WZBC 90.3 FM Newton

Trump's New National Security Advisor John Bolton is a Threat to World Peace; Student-Led March for Our Lives Protests Demand Common Sense Gun Regulation Nationwide; Cambridge Analytica Just the Tip of the Iceberg in Digital Privacy Crisis; and This week’s summary of under-reported news.

The administration that has announced and acted on its intention to root out, harass and deport black and brown non-citizens wants to add the question “Are you a US citizen?” to the census. The list of problems with that is long. We’ll discuss some key ones with democracy reform activist Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause.

President Duterte has announced the withdrawal of the Philippines from the ICC. In a 15-page document the President demonstrates that the ICC violated international and Philippine law by engaging in propaganda targeting him. In short, the ICC has indeed been politicized and weaponized to be used against states that object to Western hegemony.

Plitnick is the former director of the U.S. Office of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and was previously the director of education and policy for Jewish Voice for Peace. He’s published an article called “John Bolton: The Essential Profile.” See: https://lobelog.com/john-bolton-the-essential-profile

As promised, we are returning to our coverage of the annual revelatory conference on the Israeli Lobby sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs which was held in Washington DC in early March of 2018. Exposing the machinations of the Lobby, especially AIPAC and its inordinate influence over the US President and Congress is crucial to exposing the distortions and lies of the Lobby which have controlled American opinion on the Israel/Palestine issue for decades.

It’s hard not to focus on the fact that Trump has picked the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day celebration for his weaponry parade (more on that below). But there was another parade a month and a half before the armistice that cries out for comparison because of its remarkable stupidity. I’m thinking of the Liberty Loan Parade in Philadelphia: This was a parade to squeeze more money out of people to pay for war, to celebrate patrioti-nationali-militarism, and to reject fake news. I’ll explain that last one. ...

Artists and social critics have used the idea of the Second Coming of Christ as a metaphor to highlight social ills. (Bumper sticker: "Christ has come ... and boy, is He p***ed!") We hear & look at 4 works of art that do this: Lenny Bruce's "Christ and Moses" routine, a Langston Hughes story featuring the Harlem character "Simple," W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," and The Police's song "Synchronicity II"--which is pretty much Yeats's poem, updated and set to music.

... When he threatens to loosen federal libel laws so he can sue news organizations that are critical of him and revoke licenses of networks critical of him, he isn’t just bullying the media. He’s threatening the constitutionally guaranteed freedom and integrity of the press. When he equated Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members with counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, by blaming “both sides” for the violence, he wasn’t being neutral. He was condoning white supremacists, thereby undermining the constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. When he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, for a criminal contempt conviction, he wasn’t just signaling it’s okay for the police to engage in violations of civil rights. He was also subverting the rule of law by impairing the judiciary’s power to force public officials to abide by court decisions. ...

In its first analysis of how the GOP tax plan will affect Americans' personal income taxes alone, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) this week underscored what experts and most of the public already knew: that the Republican tax law will pour tens of thousands of extra dollars into pockets of the wealthy few while providing mere crumbs for the poor.