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

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

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

Theodore Postol

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

Theodore Postol

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

Theodore Postol

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 4/23/24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joy James

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

Joy James

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

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

Noelle Hanrahan

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

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

Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

Ralph Nader

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

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

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

Jeffrey Sachs

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

Jeffrey Sachs

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

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 4/10/24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ralph welcomes Chris Anderson, author of “Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading” where he explains how techniques for tapping into the potential of “the internet to turbocharge generosity” can fund and scale-up bold, audacious projects for the common good.

Chris Anderson is the founder of the Sapling Foundation, and Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' — short talks that are offered free online to a global audience. He is the author of Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.

There're actually so many ways to be generous. And in the connected world, just acts of human kindness and sharing stories of human generosity can help transform the culture. We've somehow convinced ourselves that humans are pretty awful and especially “those other humans over there” are really awful and scary, and we don't want anything to do with them. And this is really dangerous because we're taking away what I think is humanity's superpower, which is the ability for very very different people to connect and to negotiate and to agree and to find ways of cooperating.

Chris Anderson

The key mind shift here is to flip from saying what change could I pull off on my own or with someone I know, to saying how can we create a moment of ignition, a moment of bringing people together in a way that they see each other and are persuaded by each other to do something big together.

Chris Anderson

Generosity is way beyond just money. It's time, advice, experience. It's a retired lawyer, a retired doctor, for example, providing counsel to local neighborhood or community groups. Sometimes they make connections, they help networking in these groups. So it's always good, I think, when you ask people for money to ask them for their advice, their time, their networks, the benefits of their experience. And oftentimes that way you can actually raise more money than if you just ask them for money.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 4/3/24

1. In an airstrike, Israel killed six foreign aid workers, including an American citizen, along with their Palestinian driver, Al Jazeera reports. These workers were affiliated with Chef Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen, which had been doing what it could to fill the gap left by UNRWA after the U.S. and other Israel-allied nations pulled the organization’s funding following dubious claims about UNRWA workers colluding with Hamas. On Twitter, Andres wrote “These are people…angels…They are not faceless…they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing…and stop using food as a weapon.” Israel claims that striking the convoy was unintentional, with PM Netanyahu saying “This happens in wartime,” while smirking in a video message. World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Goran, quoted in the Washington Post, maintains that this strike was “[a] targeted attack” by the IDF and called the strike “unforgivable.”

2. The “uncommitted” electoral protest movement continues to pick up votes in Democratic primaries nationwide. In Missouri, Uncommitted took nearly 12% of the vote statewide and over 20% in the first Congressional district - represented by outspoken ceasefire advocate Cori Bush - per St. Louis Public Radio. In Maine, blank ballots - that state’s version of an uncommitted ballot line - took over 10% of the vote statewide, a tenfold increase from 2020, per political blogger Ettingermentum.

3. More troubling for the Biden campaign are the polls - nationwide and in swing states - that show widespread discontent with his handling of Israel’s murderous rampage. A recent Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s campaign by a margin of 55% to 36%, the result of an 18% drop among Democrats and Independents, and a 7% drop among Republicans. The same poll shows that only 27% of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the situation in the Middle East. And in Wisconsin, a new poll by Poll Progressive Strategies finds that one in five Wisconsin Democrats say Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza will impact their vote in November. 71% say they strongly support an immediate and permanent ceasefire - including a stunning 100% of voters under the age of 29. In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by 0.63%. 

4. In another sign of how out of step the Biden administration has become with the liberal mainstream, Patrick Gaspard - president of the Center for American Progress, former Executive Director of the DNC, and former Ambassador to South Africa under Obama - has issued a stinging rebuke of the State Department’s claim that Israel is upholding international law in Gaza. In a statement, Gaspard writes “The State Department's shocking assertion that the Netanyahu government is complying with international law in Gaza is a gross disregard of overwhelming evidence and a dangerous precedent in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy…The United States…cannot heedlessly deliver offensive weapons as the Israeli government continues to bombard and starve innocents on a mass scale. These actions have nothing to do with self defense; they are clearly intended as collective punishment and are resulting in the complete devastation of Palestinians as a people.”

5. As Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman continues his unpopular turn to the Right, a wave of resignations has rocked his office. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the Senator’s deputy communications director Nick Gavio resigned last Friday, with his departure coming on the heels of the resignations of Fetterman’s former communications director Joe Calvello and press and digital aide Emma Mustion. Calvello decamped for the office of progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson while Gavio is taking a job with the Working Families Party, per the New Republic.

6. As if escalation in the Middle East were not enough, the United States is now deploying Green Berets to Taiwan, the Asia Times reports. According to this report, “US Special Operations Forces…have been permanently assigned to Taiwan’s frontline islands, preparing elite Taiwanese units for possible island defense and guerilla warfare operations against a Chinese invasion…US troops on Kinmen will be situated just ten kilometers from mainland China.” This outrageous provocation would not be tolerated by the United States of course, but any response by China would surely be labeled as aggression in the western media. This whole exercise is rendered especially preposterous as the U.S. recognizes Taiwan to be part of China under the one China policy, according to the State Department.

7. Morningstar reports so-called Medicare Advantage has been overbilling Medicare by approximately 22%. This figure comes from a report issued by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPac, an independent body set up to advise Congress on Medicare in the 1990s. MedPac’s new report titled "Medicare Payment Policy” reads: "We estimate that Medicare spends approximately 22 percent more for MA enrollees than it would spend if those beneficiaries were enrolled in FFS Medicare, a difference that translates into a projected $83 billion in 2024." As Morningstar puts it: “The private insurers who now run more than half of all Medicare plans are overcharging the taxpayers by a staggering $83 billion a year. They are charging us taxpayers 22% more than it would cost us to provide the same health insurance to seniors directly, if we just cut out the private insurance companies as middlemen…It's a rip-off, pure and simple.”

8. We have previously discussed on this program how President Biden is urging Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, to help stem immigration coming up through Mexico. In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, AMLO laid out his conditions for doing so:

“-The U.S. [must] commit $20 billion a year to poor countries in Latin America and the Caribbean

- [the U.S. must] Lift sanctions on Venezuela

- [the U.S. must]  End the Cuban embargo [and]

- [the U.S. must] Legalize law-abiding Mexicans living in the U.S.”

This proposal sounds more than reasonable.

9. A moving story in Atmos Earth details the movement among Polynesian indigenous leaders to extend legal personhood to whales, considered their mythological common ancestor. In addition to legal personhood, these advocates are pushing for “the establishment of rāhui, or customary marine protected areas…to reduce harmful impacts from threats like trawling and ship strikes…[and] Empowering coastal communities as kaitiaki, or guardians.” If enacted, this would be a major shift in the legal landscape that would help preserve the planet’s marine ecology as it comes under greater and greater threat. 

10. Finally, in less uplifting animal news, the Iowa Capital Dispatch is out with a report on private equity’s impact on veterinary care. According to veterinarian Melissa Ezell of Huntsville, Alabama, vets are increasingly “feeling pressure from management to make a certain amount of money from every appointment. If a pet owner wasn’t going to spend enough, the message from management was to offer more services. She was urged to pack in more patients outside of normal business hours.” This clinic is “owned by National Veterinary Associates, one of the largest veterinary chains in the nation. In 2020 the company was acquired by JAB Consumer Partners, a global private equity firm based in Luxembourg…Private equity firms such as Shore Capital Partners, KKR, TSG Consumer and JAB Consumer Partners have spent billions over the past few years on veterinary practices, specialty animal hospitals, pet insurance services and pet food companies. Among the companies owned by private equity are PetSmart, PetVet Care Centers, FIGO, Thrive Pet Healthcare and ASPCA Pet Health Insurance.” This story may sound familiar, because it is the private equity playbook they have run on industries ranging “from nursing homes to car washes.” And being the same playbook, we know how this ends - with the philosophy of profit maximization leading to predatory pricing and a reduction in the quality of services. So, if you don’t want companies like JAB Consumer Partners controlling your pet’s health tomorrow, take a stand against private equity today.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.