GUEST: Ron Jacobs, writer for Counterpunch Magazine

 





Activist Radio has the following guest on this week:

GUEST: Ron Jacobs, writer for Counterpunch Magazine and author of "Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies," talks about his latest article on Blinken-Biden foreign policy, entitled "Biden, Blinken and DOD." 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/11/biden-blinken-and-dod/

Activist Radio is broadcast: Thursdays 5-6 pm from WVKR 91.3 FM at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY; Sundays 4-5 pm from WIOF 104.1 FM in Woodstock, NY; and Sundays 5-6 pm from the Progressive Radio Network at PRN.FM. It will also be posted on the ClassWars website for the next ten weeks. Simply click on the date to hear it.

Activist Radio

https://www.classwars.org



There’s a lot of noise in our world…

And I’m not even going to touch on the mainstream media.

There are so many opinions and so many people who were mobilizing for the change that we need in this country but they got complacent after the 2020 election.

But that’s why we need to cut through the noise to wake people up to a very important fact that lies at the heart of so many issues:

US imperialism hasn’t skipped a beat from Trump to Biden.

Look at what’s happening right under our noses:

  • Biden’s budget proposal increases the military budget, including money for new ICBMs that accelerate the new nuclear arms race.
  • Biden calls out the human rights violations of China and Russia, but it rings hollow because he ignores the human rights violations of U.S. allies (and of the U.S itself at home — see Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Julian Assange, and the daily carnage by killer cops).
  • In Biden’s first 100 days, over 300,000 people have been deported. (He’s on pace to exceed both Trump and Obama in his first term.)
  • In the Middle East, he is “recalibrating” relations with Saudi Arabia's murderer-in-chief, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salmon, while he continues to sell arms to the United Arab Emirates for the destruction Yemen
  • He unconditionally backs Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. He looks the other way as Turkey wages war on leftist Kurds in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey itself.

Yet how many people are content to say “well at least we got rid of Trump”?

The truth is that getting rid of Trump didn’t get rid of the bigger problem.

We’re still seeing the effects of U.S. imperialism. When Biden proclaims "America is back," he means the imperialist machine is getting back in gear.

If anything, it’s speeding up.

Case in point:

  • In Africa, Africom special forces fight for corrupt dictatorships across the continent against popular insurgencies, increasing the militarization of these conflicts that the U.S. treats as Islamic terrorism rather than as the resistance to public neglect and kleptocracy that they really are.
  • In Latin America, the blowback from U.S. imperialism is found at the U.S southern border, where tens of thousands refugees and asylum seekers are still denied entry or deported back to face death in countries like Honduras, the narco-state created by the U.S.-backed coup in 2009 when Biden was Vice President. Biden wants to impose Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s U.S.-picked president. He backs the dictator president of Haiti who won’t leave office after his term expired.
  • Globally, Biden continues the brutal sanctions on the people of Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. He ignores demands for debt relief from the capitalist rentiers who extract wealth from the inpoverished Global South. He ignores demands to end the off-shore tax havens where the super-rich shelter their ill-gotten gains. He plays military games of chicken with China and Russia instead of engaging them diplomatically to address global warming and new nuclear arms race.

So… what do we do in the face of all of this?

The truth is that it starts with you.

Because we need to mobilize before it’s too late.

We aren’t settling for Biden and we certainly aren’t turning a blind eye to the continued imperialism.

We’re fighting for peace policies and need your help.

When we all pitch in, we can:

  • Cut the U.S. military budget 75% and redirect that money and brainpower to an Ecosocialist Green New Deal for climate safety and economic security.
  • Pledge no first use of nuclear weapons.
  • Scale back our nukes to a minimum credible deterrent, and, on the basis of these peace initiatives, engage all the nuclear powers in negotiations for complete and mutual disarmament under the terms of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Because it’s past time that we make these changes.

The U.S can use its wealth to be a humanitiarian super-power instead of a global military empire. Instead arms, we can send aid in a Global Green New Deal.

We can make friends, instead of enemies.

We can build peace instead of permanent war.

 

This is a world worth fighting for.

And we can only do it with your help.

It is going to take all of us to realize an EcoSocialist Green New Deal. Can we count on you to donate today?

Our fundraising comes from grassroots donations. Your donation matters and empowers us to continue to fight and save our world.

The time for talk has come and gone. Now is the time for taking action!

Thank you for standing with us!







Howie Hawkins for Our Future

PO BOX 562

SYRACUSE, NY 13205-0562

United States

Web: howiehawkins.us

Email: mobilize@howiehawkins.us

Phone: (315) 220-0101

 


The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions

Activist Radio has the following guest on this week:

GUEST: Chuck Collins, author, activist and Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks about his most recent book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions.

https://ips-dc.org/ips-authors/chuck-collins/

Activist Radio is broadcast: Thursdays 5-6 pm from WVKR 91.3 FM at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY; Sundays 4-5 pm from WIOF 104.1 FM in Woodstock, NY; and Sundays 5-6 pm from the Progressive Radio Network at PRN.FM. It will also be posted on the ClassWars website for the next ten weeks. Simply click on the date to hear it.