WZBC 90.3 FM Newton

Tiffany Muller: Unlimited, Unaccountable Corporate Campaign Cash Killing Biden’s Human Infrastructure Bill; Silvia Pastorelli: Investigation Exposes Systematic Deceptive Marketing by Six Major European Fossil Fuel Companies; Tracy Rosenberg: Facebook Whistleblower’s Explosive Testimony Provokes Calls for Regulation; Bob Nixon: This Week’s Under-reported News Summary.

The audience of One America News Network (OAN) has been told, among other things, that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election and that chemical cocktails are a better response to Covid-19 than government-authorized vaccines. We discuss that. Also on the show: Thousands of people are out in the street this week, calling on lawmakers to not just acknowledge that climate change is happening, but to do something about it. Media have a role to play here. We’ll talk about people vs. fossil fuels with Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity.

Normally, we seek donations every two years. We had to skip it a year ago in the thick of lockdown. Funds received are 100% earmarked for equipment upgrades, maintenance, or replacement.

They screwed up our lake: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds. The Anishinaabe people are rallying to save their lakes and their traditional wild rice harvests The Line 3 pipeline project in Minnesota, if completed, will move up to 915,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. Tar sands oil is one of the dirtiest energy sources on the planet. The 337-mile stretch of pipeline now being built in Minnesota would cross indigenous Anishinaabe treaty lands, threatening their sacred wild rice crop, which requires clean water to grow.

Steven Donziger, in 2013, helped lead the legal effort that won the largest court judgment in history for human rights and environmental justice, a $9.5 billion verdict against Chevron. Chevron, following the verdict, sold their assets in Ecuador and left the country. The corporation threatened the plaintiffs with “A lifetime of litigation” if they attempted to collect. According to internal memos Chevron launched a highly funded and sustained campaign to destroy Donziger’s career. To this day Chevron has not paid any of the $9.5 billion verdict to the indigenous communities whose land they polluted. And they proceed with their campaign against Steven Donziger. He was sentenced in federal court in New York on October 1, 2021, on contempt of court charges, which could send him to jail for six months.

Normally, we seek donations every two years. We had to skip it a year ago in the thick of lockdown. Funds received are 100% earmarked for equipment upgrades, maintenance, or replacement.

Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss has written a troubling article documenting the power of the Jewish community in using its funding to control members of congress concerning their votes on of the flow of money to support Israel. Recent events give illustration to this phenomenon. We quote from that article. Next, our feature presentation this week is a speech by journalist Ian Williams, delivered at a forum sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It picks up on our examination of the influence of the Israeli lobby on global politics.

Adam Tooze, Columbia University history and economics professor and author of Shutdown: How Covid Shook The World’s Economy, offers a global perspective on what “back to normal” will mean. Comparing the US experience to China’s, he notes how cultural and political differences have determined successes and failures in dealing with the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19. Tooze argues that, like soldiers returning from mortal combat, we are suffering from a kind of national — and even global — PTSD.

"Who Profits When Our Pastors of Peace Become Enablers of War? We feel it is a hallmark of our American democracy that although our religious communities may differ in their beliefs, their leaders can nevertheless reach out to one another across those differences to unite around basic moral principles of truth, honor, justice and non-violence that enrich and ennoble humanity. And our religious leaders have indeed united around those moral principles–by agreeing to keep silent and look the other way when they are violated. ..."

Normally, we seek donations every two years. We had to skip it a year ago in the thick of lockdown. Funds received are 100% earmarked for equipment upgrades, maintenance, or replacement.