WZBC 90.3 FM Newton

Veterans Rally to Oppose Trump Privatization of Veterans Administration; Despite Climate Change Crisis, Banks Increase Investments in Fossil Fuel Extraction; Inclusion of Citizenship Question in 2020 Census Threatens Costly Undercount; and This week’s summary of under-reported news.

Israeli media offer a better understanding of Israel's most recent Gaza massacre than US media, who seem to suggest that there’s an “Israeli” position and a “Palestinian” position, never mind actual reality. Orwellian? What about the spectacle of dozens of local TV anchors being required to recite a script provided by their corporate owner (Sinclair) that declares that “fake news” is dangerous to democracy?

For years, farmworkers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers & their allies have called on Wendys to join all of its major competitors in the Fair Food program, a uniquely successful approach to eliminate human rights abuses in the agricultural industry. Instead of joining the Program, Wendys has taken its tomato purchases to Mexico, where workers continue to confront wage theft, gender-based violence, child labor, and even slavery without access to protections. Now tens of thousands strong, and endorsed by over a hundred organizations the CIW is asking you to join a boycott against Wendy's, until it does the right thing.

Vermont attorney James Marc Leas (co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee) has been a leader of a campaign to block the stationing of F-35 jets in Burlington. He explains why, and reports on the community's efforts to prevent the arrival of this horrendous, noisy, 1.4 trillion dollar first-strike nuke-equipped fighter plane. A referendum on this won handily, but the City Council is getting in the way. The Mayor can veto their mischief. You can call or write him (mayor@burlingtonvt.gov).

Despite many contrasts, there is one common theme: the extreme injustice of our respective "justice" systems. This was a recent event at Harvard, sponsored by student organizations. Regrettably, our audio quality leaves much to be desired.

Ten years old, this talk is more pertinent than ever. Parenti had already predicted the financial crisis of 2008, and said that giant corporate capitalism – by its very nature – is an apocalyptic system. When unregulated, the built in elements of ever increased growth may well bring the whole system down. And he described the growing national debt not as a tragic mistake but as a means to shift ever more money from the tax payers to the financial institutions in the form of interest payments. This speech is an analysis of the many structural flaws of a capitalist system that puts it on a permanent collision course with democracy.

On the anniversary of MLK Jr.'s death, Blankfort cites his comment that the USA is the world's greatest purveyor of violence. He remarks on how the media and the schools have sanitized his story. He follows that with war hero Smedley Butler's comment that "war is a racket," and that he had been a racketeer for capitalism. Blankfort's posted summary goes on from there. You'll find it at radio4all.net/index.php/program/96879.

[This article was originally published in the Hearst TimesUnion (Albany, NY).] Nearly every U.S. president since the 1969 Nixon Doctrine has been a salesman for the arms industry, deregulating it, increasing public subsidies to it, receiving campaign contributions from it, and swamping at least 100 nations with its lethal products. And being Number One Weapons Salesman isn’t enough. President Donald Trump claims the State and Defense Departments aren’t pushing weapon exports enough. ...