “Oh, we’re all in favor of a rule-based international order,” while he’s supporting the very definition of genocide? It shows you how incredibly hypocritical and callous these politicians are. I don’t want to single out Biden, because I think politicians in general are that way. And I’m not going to exclude some of those who are Palestinians too. It’s a universal sociopathology in the political figures. And it’s very, very tragic. ‘Cause who loses? the peaceful civilians who want nothing more than a better life and opportunity to develop their faculties and have families.

    Bruce Fein

    Given the current events and the destruction of Gaza, Biden should really demand an immediate ceasefire and negotiate to establish a truce. He’s got to try to be an honest broker, and instead he’s a dittohead bullhorn for more military activity by Israel. This is the low point in presidential positioning on the Middle East conflict since the end of World War II, and there’s nobody in government to call him to account.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. First, I must address the situation in Palestine. There is too much to say and the situation continues to develop rapidly, so instead of getting into specific news items I will instead read the October 8th statement released by progressive Palestinian congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. “I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day. I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity. The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”

    2. The United Auto Workers strike has notched their first major victory. According to a statement issued by the union on October 6th, “General Motors will include electric vehicle battery production work in the UAW’s national master agreement with the company.” The statement lauded this agreement as a “historic step forward,” which will guarantee “the transition to electric vehicles at GM will be a just transition that brings good union jobs to communities across America.” Another major breakthrough is a whopping proposed 23% pay increase from Ford, with other topics ranging from Cost of Living Increases to profit sharing to retirement security. As union president Shawn Fain remarked “We may be foul-mouthed, but we’re strategic. We may get fired up, but we’re disciplined. We may be rowdy, but we’re organized…We’re not here to start a fight, we’re here to finish one.”

    3. Last week, Dr. Cornell West announced that he would drop his bid for the Green Party nomination and instead continue his run as an independent. A statement from his campaign reads “The best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100 percent on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics,” per the New York Times. Barring other factors, this will complicate the activist academic’s ability to appear on the ballot in many states. Within the same week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would drop out of the Democratic Party primary and also run as an independent. Semafor reports that the Trump campaign now plans to target, rather than boost, the RFK Jr. campaign as his independent bid is expected to draw more votes from Trump than Biden in a general election.

    4. AP reports the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 4-3 in favor of hearing a challenge to the state’s legislative maps, long regarded as lopsidedly gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Liberal justice Janet Protasiewicz, under massive pressure from Wisconsin Republicans, refused to recuse herself from this case – setting the stage for a power struggle which could see Republican legislators go so far as to impeach her. Liberals took back a majority on the state supreme court following a 15-year run of conservative control.

    5. X, formerly Twitter, has “roll[ed] out [a] new ad format that can’t be reported [or] blocked,” per Mashable. The article goes on to note that “the new ad format also doesn’t disclose who is behind the ad or that it is even an advertisement at all.” This seems to violate FTC guidelines, which demand that disclosures of advertisements be “clear and conspicuous.”

    6. An ominous report in the Washington Post finds that if one asks an Amazon Alexa whether fraud was involved in the 2020 election, it will reply that the election was “’stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,’ citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives.” Amazon claims these responses were limited and that the error has been corrected, but this incident foreshadows a much larger issue of disinformation becoming so plentiful that it overwhelms reliable sourcing in terms of sheer volume online. Others have reported similar issues with so-called AI programs, which cull the internet for their answers to specific questions.

    7. Politico reports that, following a DNC meeting this past week, the Iowa caucuses will no longer be first on the presidential primary calendar. The state will now vote with many other, larger states on March 5th, also known as Super Tuesday. Iowa delegates have made clear that they plan to “lobby for an earlier nominating contest in 2028.” On the other hand, New Hampshire has signaled that it will not abide by the Committee’s decision to move their primary, and may hold a “rogue” primary on their chosen date. Elaine Kamarck, a DNC member told Politico “We’ve made our decision about the sequence of these early states and we’re going to stick to that sequence.”

    8. Finally, El Pais reports that the “Colombian hitmen who killed presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio [have been] murdered in an Ecuadorian prison.” Sources claim the men were hanged in a cellblock. Just days prior, “the United States offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the masterminds behind Villavicencio’s murder.” Outgoing right-wing Ecuadoran president Guillermo Lasso was in New York when the murders occurred, though former leftist president Rafael Correa wrote “If they are the hitmen who killed Villavicencio, it proves that the government was behind the crime.” Ecuador’s contentious presidential election is slated for October 15th.



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  • Going Into Labor

    Our five hundredth episode features long time labor organizer, Chris Townsend, who talks to Ralph about labor law reform, the Biden administration’s attitude toward the labor movement, the UAW strike, the threat of automation, and much more. Plus, Ralph clarifies his position re the Washington Post article where he said he preferred “autocracy over fascism,” and we briefly discuss the chaos in the Republican caucus.

    Chris Townsend is a 44-year trade union worker and organizer. He is the retired Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union and was the International Union organizing and field director for the Amalgamated Transit Union.

    The workplace in the United States is a dictatorship. And if you’re willing to challenge that dictatorship— create a rebellion against it—you might be able to build a union. If you look at the statistics, the number of elections— the number of those campaigns that actually get that far, which is only a small number, most of them are incinerated, liquidated, poison gassed, fired, terminated out of existence before you ever get that election— but if you get that election, the labor movement is winning.

    Chris Townsend

    When you have a labor leadership that is lazy, unimaginative, unimaginative, rarely challenged, has a very timid view, a very limited worldview, and they see their role more as administrator as opposed to leaders— this is the modern situation that we face. We don’t have much of a leadership, sadly. We have an administrator group, and they have administered the decline.

    Chris Townsend

    Let’s be very, very realistic here. I don’t think there can be a labor union movement in the United States under present federal laws. There are just too many hurdles, too many delays, too many licenses for these corporations to bust up the situation… And I’m amazed that you can listen to what the AFL puts out, what labor union leaders put out—they almost never mention card checks, they never mention repealing Taft -Hartley. They don’t force the Democrats— who get elected in no small part because of union support— to put these labor law reforms in place.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. October 1st marked the first day of Fiscal Year 2024 in Washington DC, and with it, DC’s Cashless Ban finally goes into effect, per Axios. Now, district residents will be able to report businesses that do not accept cash and/or those who post signage saying they will not accept cash. If any listeners out there are based in Washington and wish to report any such businesses, feel free to submit them to me at francesco.desantis@csrl.org. And remember, if you see something, say something.

    2. Democracy Now! reports that Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has gone on record saying she plans to restore Net Neutrality rules – which would “bar internet providers from blocking access or throttling customers’ connections based on how much they pay or which websites they visit” – which were repealed under the Trump administration. This follows Democrats finally taking majority control of the commission. Common Cause remarked, “To allow a handful of monopoly-aspiring gate-keepers to control access to the internet is a direct threat to our democracy.”

    3. Brazilian President Lula has issued a statement in support of the United Auto Workers strike. Lula, who himself worked as a union organizer at the Brazilian automobile manufacturing facilities of auto giants like Ford, Volkwagon, and Toyota, made this statement after meeting with President Biden and seeing him take to the picketline in support of the striking workers. Lula added “It is crucial that presidents all around the world show concern for labor.” More about Lula’s history with automobile labor unions is available at the Multinational Monitor.

    4. Despite concerns raised by high-ranking Democrats in Congress, the Biden administration has approved Israel’s entry into the visa waiver program, meaning Israelis can now visit the US for up to 90 days without a visa, and Americans can do the same. However, the Middle East Eye reports that Arab-American Nondiscrimination Committee plans to challenge this decision in court, as Israel may not meet the legal criteria for the program due to their discrimination against Palestinian Americans. Huwaida Arraf, a lawyer representing the ADC, added “This is all so unnecessary, all the US government had to do was maintain the standard it has with every other country in the Visa Waiver Programme. This lawsuit could have been avoided, but the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department resurrected the debunked notion that separate is somehow equal. As these plaintiffs show, that notion is a farce.”

    5. The Sacramento Bee reports California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed two major pro-labor bills that emerged late in this session of the state legislature. One would have granted unemployment insurance to striking workers, a push which emerged in the face of the extended entertainment industry strikes. The other would have brought domestic workers under “the umbrella of OSHA protections.” These vetoes were handed down along with Newsom’s decision to appoint LaPhonza Butler, head of EMILY’s List and a Maryland resident, to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein’s passing.

    6. On October 1st, The State Department issued a statement decrying “Anti-Democratic Actions in Guatemala,” directed at President-elect Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla Party. The statement expresses that “The United States is gravely concerned with continued efforts to undermine Guatemala’s peaceful transition of power…Most recently, the Guatemalan Public Ministry seiz[ing] electoral materials under the custody of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal,” and goes on to add that “The United States…[is] actively taking steps to impose visa restrictions on individuals who continue to undermine Guatemala’s democracy, including current and former members of Congress, judicial actors, and any others engaging in such behavior…The Guatemalan people have spoken. Their voice must be respected.”

    7. PBS reports that during a recent meeting between American officials and Mexican President AMLO, the latter levied scathing criticisms of US foreign policy, including the mammoth aid packages for Ukraine and economic sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and other Latin American nations. President López Obrador said the United States “should spend some of the money sent to Ukraine on economic development in Latin America…[and]…called for a U.S. program “to remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries, an integrated plan for cooperation so the Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans wouldn’t be forced to emigrate.”

    8. The Japan Times reports that “The Japanese government plans to seek a court order to disband the Unification Church…after a monthslong probe into the religious group over allegations of soliciting financially ruinous donations from members and other questionable practices.” The report goes on to say “Scrutiny of the group intensified after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot during an election campaign speech last year over his perceived links to the entity, an incident which also brought to light its connections with many ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers.”

    9. Finally, Disney World is being hit with a substantial tort lawsuit. A woman visiting the park for her 30th birthday suffered “serious ‘gynecologic injuries’” while on the “Humunga Kowabunga” ride. I will spare listeners the grisly details, but suffice it to say she experienced “severe and permanent bodily injury,” which required surgery, per Law & Crime. Yet, in typical fashion of corporate media reportage on tortious injury, this story is being presented primarily as nothing more than a “wedgie,” just as the McDonald’s lawsuit was reported as merely being about hot coffee. A deep dive into that case is available at the Tort Museum website. 



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  • Proxy Wars/ America Run Amok

    Ralph welcomes award-winning foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer to discuss America’s bloody history of proxy wars. They’ll also discuss the mainstream media’s “shameful” coverage of the war in Ukraine, the warhawks on Capitol Hill, and the catastrophic trickle-down effects of American military meddling.

    Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Mr. Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. After leaving the Times in 2005, Mr. Kinzer taught journalism, political science, and international relations at Northwestern University and Boston University. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

    We attacked Libya in complete violation of international law, but in accordance with the system that we have used as a substitute for international law. And that’s what we call the “rules-based international order.” That’s our alternative to international law. And the rules-based international order is great for us because we’re the ones that make the rules. We decide everything. We decide who’s making war, who’s not making war, who’s good, who’s bad, who needs to be punished, who doesn’t need to be punished. Under international law, we can’t do that because countries are treated more equally. So I think this is the real way we have turned away from both international law and our own domestic law—we’ve said that they’re all superseded by the rules-based international order, which is a nice way of saying everybody has to do what the United States decides.

    Stephen Kinzer

    A mantra in Congress is “Israel has a right to defend itself.” But no one ever says in Congress “the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves,” and they take casualty counts anywhere from 40 to 100 times greater in terms of innocent civilians, killed or injured. The Iranians apparently have no right to defend themselves… What is this inverted sense that these countries that are legitimately threatened, that have been overthrown… What’s this mindset in official Washington that nobody threatened by the US or Israel has a right to defend themselves?

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. On Monday, the Writers’ Guild of America announced that they have reached an interim agreement with the studios. The proposed deal includes minimum writing room sizes, pay increases, a ban on writing by generative AI programs, and disclosures of streaming numbers with residuals to match, to name just a few of the top line wins for the union. The agreement still needs to be formally submitted to the Guild membership for ratification, but this marks the end of the second longest strike in the WGA’s history.

    2. AP reports that earlier this week, President Biden joined the United Autoworkers on the picket line. This is the first time ever a sitting president has joined a picket line. “Donning a union ballcap and exchanging fist bumps, Biden told United Auto Workers strikers that ‘you deserve the significant raise you need’” and urged the workers to “stick with it.” Biden made this move in part because former President Donald Trump also addressed autoworkers in a speech this week, though he did so at a non-union plant away from the picket line. UAW president Shawn Fain deemed Trump’s address to non-union workers “pathetic irony,” per FOX 2 Detroit.

    3. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is facing a mammoth corruption scandal involving fraudulent halal meat from Egypt and $100,000 worth of gold bars. Per the BBC, Menendez has been forced to resign his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Yet, the powerful New Jersey Senator has not resigned his seat, even as a growing chorus of top Democrats have called on him to do so – including New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, and many more. One possible upside to all of this is that Menendez’s departure from his post on the Foreign Relations Committee could pave the way for a more rational American policy towards Cuba.

    4. In more Cuba news, NBC reports that on September 24th, the Cuban embassy in Washington was attacked. The assailant hurled two molotov cocktails at the diplomatic mission; fortunately, the diplomatic staff were unharmed. No arrests have been made. This follows a 2020 attack, when a man shot “nearly three dozen rounds” at the embassy from an AK-47.

    5. CNN reports that the FTC and the attorneys general of 17 states have filed a lawsuit against Amazon,   alleging that “Amazon unfairly promotes its own platform and services at the expense of third-party sellers who rely on the company’s e-commerce marketplace for distribution.” Specific examples of the e-commerce giant’s anticompetitive practices include “requiring sellers on its platform to purchase Amazon’s in-house logistics services in order to secure the best seller benefits, [and forcing] sellers to list their products on Amazon at the lowest prices anywhere on the web, instead of allowing sellers to offer their products at competing marketplaces for a lower price.” Hopefully, this reinvigorated consumer protection regime will serve as a deterrent to other would-be corporate criminals.

    6. Kyodo News reports Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki recently addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, and used the opportunity to rail against the proposed US military base in the Japanese-controlled territory. Tamaki noted that the base “was clearly opposed by Okinawan voters in a democratically held referendum” and that the installation of the base would threaten regional peace. Okinawa already hosts most of the American military presence in Japan.

    7. Variety reports that Anil Kapoor, an A-list actor in India, has won his legal battle against AI. The court “granted an order…acknowledging [Kapoor’s] personality rights and restraining all offenders from misusing his personality attributes without his permission in any manner…across all modes and media worldwide.” Kapoor also noted that “My intention is not to interfere with anyone’s freedom of expression or to penalize anyone. My intent was to seek protection of my personality rights and prevent any misuse for commercial gains, particularly in the current scenario with rapid changes in technology and tools like artificial intelligence.”

    8. Finally, the Orchard reports that On September 22nd, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed the Canadian House of Commons. In attendance was Yaroslav Hunka, a 98 year-old veteran who, according to the CBC “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians during the Second World War.” Students of history quickly put two and two together, deducing that this “veteran” was in fact a soldier in the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS, otherwise known as the Galician Division. Prime Minister Trudeau also held a private audience with this Nazi. Uproar in Canada proved so great that the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, Anthony Rota, was forced to resign, per the CBC. Furthermore, Polish officials have now formally requested that Hunka be extradited to Poland to face charges for atrocities committed by the Galician SS Division during WWII.



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  • Ralph Nader: GOP Debate Was “Pretty Embarrassing”

    Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader responds to Wednesday’s second Republican debate, saying, “It’s pretty embarrassing that this is what they put forward to become the president of the most powerful country in the world.” Nader discusses the debate’s topics of social media, former President Donald Trump and wealth inequality in America. Nader also calls for the Democratic Party to “stop…

    Source

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  • The Procrastination Equation

    Mark Twain once said, “Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.” As an antidote to that Ralph welcomes Professor Piers Steel, author of “The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.” Plus, Ralph urges listeners to sign up for The Capitol Hill Citizen Association, another way to organize citizens to put pressure on the branch of our government where things must get done, the United States Congress.  

    Dr. Piers Steel is one of the world’s leading researchers and speakers on the science of motivation and procrastination. Dr. Steel is a professor in the Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources area at the University of Calgary, and is the Brookfield Research Chair at the Haskayne School of Business. He is the author of The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.

    The root of procrastination is impulsiveness. Impulsiveness is valuing the now more than the later… We’re designed to value the now. And this was really adaptive for a long time. It’s not a bad trait. It’s just that we’ve designed a world to take advantage of every little flaw that we have in our decision-making system.

    Dr. Piers Steel

    You have to deal with yourself as an imperfect, flawed creature and deal with the reality of that. We’re not robotic angels of perfection. We have limitations. And when I actually act within my limitations, I get stuff done.

    Dr. Piers Steel

    We’re superstars of self-control in the animal kingdom. We’re able to hunt and kill most anything because we’re willing to actually put in the delay of gratification. That’s really what makes us great. But we’re still not ready for things that are happening even a year off, much less five or ten.

    Dr. Piers Steel

    More people will listen to what we just said about becoming part of the Capitol Hill Citizen Association and say to themselves, “I’m going to get around to doing that,” than the actual number of people who do it in a prompt period of time. So it would be very good to listen to Professor Steel’s suggestions and read his book, because we cannot afford procrastinatory citizens. We have a procrastinatory Congress, and the citizens have got to get them to anticipate, to foresee, to forestall so many of the omnicidal urgencies that are coming at our country and other countries around the world.

    Ralph Nader

    To become a member of the Capitol Hill Citizen Association, click here.

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. On August 28th, 20 groups – ranging from Left-wing anti-war organizations like Veterans for Peace to Right-leaning government transparency groups like R Street Institute – sent a letter to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees demanding they maintain Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Cost of War amendment in the final National Defense Authorization Act. This provision “requires public disclosure about the cost of the U.S.’ overseas military footprint and gives the American people greater transparency on military spending.” Hopefully, the left-right consensus on this issue is enough to maintain this amendment.

    2. In other Pentagon news, the Intercept reports that Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, has introduced an amendment demanding the Pentagon “collect information on trainees who overthrow their governments,” following the recent spate of coups in Africa. Gaetz told the Intercept “The Department of Defense, up until this point, has not kept data regarding the people they train who participate in coups to overthrow democratically elected — or any — governments.” This could become a flashpoint as Congress prepares to consider the 2024 NDAA when it returns from recess in September.

    3. As expected, tensions are running high in Guatemala following the upset victory of anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arevalo. Opponents of Arevalo had urged the country’s electoral tribunal to suspend his Semilla party on dubious legal grounds, which the tribunal resisted hewing to the letter of the law which dictated such actions could not be taken during the electoral process. After the election however, the party was officially suspended. Now, Reuters reports that suspension has been revoked, following a mass mobilization of Arevalo supporters in Guatemala City. It seems unlikely however that Arevalo’s political opponents will accept his victory without a fight.

    4. In a dangerous, anti-free speech move, the Attorney General of Georgia has filed RICO indictments against 42 individuals involved with the Stop Cop City protest movement, the Atlanta Community Press Collective reports. This is the latest in a long line of attempts to quash opposition to the project, which has so far included trumped up domestic terrorism charges and arrests for handing out flyers.  

    5. Bloomberg reports that President Biden and Brazilian President Lula will jointly call for new worker protections at the upcoming General Assembly of the United Nations. While the article notes the two leaders have been “at odds” over China and Russia, they align on the topic of labor unionization. The two presidents have found common ground before, such as on the issue of climate change.

    6. Visual Effects workers at Disney have filed for unionization, per the Hollywood Reporter. Approximately 80% of VFX staff have already signed union cards, demanding an NLRB election and representation by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees or IATSE. This comes on the heels of a similar announcement by VFX workers at Marvel, a Disney subsidiary. In recent years. studios have increasingly relied on VFX workers in a rather blatant attempt to cut costs, as VFX workers have generally been non-union.

    7. At long last, the Department of Health and Human Services has announced the first ten drugs that will be subject to Mecicare negotiations to bring down prices. These are: Eliquis, Jardiance, Xarelto, Januvia Farxiga, Entresto, Enbrel, Imbruvica, Stelara and – crucially – several brands of insulin. HHS noted that “These selected drugs accounted for $50.5 billion in total [Medicare] Part D gross covered prescription drug costs, or about 20%, of total Part D gross between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2023.”

    8. The Washington Post reports Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su has proposed new overtime rules intended to “extend overtime pay to an additional 3.6 million salaried white-collar workers in the United States.” According to current rules, workers are exempt from overtime if they make over $35,568 per year; the new rules would extend to workers making under $55,000 annually. If implemented, this would mean a whole new class of workers would be eligible for time-and-a-half pay if they work more than 40 hours per week.

    9. Per Republic Report: “The U.S. Department of Education announced…that it is cancelling $72 million in student loan obligations for more than 2,300 former students who attended for-profit Ashford University between 2009 and 2020.” Yet, even now the shady operators behind Ashford may still be able to squeeze money out of the taxpayers via a convoluted buyout by the University of Arizona Global Campus. Still, this marks a significant victory in a legal battle that has raged for over a decade, with Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa calling Ashford a “complete scam” all the way back in 2011.

    10. Finally, in more debt related news, the Philadelphia Inquirer has published a piece detailing how the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt was able to purchase – and forgive – over $1.6 million in medical debt. As the piece explains “When hospitals or physician groups have delinquent debts they have little chance of collecting on, they’ll typically go to what’s called the secondary market and sell their portfolios for pennies on the dollar.” It was on this secondary market that RIP Medical Debt was able to buy $1.6 million worth of debt for just $17,000. In celebration, “30 proud, self-described gutter-pagan, mostly queer dirtbags in their early 30s,” gathered for a ritual burning of an oversized medical bill. Someone chanted “debt is hell” and the crowd responded “let it burn.”



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  • Join or Die

    Ralph welcomes civic activist, writer and filmmaker, Pete Davis, to discuss “Join or Die,” a film about why you should join a club—and why the fate of America depends on it. Then Professor Scott Sklar, an expert on sustainable infrastructure joins us to talk about one of the easiest ways we can reduce our energy consumption and slow down the pace of our overheating planet: white roofs. Plus, Ralph has some choice words about the media’s coverage of the Republican presidential campaign and also how we don’t truly celebrate Labor Day. And speaking of labor, Steve gives us an update on the Writers’ and Actors’ strike.

    Pete Davis is a writer and civic advocate. He is the author of Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing, co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network— a policy organization focused on raising up ideas that deepen democracy— and co-director—with Rebecca Davis— of the film Join or Die.

    43% of Americans are part of zero organizations, and another 20% are only part of one organization. So we’re talking about two-thirds of the country that are not part of anything. So they don’t know how to run a meeting. They don’t know how to do an invitation. They don’t know how to deal with tension between neighbors. They don’t know how to plan something together in public.

    Pete Davis

    The real basic, atomic-level skills that eventually flourish into hardcore political action often start with softer civic organizing.

    Pete Davis

    Scott Sklar is Energy Director of George Washington University’s Environment & Energy Management Institute and Director of GW’s Solar Institute. Mr. Sklar is an expert on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable infrastructure, and runs The Stella Group, Ltd., a clean energy technology optimization and strategic policy firm.

    White [roofing] is preferable, but even the lightest gray or lightest brown reflects out. We need building codes to do this, we need community activists to do this, we need to train roofers and builders to do this, and we need to create a sort of social compact that [recognizes] this is very easy to do. And so with this and things like tree canopy we can reduce the heat on the ground, which will save lives, make people healthier, and use less energy.

    Scott Sklar

    The obvious 800-lb gorilla in the room is the contradiction, where corporations in energy arenas make more money selling waste (by the overuse of energy) and consumers save money by the efficient use of energy. So there’s a dead-on conflict between the two interests, and guess who has the most power in the country over government and media. So what Scott is saying is, the more you realize what you personally can save—quite apart from what your community and world can save— the more powerful you have to become.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. Capping off a campaign defined by underhanded tricks and legal brute force by the corrupt right-wing establishment, Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo triumphed on Sunday – winning the presidential election in a landslide, with nearly 60% of the vote. However, even with this victory in hand, the road ahead remains perilous. As renowned investigative journalist Allan Nairn noted just before the election, “Arévalo…won’t be due to be sworn in until January 14, 2024, and…members [of the corrupt ruling clique known as El Pacto] have made it clear that they will do what’s needed to prevent that.”

    2. Ecuador also held elections on Sunday, including the first round of their presidential contest. Moving to the runoff are Luisa Gonzalez, a left-wing leader backed by Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa and Daniel Noboa, a businessman and scion of a powerful family of banana tycoons, per AP. Yet, looming larger than either candidate is the specter of political violence directed at the left. Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated earlier this month, as was a local leftist politician, and a third survived an attempt on his life. One can only hope for a runoff free of bloodshed.

    3. In that same election, the Guardian reports Ecuadorans passed a referendum to “halt the development of all new oilwells in the Yasuní national park in the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.” The article goes on to state “In a second referendum, citizens in Quito also voted to block gold mining in the Chocó Andino, a sensitive highland biosphere near the capital city.”

    4. The Hollywood Reporter has a new story out concerning a federal court ruling that art created by AI is not eligible for copyright protection. This tremendous victory for creative workers puts up a major roadblock for Hollywood studios who have been unsubtly hinting that they will use AI-generated work to bypass writers, actors, and more. Hopefully, this ruling will convince the studios to return to the negotiating table and hammer out a fair deal to end the entertainment industry strikes.

    5. A report in The Intercept traces how Norfolk Southern successfully lobbied to weaken a rail regulation bill following the East Palestine disaster. As the author put it in a tweet: “April: Norfolk Southern sends lobbyists to Congress. May: A committee that lobbyists met with weakens the bipartisan rail safety bill. June + July: Norfolk Southern gives thousands to Republican members on that exact committee. Welcome to Washington!”

    6. From Truthout: In 2021, activists in New Jersey spearheaded a push to ban ICE contracts with private prisons – and got a bill signed into law. Yet, now the Biden administration is backing a challenge to this law led by private prison megacorporation CoreCivic. Back in 2021, Biden stated unequivocally “There should be no private prisons, period, none, period…They should not exist. And we are working to close all of them.” Another promise broken.

    7. Elon Musk has 153 million followers on Twitter – or as he has redubbed it, X – yet, how many of those are real? Mashable’s Matt Binder examined the data and found some startling results. “[over] 42% of Musk’s followers have 0 followers on their own account, [more than] 72% have less than 10 followers, [and over] 40 percent of Musk’s followers have 0 posts.” While some of these accounts could simply be inactive, this data suggests many of these accounts are bots being used to artificially inflate Musk’s follower count.

    8. The Daily Beast reports that Van Jones, the former activist and CNN commentator, has been forced out of his leadership role at the nonprofit Dream.org, two years after the group received a $100 million donation from Jeff Bezos. A subsidiary of Dream.org, Green For All, also received a three year, $10 million grant in 2020. The article quotes “several ex-employees” who allege “The group tore through that money with little to show for it.” This story shines a light on corruption in activist spaces and gives a window into the non-profit industrial complex run amok.

    9. Last year, San Francisco voters ousted progressive, reform prosecutor Chesa Boudin, in a recall brought after sustained attacks by conservatives and establishment liberals. Boudin was replaced by more traditional, ‘tough on crime’ prosecutor Brooke Jenkins. Yet, a year on and MSNBC reports that violent crime has actually increased in the Golden City compared to Boudin’s tenure. While this will come as a surprise to some, it is arguably more shocking that anyone could think going back to the old, failed model of law enforcement would yield new results. That is after all the very definition of insanity.

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  • The False Promise of Small Nuclear Reactors

    Ralph is joined by M.V. Ramana, professor at the “School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia,” to lay out the false promise of small nuclear reactors, which still carry the risk of accidents, still produce waste, still produce plutonium for the weapons industry and are still economically noncompetitive with wind and solar. Plus, in an interview recorded before the tragic wildfires in Maui we welcome back citizen activist and organizer, Paul Deslauriers, to break down how his progressive group was able to take over the governance of Maui County and how with a little “Common Sense” you can do the same.

    M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. Professor Ramana is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India, and is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

    It seems inconceivable to me that anybody who has any sense of history would think about nuclear power— either the fission version or the hypothetical future nuclear fusion version— as an environmentally sustainable source of electricity.

    Professor MV Ramana

    What we are lacking in climate change today—simply because we’ve been so late in trying to act on it—is the urgency. The IPCC puts out report after report saying how high emissions are, how rapidly it has to be decreased if we have even a fighting chance of meeting a 1.5℃ target. And by putting off this kind of action, those calls are becoming more and more desperate. And I think that desperation is probably what’s driving some of these groups to say, “Well, you know, let’s make friends with everybody, and so on, and so forth.” But the challenge there is that every dollar we spend on nuclear power is a dollar that’s not spent on renewables, on energy efficiency, on other ways of trying to deal with [the climate crisis.]

    Professor MV Ramana

    As I’ve said on prior programs— nuclear power today is unneeded, unsafe, uninsurable, uncompetitive, irresponsible, very secretive, and not willing to suffer the verdicts of the marketplace.

    Ralph Nader

    Paul Deslauriers is a grassroots organizer, who has consulted over two hundred organizations involving mergers, restructuring, work process flows, teamwork, management coaching, and asset management. The work involved diverse groups such as the Alaskan Inuit, Icelandic communities. In 2002 Mr. Deslauriers became a full-time activist, coordinating nearly three hundred grassroots groups focused on government system change. He has written a number of guidebooks on organizing including Seven Steps to Reclaim Democracy: An Empowering Guide For Systemic Change, Reclaim Paradise: RESET for the Common Good, and Common Sense: How we are Reclaiming Democracy and Resetting for the Common Good.

    When you have a core team that is really dedicated in trying to bring about systemic change, and you have the foundation that you need, then you can really develop and grow this without a lot of divisiveness.

    Paul Deslauriers

    When you have volunteers, you have to have the right motivation, the right structure, the right training so that you can work cohesively and collaboratively together. And that’s so crucial for anyone who wants to start a similar group.

    Paul Deslauriers



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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nader: Jack Smith Must Add Charge of Inciting Insurrection to Trump Indictment

    Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate, discusses “serial law violator” Donald Trump’s criminal indictments, particularly the second federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith that accuses Trump of conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and of inciting the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Digital Addictions

    Ralph welcomes Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and an expert on culture and therapy, mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics to talk about our addictions to screens and how to break out of them. Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, opens the program with everything you need to know about the latest Trump indictment.

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

    I think it’s important for the audience to recognize that 100% of the incriminating evidence was supplied by Trump appointees or supporters. No Democrat made a cameo appearance. There was no incriminating evidence from any opponent of Donald Trump. It’s all his own people. And therefore, when you think about the indictment, the idea that it’s a witch hunt by Trump’s political enemies is facially lunatic.

    Bruce Fein

    These expressions by Trump were not good-faith belief that there may have been a few blunders someplace or other. And [they demonstrate] that the whole goal was to defraud the American people out of the right to have a peaceful transition of power based upon a free and fair count of the electoral votes.

    Bruce Fein

    Sherry Turkle is Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Professor Turkle is a sociologist, a licensed clinical psychologist, and she is an expert on culture and therapy, mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics. She is the author of several books, including Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir.

    That’s really what you’re fighting— this ethos that says, “When technology makes a problem, technology will solve that problem. In a friction-free manner. It will not involve changing capitalism, changing the structures of power, or saying that science and engineering need to be dethroned as the moral and cultural arbiters for the society we live in.” So, I think that the resistance movement has to come from politics and really has to come from political organization.

    Sherry Turkle

    [If I were king in this domain,] you absolutely have legislation that treats generative AI as though it were nuclear energy. In other words, do not say, “Well, there’s kind of an analogy. Maybe there’s an analogy because it’s very powerful.” But to really say, “This is going to disrupt us, it’s a national security threat, and it’s certainly a threat to our elections…” So, it can wreak havoc— unless you’re extremely vigilant and the thing is controlled— with every aspect of our democracy.

    Sherry Turkle

    There’s always a big-time gap between the damage of new technology and accountability catching up with it, or public awareness.

    Ralph Nader

    Hi everybody, Steve Skrovan here. This is halfway between a shameless plug and some useful information. As some of you may know, I have my own Substack page called Bits & Pieces. It’s mainly funny stories and essays. I wanted to alert you specifically to the last piece I wrote concerning the Writers’ Guild Strike. It’s funny but also packed with a lot of information for those of you who are interested. Some of you may think writers and actors striking is not a big deal, but our strike is emblematic of what is going on across many industries where the corporations are trying to turn us all into gig workers. On the RNRH, we have talked a lot about AI for instance, especially on the program you just heard. The writers and the actors have a chance to be the first entities to address regulating AI in a meaningful way. We are on the cutting edge of what people are calling the Hot Labor Summer. So, check it out at steveskrovan.substack.com. That’s s-t-e-v-e-s-k-r-o-v-a-n dot substack dot com. We’ll link to it on the RNRH page also. Feel free to subscribe. It’s free! Thanks.

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Bobby Scott announced that they have introduced a new bill to raise the minimum wage. To account for the rising cost of living, this new bill would raise the wage not to $15 per hour, but $17. Sanders and Scott note that “If the minimum wage had increased with productivity over the last 50 years, it would be $23 an hour today. If it had increased at the same rate that Wall Street…bonuses have increased, it would be more than $42 an hour.”

    2. USA Today reports that the Houston Independent School District in Texas has decided to “eliminate 28 school libraries,” and use at least some of those spaces as “discipline centers.”  This article further notes that “The Houston Independent School District is the largest district in Texas and serves more than 189,000 students at its 274 campuses…[and that] The once- independent district was recently taken over by the Texas Education Agency.”

    3. The Intercept reports that, amid the strikes roiling Hollywood, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has introduced the Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023. This bill would “repeal a restriction on striking workers receiving SNAP benefits, protect food stamp eligibility for public-sector workers fired for striking, and clarify that any income-eligible household can receive SNAP benefits even if a member of that household is on strike.” This bill would provide a crucial lifeline to striking workers, particularly as the Hollywood bosses have made clear that they are willing to see workers lose their homes before coming back to the negotiating table.

    4. A new report in Reuters alleges that employees at Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors “had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service.” The company even went so far as to create a “Diversion Team” with orders to “cancel as many range-related [service] appointments as possible,” in order to stifle consumer complaints that the automobiles range on a single charge was far below advertised. According to the report “some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks.”

    5. Bloomberg reports that the Abraham Accords –  Trump’s middle east peace plan which rested on inducing Arab states to recognize Israel by offering them money, weapons, or whatever else they desired – seem to be coming apart at the seams. The numbers are stark. While the agreements never enjoyed majority support in any Arab state, support has declined considerably – from 47% initially in the UAE, to just 27%, from 45% to 20% in Bahrain, and 40% to 20% in Saudi Arabia. This last drop is most significant, as the underlying purpose of the agreements were to align Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran. The Saudis now plan to extract further concessions from the United States.

    6. Listeners may recall a story from North Carolina about Tricia Cotham, a Democratic state legislator from a safe blue seat who switched parties, giving Republicans a super-majority in the state House – and cast the deciding vote to override the Democratic Governor’s veto and impose a 12-week abortion ban. Now, a New York Times report sheds light on why she made the switch: “Lacey Williams, a former advocacy director at the Charlotte-based Latin American Coalition who considered Ms. Cotham a friend for years, said Ms. Cotham “felt she did not get the gratitude or spotlight that she felt she deserved,” and added, “she was jealous that other Democrats were getting…adulation from the party.” This report also suggests that she was working hand-in-glove with Republican leadership prior to her election, suggesting that perhaps this was her plan all along.

    7. In Julian Assange’s native Australia, political officials are calling on the U.S. to drop their efforts to extradite the publisher to the United States to stand trial under the espionage act. These officials include Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Democracy Now! reports that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has rejected this demand, claiming that the WikiLeaks disclosures “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk.” Australian lawmaker Andrew Wilkie,  co-chair of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, called this “patent nonsense,” and told The Guardian, “Mr. Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the U.S. and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone.”

    8. Finally, former President Donald Trump has been indicted for the third time, this time on four counts related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. Yet, what is most striking about this indictment is that Trump is being charged under the Enforcement Act of 1870, originally intended to prevent Ku Klux Klan terror to deprive Black voters of their 13th, 14th and 15th amendment rights. Section 241 of this law deems criminal any attempt to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” exercising a right protected by the Constitution or federal law,” per the Washington Post. Charging Trump under the Klan act may seem a bit on the nose, but hey, if the hood fits.



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Wonder Drug

    Ralph spends the whole hour with Jennifer Vanderbes, author of “Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims.” Thalidomide was never “commercially available” in the U.S., but American doctors handed out samples to patients even though no one could prove the drug was safe. Or could definitively say what the drug did. And by the time thalidomide landed at the FDA for approval, whistleblowers, journalists, doctors, and patients in Germany, Australia, and the UK were sounding the alarm about its shocking side effects.

    Jennifer Vanderbes is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. Her latest book is Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims.

    It did not shock me researching this story that the pharmaceutical firms operated with a focus on profit, and that allowed for cutting corners. What really did shock me in my research was realizing that the doctors uniformly gaslit these patients. And it was stunning to me that you didn’t have any of these physicians who had given the drug to pregnant women who realized.

    Jennifer Vanderbes

    I was very surprised to be looking through materials that were so at odds with what had been reported. And in many ways this became, to me, a story about what can happen when the media accepts at face value a certain spin on the story. The FDA was very dependent initially on what the drug firms were telling it, and then the press was depending on what the FDA was telling it, and then everybody sort of moved on. It was also a happy story that people wanted to believe: “we were the one wonderful country that had stopped this drug.“

    Jennifer Vanderbes

    Their number one tactic is to just not even argue the merits of [thalidomide cases], but get them dismissed on the basis that, “All these people should have known.” And I would say six years of my life—and this book— is really an examination of how incredibly reasonable and understandable it is that these individuals did not know. They were not given the information, and the government was quite complicit.

    Jennifer Vanderbes

    The best investigative reporters in America didn’t uncover this story, until [Jennifer Vanderbes] put it together in a book. Because it took unbelievable energy, curiosity, travel, interviewing the survivors, going to their homes, and the most recent development— which was really incredible that it didn’t get national TV and radio coverage— was the gathering, for the first time, of thalidomide victims in San Diego.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. On July 25th, The Teamsters reported that UPS caved to their demands, narrowly avoiding a massive strike. The wins in the new contract include higher wages, more jobs, ending the two-tier wage system, air conditioning in UPS trucks, part-time Rewards, and drivers getting Martin Luther King Day off. The union has triumphantly declared “We’ve Changed the Game” If these negotiations had fallen through, 340,000 UPS Teamsters would have gone on strike. Other employers, such as the Hollywood AMPTP, should take notes.

    2. The Intercept reports that the Sanders-led Senate HELP Committee has passed an amendment to the  Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act allocating $3 million to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to explore new options to pay for developing pharmaceuticals, specifically through public funding or “innovation prizes.” These drugs would then enter the public domain so they could be sold as generic medications. Sanders has made the cost of prescription drugs a high priority during his chairmanship on the committee, and hopefully this effort will bear fruit.

    3. Following months of protest, CNN reports that Israel has rammed through their controversial judicial reform legislation. This law will limit the independence of the Israeli judiciary, which has been a bulwark against the most extreme Right-wing factions in the country. This measure has sparked a new round of scrutiny regarding the $3.8 billion in military aid the US provides to Israel annually.

    4. Progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has requested $15 million for a plan to help decarbonize 200 to 350 homes by modernizing heating and insulation for low-income Chicagoans, Gregory Pratt of the Tribune reports. One hopes to see more progressives pushing for these localized and tailored climate change plans.

    5. Anchor Brewing, a San Francisco institution, has been on a roller-coaster for several years. The workers organized the plant, then it was sold to Sapporo, and now Sapporo is attempting to sell the company for parts. In response, the union is attempting to raise funds to purchase Anchor Brewing and run it as a worker-owned cooperative. More information is available at Vinepair.com.

    6. In other alcohol related news, the American Prospect reports that Total Wine, the company founded by Rep. David Trone of Maryland – who is currently seeking the open Senate seat in that state – is fighting an FTC antitrust investigation. The agency is investigating the chain for “price discrimination and exclusive dealing arrangements in alcohol markets as part of a broader crackdown that’s also charging Pepsi and Coke for similar anti-competitive conduct.” Total Wine has reportedly sought to impede this investigation at every turn, and have succeeded in slowing it down even as the Biden administration seeks to crack down on anti-competitive behavior. It remains to be seen whether this will become an issue in the Senate campaign.

    7. Following Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s boycott of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress, Jewish Insider reports that  AIPAC – among the most powerful Washington lobbies – is pushing for Westchester County executive George Latimer to run a primary challenge against Bowman. Historically, AIPAC has been instrumental in keeping progressive voices, and their criticism of Israel, out of the halls of Congress.

    8. The German news service DW reports that Ukraine has imposed a “ban on Russian-language culture…such as books, music, plays and concerts.” Whatever one’s opinions are on the war in Ukraine, this ban approaches dangerous territory of limiting expression for minority groups in the country and could presage more militarized crackdowns on the Russian minority in Ukraine similar to Japanese-Americans during WWII. All parties must come to the table to negotiate an immediate ceasefire and engage in high-level diplomacy; only that can prevent this war spinning into graver and graver circumstances.

    9. Finally, on July 20th a super-majority of workers at Grindr, the LGBTQ dating app, voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, per Kim Kelly. This came as a response, in part, to revelations showing Grindr’s new CEO had previously voiced support for anti-LGBTQ politicians on Twitter and via political donations. Bring on “Hot Labor Summer.”



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Humanity Forsaken

    I have written ad nauseam about experts’ predictions of one form or another of Doomsday later this century, less than three generations away.1 I have made appeals for super rich people whose wealth was not ill-begotten to fund my comprehensive strategy to end war and human misery while emphasizing that I had no financial interest and would play the role of a non-paid consultant in the background. This brief article shares with readers the deafening and deadening silence that met me.

    Spurned by the Super Rich

    I got the idea to beg the super-rich from Ralph Nader’s book promoting that very supplication.2 Well, Mr. Nader, we were both hoodwinked!

    Warren Buffett: I mailed one of my books and a plea for funding to this investor. No reply.

    Bill Gates: Ditto for this internet whiz.

    Elon Musk. Ditto for this creative genius.

    Patriotic Millionaires. Ditto for this group who would probably not know the true definition of patriotism if it walked into their office: “My country, please do right and no wrong.”

    Spurned by “No Good Organizations”

    I once wrote an article describing my THOROUGH research of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs for short. I concluded that they existed to get “hush money” from our government members of the corrupt corpocracy.3

    Apparently because of my wishful thinking and despite the damming evidence from my own research, this last April 1 I contacted three NGOs I had hoped would join in a consortium to replace the corpocracy with a true democracy:

    Code Pink, World Beyond War (WBR), and USS Liberty Veterans

    Here are excerpts from my proposal:

    A PROPOSAL FOR LAUNCHING THE U.S. DEMOCRACY CORPS AND ITS LEGIONNAIRES

    WHY?

    • TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM DOOMSDAY!

    • THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS WARNING US!

    • THE POWER ELITE OF AMERICA’S CORPOCRACY ARE LEADING HUMANITY TO DOOMSDAY LATER THIS CENTURY IF NOT SOONER.

    WHAT?

    • THE USDC AND ITS LEGIONNAIRES WOULD BE A VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION.

    • THERE WOULD BE A CHAIRPERSON, A STEERING COUNCIL, A STRATEGIC PLAN WITH A BUDGET, AND RECRUITED MEMBERS DRAWN FROM AT LEAST 17 SEGMENTS OF AMERICA’S DISSIDENTS AND FROM EXISTING NGO’S DEDICATED TO ENDING WAR AND POVERTY.

    HOW?

    • BY PEACEFULLY REMOVING THE MANY “PROPS” THE POWER ELITE RELY ON TO KEEP AND STRENGTHEN THEIR POWER.

    YOU?

    • ARE YOU READY TO START?

    • IF SO, PLEASE DO SO!

    REFERENCE

    • ACHILLES HEEL OF PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1

    BY GARY BRUMBACK, KDP, JUNE 25, 2021

    My 1st e-mail to you was on April Fools’ Day, strictly a coincidence. My proposal is deadly serious about a deadly matter.

    Some examples of what one or more wealthy benefactors could do:

    • Buy out a small war contractor and turn swords into ploughshares.

    • Buy out or create for mainstream media a major newspaper, a TV network, etc. to give Americans the true history and current events.

    • Buy millions of WBW’s billboards and erect everywhere.

    • Buy and distribute millions of Code Pinks posters such as the brilliant “Arms are for hugging”).

    • Buy millions of positive, beneficial items from “smile. amazon.com that benefits USS Liberty Veterans organization.

    • Buy out the major sports organizations such as the NFL.

    • Fund and institute Contract for American Renewal to create and support a new, winnable and honest political party [see p 41 and 78 in my book, Achilles Heel of Public Enemy No. 1. KDP, June 25, 2021).

    These three organizations never even gave me the courtesy of a reply!

    In Closing

    Humanity will someday go to Hell. Unfortunately, only a minuscule portion will deserve to go there! And you know whom I mean!

    ENDNOTES

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Stop Ignoring The People!

    Ralph and our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, discuss how they compiled letters they sent to various government officials and representatives that have gone unanswered into a book titled “The Incommunicados” and how this unresponsiveness violates our First Amendment right to petition our government for redress of grievances. Then Washington Post opinion columnist, Helaine Olen, highlights the corporate equivalent, how hard it is to reach a human being for customer service and how all of this plays into the free-floating anger and general unrest of an American population that feels unheard.

    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.

    Today, I couldn’t have gotten through to members of the Senate or House on the auto safety issue. We couldn’t have gotten through for them to even consider (much less pass) the auto safety legislation that they did in 1966. Because I could get on the line and even if I couldn’t get a member, I could call and get the chief of staff or get the legislative director in order to have access. I could go down to Capitol Hill and get the hearings, get the media attention, and get the law to save millions of lives. So, this is serious. It isn’t just a matter of literary courtesy here.

    Ralph Nader

    What we have in the right to petition for the redress of grievances is an effort to prevent a repeat of the deaf ear that King George was turning to the grievances of the colonists. And the right to petition implies a corollary obligation to respond… That’s the heart of what democratic discourse is about. Part of what holding government officials accountable is about— requiring them to explain their decisions. They don’t have to agree with us, but they can’t just ignore us and treat us as though we’re not human beings.

    Bruce Fein

    Helaine Olen is an expert on money and society, and an award-winning columnist for the Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and many other publications, and she serves on the advisory board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She is co-author of The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated and the author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.

    This is part of why Americans are so angry. Is our lives as consumers. In the United States we often confuse our consumer lives with being a citizen. We think if the phone line isn’t working if the airline isn’t working, if we can’t get through to the doctor’s office, there’s something wrong with the state of the country. And every time one of these interactions deteriorates, there’s this sense of ‘things don’t work,’ which I think is pervasive in the United States… and I think it translates into this free-floating anger that then gets turned around and leveled at random people at the government, fill in the blank.”

    Helaine Olen

    There’s this dominant narrative out there right now that American consumers are becoming greedy and grasping and they’re abusing the help— which happens, I don’t want to say every consumer is a perfect citizen by a long shot— but I think it is partly a response to the fact that people are often treated very very badly. And there’s really no one to complain to that will actually do anything about this.

    Helaine Olen

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. The Screen Actors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, has joined the Writers Guild in going on strike following the collapse of negotiations with the studios. This new strike covers 160,000 actors and coming as it does amid the writers strike, will effectively shut down Hollywood production for the foreseeable future. In a widely shared video, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher decried the studios for “plead[ing] poverty…[while] giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs.”

    2. The Intercept reports that AOC has authored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring “the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department to declassify information related to the U.S. government’s role in the Chilean coup that brought dictator Augusto Pinochet to power.” Much of what the public knows about the Chilean coup came out through the legendary Church Committee hearings, and it is encouraging that someone in Congress is interested in taking up that mantle.

    3. In Florida, a joint investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald uncovered the disturbing reality underlying Governor DeSantis’ revamped Florida State Guard. While recruits were initially told they would be trained for a nonmilitary mission – to “help Floridians in times of need or disaster” – they were instead taught how to “rappel with ropes, navigate through the woods and respond to incidents under military command.” Major General John D. Haas, charged with overseeing the program, is quoted saying the State Guard is a “military organization” that will be used not just for emergencies but for “aiding law enforcement with riots and illegal immigration.”

    4. Longtime civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson has announced that he is retiring from his role as president of the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, per The Hill. He had led the group for over 50 years, even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017. President Biden said of Jackson, “I’ve seen him as history will remember him: a man of God and of the people; determined, strategic, and unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation.”

    5. Uruguay, the small South American nation sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, is experiencing its worst drought in 74 years. The situation has become so dire that authorities are mixing salt water into the public drinking water. Now, the Guardian reports that Uruguayans are protesting a planned Google data center that would consume two million gallons of water per day. In response to this crisis, a new group has cropped up – the Commission to Defend Water and Life, backed by the country’s trade unions – and their slogan has become ubiquitous: “This is not drought, it’s pillage.”

    6. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Progressive Caucus, got herself into trouble this week by calling Israel a “racist state,” in a speech to the progressive summit Netroots Nation, per CNN. While clumsily worded, Jayapal’s statement actually vastly understates the issue. According to mainstream groups like Amnesty International, Israel is in fact an “apartheid” state.

    7. More on Israel, the New York Times reports that “At least 180 senior fighter pilots, elite commandos and cyber-intelligence specialists in the Israeli military reserve have informed their commanders that they will no longer report for volunteer duty if the government proceeds with a plan to limit judicial influence by the end of the month.” While media coverage of the protests against this judicial overhaul has slowed, the protests themselves are very much ongoing and these resignations prove there is significant discontent among secular Israelis. It remains to be seen whether the opposition by mainstream Israeli society to authoritarian creep will substantively address any of the underlying issues, such as the occupation of Palestine.

    8. In an update to the Guatemala story from last week, Al Jazeera reports that in a statement, “the public prosecutor’s office denied accusations that its actions were aimed at derailing the [anti-corruption] Seed Movement’s prospects as it competes in the final round of voting.” This prosecutor, Rafael Curruchiche, has “previously targeted anti-corruption campaigners and has been placed on the US Department of State’s Engel List for ‘corrupt and undemocratic actors’.” The decision to ban the party has already been reversed by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, the highest court in that country. The party’s leader, Bernardo Arevalo, has stated “We are in the electoral race, we are moving forward and we will not be stopped by this corrupt group.”

    9. The Houston Chronicle reports that “Officers working for [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push children into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to migrants” These abuses were revealed in an email from a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”

    10. Finally, Universal Studios appears to have unlawfully trimmed trees on the public sidewalk outside of their building in Los Angeles, a transparent attempt to discourage picketers by denying them shade during the ongoing heatwave. City Controller Kenneth Mejia has announced that his office is launching an investigation. Ironically, this shows Hollywood executives are perfectly capable of cuts at the top.



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Young Swing Voters

    Ralph welcomes Maxim Thorne director of the non-partisan Civic Influencers, an organization that trains young people to inspire their peers to vote and therefore swing elections toward issues they care about and also fights “generational gerrymandering,” efforts by certain states to make it harder for 18 to 29-year-olds to vote. Plus, Ralph gives his take on some recent news items, answers your questions, and comments on your recent feedback.

    Maxim Thorne is a lawyer, activist, philanthropist, and a Lecturer at Yale. He has worked with the NAACP, Human Rights Campaign, New Jersey Head Start Association, GLAAD, the Executive Committee of the Yale Law School, and the Yale Alumni Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He currently serves as Chief Executive of Civic Influencers, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to inspiring young people to make their voices heard—and their votes count.

    When we think about how important young people are to saving our democracy, and voting on pro-democracy candidates, and voting on issues like climate change and abortion rights and LGBTQ rights— what are we giving them? If you are not moving to relieve their student debt, and you are not moving to allow them to organize so they get better paid jobs that allow them to lead a decent life, you’re not giving that most important part of our electorate what they need and what they’re demanding.

    Maxim Thorne

    We can show [young people] the power of their vote— that’s the marching band, the glee club, the gospel choir, the football team, the cheerleaders alone could swing that election. One dorm could swing that election. That is power.

    Maxim Thorne

    It’s really amazing how, after the civil rights battles and the civil rights laws in the 1960s and ‘70s, most people thought, “That battle is over, it’s up to you to vote, and no one’s going to obstruct you.” And along come some of these rightwing corporate lawyers for the GOP. And they say, “Hey, we can develop all kinds of ways to harass, delay, expunge, purge, and not count votes!” And that’s what a lot of Republican governors are doing from Florida to Texas.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. For the first time in 20 years, Israel has attacked the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp, the New York Times reports. Less than two weeks earlier, far-right Israeli defense minister Itamar Ben Gvir went on record saying “We have to settle the land of Israel and at the same time need to launch a military campaign, blow up buildings, assassinate terrorists. Not one, or two, but dozens, hundreds, or if needed, thousands.” This brutal attack has reignited international outcry against Israeli apartheid, including from the United Nations, but few expect the Biden administration to impose serious penalties in response.

    2. A group of congressional progressives is speaking out in response to the White House’s decision to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine. In a statement, this group wrote “Cluster munitions have been banned by nearly 125 countries…because of the indiscriminate harm they cause, including mass civilian injury and death.” This statement also notes that the administration is circumventing clear directives from Congress restricting the transfer of these weapons. This statement was signed by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, and Ilhan Omar, among other progressives.

    3. Per Ryan Grim of the Intercept, on the other side of the aisle, Matt Gaetz – the dissident House Republican – has committed to cosponsoring the amendment to bar the transfer of cluster munitions. One hopes this Left-Right coalition can expand and stop this move.

    4. The Verge reports that Microsoft has won the first round of its legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the tech giant’s acquisition of the video game conglomerate Activision Blizzard. The ruling follows “five days of grueling testimony.” Despite their victory, Microsoft still faces an antitrust lawsuit.

    5. In Guatemala, an electoral crisis is unfolding. Shocking results in the June 25th elections put Bernardo Arevalo – a progressive anti-corruption candidate and son of former left-wing president Juan Jose Arevalo – into the second round, defeating the daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt and setting up a showdown with the former first lady Sandra Torres. However, a coalition of nine right wing parties have filed a lawsuit to suspend the results, citing far-fetched allegations of fraud. The Organization of American States is urging the Guatemalan authorities to reject the lawsuit because “The Mission verified that no serious irregularities were revealed and that no significant changes were registered with respect to the preliminary results of Sunday, June 25.” This from Reuters.

    6. The sports pages of both the LA Times and New York Times took major hits this week. According to the Sporting Tribune, the LA Times “will no longer have box scores, standings, game stories, TV listings or a daily sports calendar.” These changes were reportedly made to accommodate new 3 p.m. deadlines following the sale of the paper’s printing press. At the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Grey Lady is planning to close its sports desk entirely, and instead rely on The Athletic for their daily sports coverage. This is “part of an effort to further integrate the publication it bought for $550 million last year.”

    7. A wild story in Variety alleges that Warner Brothers-Discovery CEO David Zaslav made a crooked bargain with GQ’s editor-in-chief Will Welch. The terms? In exchange for burying a GQ story critical of Zaslav, Welch got a plum position as a producer on a WB film. If so, Welch likely violated the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics which states reporters and editors should “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived [and] disclose unavoidable conflicts.”

    8. Common Dreams reports that President Biden has nominated Elliott Abrams to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Abrams, a lifelong neoconservative war hawk, has admitted to covering up information in the Iran-Contra scandal and ignored reports of the massacres in El Salvador in the 1980s. Abrams later called US policy in El Salvador a “fabulous achievement.” Listeners may remember a heated confrontation between Abrams and Rep. Ilhan Omar when he was nominated as a diplomat to Iran and Venezuela under President Trump in 2019.

    9. According to the Financial Times, “Elon Musk’s Tesla has joined Chinese automakers in pledging to enhance “core socialist values” and compete fairly in the country’s car market after Beijing directed the industry to rein in a months-long price war.” While Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, clearly does not hew to ‘core socialist values’ it is a marked turn from his previous comments on the topic, including tweeting that “Karl Marx was a capitalist.” We recommend he take a break from Twitter, and maybe read a book?



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What’s The Matter With Delaware?

    Ralph welcomes journalist and executive director for intellectual capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Hal Weitzman, to discuss his book “What’s The Matter With Delaware? How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.”

    Hal Weitzman is Executive Director for Intellectual Capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review. A former Financial Times editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering and What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.

    We know that lawyers and investors in corporations hate political uncertainty because it might affect their profit-making process. And in Delaware they’ve perfected that system. They have completely bypassed any political uncertainty, and therefore also bypassed any oversight or regulation.

    Hal Weitzman

    The state of Delaware, the major law firms, the legislature, and the State Secretary of State over the years have created a very powerful embrace to make sure that Delaware stays #1 in terms of being a haven for these kinds of corporations, and in terms of making sure that the federal government interferes the least.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

    1. The Lever reports that in Delaware, The Company State, in a little town called Seaford, corporations may soon have the right to vote. The town has proposed an amendment to their charter granting LLCs, corporations, trusts or partnerships suffrage in municipal elections. Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of Common Cause Delaware called this a “shocking…attempt to [give] artificial entities… voting rights,” and characterized it as the “flipside [of voter suppression].” This proposal would require the blessing of both houses of the Delaware legislature, and while unlikely to pass, the corporate control of the First State is so powerful that passage cannot be entirely counted out either.

    2. Senate HELP Committee Chair Bernie Sanders has launched an investigation into safety at Amazon. Chairman Sanders wrote on Twitter “If Amazon can afford to spend $6 billion on stock buybacks last year, it can afford to make sure its warehouses are safe. If Amazon can afford to pay its CEO $289 million over the past 2 years, it can afford to treat all of its workers with dignity and respect, not contempt.” To further this investigation, the HELP committee has launched an online portal allowing “current or former workers, supervisors, medical staff, or anyone else in Amazon’s warehouses,” to submit their stories of mistreatment.

    3. A troubling new report from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) highlights the rise in pedestrian fatalities in recent years. According to the data, over 8,000 pedestrians were killed on US roadways in 2022, more than double the number who were killed in 2010 and higher than any year since 1980. Regulators must take pedestrian safety as seriously as that of automobile drivers.

    4. Last Thursday, Indian Prime Minister and Right-wing extremist Narendra Modi addressed Congress, following his meeting with President Biden. A number of progressive Democrats boycotted the event, including Reps. Summer Lee, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, and AOC. In a joint statement issued by Bush and Bowman, the members wrote “by bestowing Prime Minister Modi…the rare honor of a joint address, Congress undermines its ability to be a credible advocate for the rights of religious minorities and journalists around the world.” This from the Hill.

    5. People’s Dispatch reports that the New York City Council has passed a resolution calling for the United States to end the blockade on Cuba. New York City now joins Washington, D.C. and Chicago in passing such resolutions. This resolution notes “Every year since 1992, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly has adopted a resolution declaring the embargo a violation of both the Charter of the United Nations and international law”.

    6. In the recent Virginia primaries, reform prosecutors swept their respective elections, per Bolts Magazine. Steve Descano, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, and Buta Biberaj, prosecutors in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington each fended off primary challenges from the right, two of whom were endorsed by police unions and a third who was backed by none other than the local Republican Party. The reform prosecutors trounced these regressive opponents by margins of 10 to 13 points. Deghani-Tafti told the magazine “If this election was a referendum on reform, our voters emphatically responded that they will not go backward.”

    7. The Reykjavik Grapevine reports that no whaling will occur in Iceland this Summer, following months of protest. Interestingly, the article notes that “Whaling is not a traditional practice in Iceland. Not only is Hvalur hf. the one and only company in Iceland engaging in commercial whaling…it does so at a loss.”

    8. Martin Austermuhle of WAMU reports that Republicans in the House are once again seeking to meddle in the sovereign affairs of Washington, DC. Riders in a draft spending bill promulgated by the GOP include banning reproductive rights legislation, reversing the legalization of marijuana, and other conservative priorities that would never get off the ground in the district. The major concern here is that spineless Congressional Democrats will serve up DC on a silver platter in exchange for other Republican concessions. Just another reason DC statehood must be a top priority.

    9. A group of House Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calling on her to ease the sanctions regime imposed on Venezuela, NBC reports. The authors include Reps. Joaquin Castro and Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with progressives like Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Barbara Lee of California. The letter described how sanctions “have often been found to be ineffective in achieving their objectives,” and “to purposefully continue contributing to economic hardship experienced by an entire population is immoral and unworthy of the United States.” Hopefully Secretary Yellen will heed these words.

    10. Finally, how much does a trashcan cost? A new report in Responsible Statecraft highlights price gouging at the Pentagon, including a trashcan sold to the Defense Department for $52,000. Must be one hell of a bin!



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • War Made Invisible

    Ralph spends the entire hour with co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon, to discuss his latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” which examines how our “military-industrial-media-intelligence complex” conspires to suppress the truth about war.

    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 tacit motto of huge media outlets like the New York Times is: Being pro-war means never having to say you’re sorry. If a journalist or a media outlet is in favor of the US engaging in war, that is couched as “objective.” If a journalist (such as Phil Donahue on MSNBC) in the leadup to the war even raises questions, serious questions critical of an impending invasion or ongoing US war then that’s considered “biased.”

    Norman Solomon

    These wars are treated as though they aren’t wars. That they don’t exist. That “there’s nothing to see here, folks!” Because we say so. We have our own criteria. And part of that is the jingoism and the nationalism and the racism that says if the people at the other end of US firepower don’t look like us, are not in a country aligned with us, then we don’t think there’s really a reason to consider it a major problem. It’s only a problem when Americans are dying.

    Norman Solomon

    This was a real sociocide—thousands and thousands of bombs and missiles dropped on Iraq. And here’s the New York Times, being fed by one of their reporters Judith Miller total lies about Saddam importing uranium from Niger and Africa and other falsehoods that made page one in the New York Times. What is clearly probably its darkest journalistic chapter… There doesn’t seem to be anything learned today. They could just as well do it today against another country.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard

    1. On Wednesday, The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the online retailer “tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions [for Amazon Prime] without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” according to FTC Chair Lina Khan. Khan added “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.” According to internal documents “Amazon named [the cancellation] process ‘Iliad,’…refer[ing] to Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War.” More about this lawsuit is available at the Washington Post.

    2. As the Teamsters continue to negotiate for a better deal with UPS, the membership has voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike. This vote – which passed with 97 percent support – gives the union “maximum leverage to win demands at the bargaining table,” according to the union’s statement. The statement goes on to note that the Teamsters represent more than 340,000 UPS package delivery drivers and warehouse logistics workers nationwide. Teamsters president Sean O’Brien added “The strongest leverage our members have is their labor and they are prepared to withhold it to ensure UPS acts accordingly.”

    3. For the fist time since 2019, the Democratic-controlled Senate Banking committee will hold a “mark-up” session on a bill – a key step toward enacting any legislation. This bill – sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown, who chairs the committee, and Tim Scott of South Carolina – seeks to claw back excessive compensation from executives at failed banks and penalize them for misconduct. This legislation was almost certainly drafted in response to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. The draft text of this bill is available at Punchbowl News.

    4. The American Prospect reports that, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” or FSD has led to at least 736 crashes – causing 17 fatalities – since 2021. Mile for mile, Tesla’s FSD system is “likely…ten times more dangerous at driving than humans.”

    5. Leaving aside self-driving, a CBS News report sheds light on new dangers associated with electric vehicles. “Their batteries make the vehicles heavier, offering better protection to the passengers inside, but that extra weight — hundreds to even thousands of pounds — has traffic safety advocates concerned about the potential risk to other drivers.” To give some perspective on how heavy these vehicles are, “GMC’s Hummer EV weighs more than 9,000 pounds…more than 3,000 pounds heavier than the GMC’s full-size pickup. The Hummer EV’s battery alone weighs about the same as a Toyota Corolla.”

    6. The Washington Post reports that the strike at Insider magazine, the “longest ever [strike] in digital media,” has ended. The new deal raises the minimum salary for Insider staff and prevents any further layoffs this year, along with an immediate 3.5 percent raise upon ratification of the contract. The strikers got a boost in public support when the editor-in-chief was filmed “tearing down fliers bearing his face with the phrase, “Have you seen this millionaire?”’ Insider, formerly Business Insider, was acquired by German media conglomerate Axel-Springer in 2015; Axel-Springer’s later acquisition of POLITICO was covered in the first edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen.

    7. Yahoo Finance reports that, in a major reversal, Shell plans to “[pivot] back to oil to win over investors.” The company will forego its goal to reduce oil outputs by 1-2% each year, and its CEO Wael Sawan emphasized that “shift[ing] to low-carbon businesses cannot come at the expense of profits.” No word yet on whether life on planet Earth can come at the expense of corporate profits.

    8. This month, American troops will begin arriving in Peru, where they will be stationed until the end of the year. These troops, invited by the wildly unpopular Peruvian Congress and unelected president Dina Boluarte, are charged with “preparing Peru’s intelligence command for “joint special operations.” The timing of this arrival is notable; while protests against the antidemocratic Peruvian government peaked in February, resulting in 70 deaths, a new rash of protests are planned for July. This from CounterPunch.

    9. The Catholic News Agency reports that a restaurant in Sacramento, California “had an individual impersonate a priest to encourage employees to confess their “sins” against their employer,” – the catch? He wasn’t a priest at all. The Department of Labor called this “among the most shameless” of employee intimidation methods they’d ever seen. In addition to the priest fiasco, investigators said the restaurant “denied overtime pay to employees and illegally paid managers from the employee tip pool….[and] threatened employees with retaliation and immigration-related consequences for cooperating with investigators.” The employer has agreed to pay $70,000 in back wages and $70,000 in damages to 35 employees, as well as $5,000 in civil penalties to the Department of Labor.

    10. Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower who exposed the lies being fed to the American people regarding the Vietnam War via the Pentagon Papers, has passed away. He was 92. Ellsberg, who had been in hospice following a diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic cancer, wrote a final note in March. This note mostly focused on the nuclear peril posed by the war in Ukraine, but the last few lines should be repeated here:

    “I’m happy to know that millions of people–including all those friends and comrades to whom I address this message!–have the wisdom, the dedication and the moral courage to carry on with these causes, and to work unceasingly for the survival of our planet and its creatures.

    I’m enormously grateful to have had the privilege of knowing and working with such people, past and present. That’s among the most treasured aspects of my very privileged and very lucky life. I want to thank you all for the love and support you have given me in so many ways. Your dedication, courage, and determination to act have inspired and sustained my own efforts.

    My wish for you is that at the end of your days you will feel as much joy and gratitude as I do now.

    Love, Dan”



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    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.