Ralph welcomes Craig Mokhiber, who just resigned his post as the director in the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the United Nations over the UN response to the bombing of Gaza. Then, we are joined by CODEPINK peace activist, Medea Benjamin, who was recently arrested at a hearing on Capitol Hill, featuring Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for protesting the weapons bill for Israel moving through Congress.
1 short additional comment. Compliments to Ralph for his decades of devotion to our USA. Compliments to Ralph for providing us wth stellar, astute speakers. Compliments to Ralph for the dozens of books he's written just for us. Compliments to Ralph for his it's "your turn folks", add to his legacy. I'll start wth 50 yrs ago Ralph slammed the brakes on "Seat Belts save life's" ..... Buckle Up those voices of gratitude. And hey- thanks Ralph.
This radio hour accompanies viewing the Mass Protest March on Washington Live Coverage, provided by Breakthrough news You Tube (live chat going on) 11/04/23 1:26pm Chicago time.
Great guests deserve great questions. With that in mind, I want to thank David for asking Medea Benjamin about the concept of military spending as a jobs program. Medea’s answer is excellent, it is just a shame the question and answer are in the Wrap Up rather than the main show because it is a very important point which everyone should hear. We need to spend more time thinking about this concept and what we can do to gain politically-necessary full employment while also demilitarizing.
The concept of militarization as a job creator is not new. I believe we can infer this from President Eisenhower’s famed farewell address when he stated about the military-industrial complex: “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.”
The comedian George Carlin addressed the concept of militarization as a job creator many years ago and it is a fairly accurate representation of reality. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith also addressed this topic decades ago as well. Military bases and the military industry bring jobs to every part of the US. Many of the jobs are in some of the poorest areas of the country and militarization does, as President Biden has pointed out many times, bring economic opportunities to rural citizens, minorities, and other citizens who otherwise would not have many equal economic opportunities. Militarization also boosts the economic fortunes for some of the US’s most educated professionals. This includes professors and American public and private higher education in general.
All this said, there’s much that can be done to demilitarize while maintaining, or improving, employment. If we realize the US federal government’s ability to spend (something with Congress is largely unaware of at least based on their public comments), we can see that the US can nationalize the military industry. Nationalizing the military industry removes the investor pressure to keep the privatized military industry viable through continued growth in militarization. Surely there will still need to be spending on legitimate national security projects, but military engineering and manufacturing can be adjusted in real-time based on national needs such that if there aren’t pressing defense needs, we no longer need to maintain militarization spending. The same labor force can work on improving sustainable infrastructure and health technology. Even with better environmental policy, we’ll still need to deal with global warming fallout from the history of poor policy and so our ‘defense’ needs can shift to dealing with flooding and wildfire mitigation, for example.
Now, obviously, much of this nationalization can be funded by simply redirecting Congressional appropriations from militarization to demilitarization efforts. Most of Congress will say that demilitarization will ruin employment in their districts, but that is why everyone employed in the military industry must be guaranteed new, similar jobs working on demilitarized projects, the ones I mentioned earlier, in their community without onerous re-training. Engineering and manufacturing offices will be maintained so if national priorities change due to legitimate national security threats, disease outbreaks, or whatever, the defense workforce can quickly shift to meet the needs.
Medea is correct in saying that there is still a lot of work which needs to be done even if military industry is dismantled. This is a very important statement. We need to keep a well-paid nationalized workforce across the country which serves legitimate public needs and which realizes that public needs are not static. This is entirely feasible economically, but this policy can only be realized with informed macroeconomic knowledge. The continued promotion of austerity economics by many progressives, much less non-progressives, will not lead to demilitarization. There is much work and reform to be done in this area before we can dream of demilitarizing while achieving politically-necessary full employment goals.
I remember UMass Amherst econ professor Robert Pollin citing a study they did which found that every million dollars spent on the military created about 12 jobs whereas every million dollars spent on education created 25 jobs. And there were a number of other industries that did better creating jobs for the money than the military.
This is a good comment. I just looked up the journal article from Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier (2009) in the ‘International Journal of Health Services’ and there are some interesting findings. One of the more intriguing findings is that education is the one sector which not only creates more jobs than military spending, but it also creates jobs with higher salaries than the military jobs. Other sectors, such as health care and consumer goods, create more jobs, but at lower salaries. Of course, since education is mostly in the public sector, it is entirely possible that if healthcare is brought more into the public sector, as it should be, it would also create higher wages than militarization in a manner similar to education where minimum salaries are set by government policy and not the market. Naturally, increased spending on education, and healthcare, would almost certainly lead to increased productivity in other sectors as well.
Military spending, as it currently exists, is mostly a transfer payment from government to the private sector. It is not all that productive in the grand scheme of things because it doesn’t produce many jobs in between items being produced and then maybe being used in environmentally and humanity-destroying ways.
I think one important inference from Pollin’s research is that if we are to demilitarize, money should be redirected to other public sector initiatives and not used in economically nonsensical ways such as ‘paying down the national debt’ as is often posited by right-wingers and even some progressives. Just as the Internet started out as a military (public) initiative, we should maintain a public department of technology and innovation which helps to solve current healthcare and environmental issues. If necessary, this department can also work on legitimate defense projects, but when defense needs are met, the needs should be focused elsewhere. It can be a modern NASA of sorts before NASA became privatized. Innovations made through this department can flow to the private sector, in a way similar to the Internet, and innovations can be transferred to the developing world without the barriers caused by patents in the private sector even when corporate welfare was used to help develop those patents. This would help the US be an engine of progressiveness and humanity in the world rather than an engine of backwardness as we are now.
Obviously, we’re just scratching the surface in discussing how to keep people employed and productive in a demilitarized country. This is certainly a wonderful point of discussion so thank you for bringing it up. The possibilities are seemingly endless when we start thinking in an economically informed manner.
Excellent program! Thanks for doing two programs this week.
WBAI has been doing a good job on covering the Palestinian genocide. Scott Ritter among others was interviewed yesterday and believes that Israel is woefully unprepared: https://wbai.org/archive/program/episode/?id=44800
How did we allow the military industrial congressional complex and corporations in general to gain control of our political process?
We keep voting for big money candidates.
Ralph touched on the solution when he said we need to take on the current legislators in the primaries.
But what will we take them on with?
If we take them on with other big money candidates then those candidates would as legislators just continue to do what the current big money legislators do no matter what they promise while campaigning.
We must demand small donor candidates in both the primaries and general elections and enforce that demand with our votes by voting for small donor candidates or using a write in vote when there are no small donor candidates on the ballot in both the primaries and general elections to register a vote against the big money candidates and to create and demonstrate demand for small donor candidates in future elections.
If we start now we can begin to have an effect in the 2024 congressional elections with as little as 10% of the vote nationally. As more citizens participate in 2026 and 2028 it will become even more effective and yield greater progress in getting the big money out of politics.
Or we can wait another several decades for the big money legislators to get the big money out of politics with legislation that they have no intention of passing in those decades.
It's that Wish I Was a Rothschild song and dance Jewish First thing. Not one Jew USA politician has called for a cease fire.
Blinken is emblematic of Ivy League Rabbi Assisted education.
Bomb babies? Let's shoot rabid dogs.
Blinken first? Hmmm. Thought experiment.
Arab leaders on Saturday urged an immediate ceasefire in Israel's military offensive in Gaza, pressing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to convince Israel, but the top U.S. diplomat said such a halt right now would only allow Palestinian militant group Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again.
In a rare public disagreement at a news conference in Amman, foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, standing alongside Blinken, repeatedly pushed for a cessation of hostilities, saying the death of thousands of civilians could not be justified as self-defense.
As always, thanks for the evidence/law based discussion regarding the Israel/Palestine disaster. I have a question I wish Colonel Wilkerson would have addressed. Specifically:
To make Hamas ineffective now and forever, can't Israel simply takeover Gaza with its overwhelming military capabilities and root Hamas out without carpet bombing and killing untold thousands of innocent people?
If there is no military basis or justification for leveling Gaza then it is clear Israel's leaders' only motive is to make Gaza uninhabitable forever--killing those who can't or won't leave. There is an historical name given to such a strategy.
PS. If anyone is still reading the above comment I wrote, John Mearsheimer on the Lex Fredman podcast answered my question re: why Israel is not making a surgical attack to take out Hamas, rather than killing ever human in sight. He says it could and should have, but its leaders don’t care or want to. He compares the Zionist government’s response as an irrational act of rage, which has caused it to lose the sympathy and respect of most of the international community-- except for the support of the US government (which the world holds in similar disregard for its position).
Genocide tax? The Jews in Israel, many of them, want a real nuclear bomb dropped. And,
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari says, "The IDF will attack Hamas in any buildings, even hospitals, and is also ready to strike throughout the Middle East against any threat to the country's security."
So there goes Ralph's fami8ly's homeland: Mount Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in Southeastern Lebanon.
Are you going to get angry, Ralph?
How about getting EI on: Asa Winstanley; Ali Abunimah, Tamara Nassar ??? John ELmer?
When are you going to get angry, Ralph, because measured lawyerly crap is what has gotten us into this dirty Capitalist Empire of Lies, Chaos, Hell, Destruction, Propaganda and Death!
Ralph Nader and his Crew need to GET INTO THE 21st Centure and mix it up with young people working hard. All the mainstream pundits and the publised New York or East Coast based authors?
+--+
MARWA OSMAN - Yemen's Willing Sacrifice for Palestine? Interview HER.
I don't particularly notice many "political cartoons" but a recent one by Mike Luckovitch rerun in Long Island Newsday (pg. A17) from the original, "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution", captures an essence of what 's wrong with it ALL...even to my agnostic viewpoint if you will.
I can't copy and paste here but it reads (and hope this is clearly pictured by my word- attempt)
"A Two-Stone Solution"
Moses holding "Thou Shalt Not Kill" stone tablet left and "Love Thy Neighbor" tablet in his right.
Not sure if the Newsday link allows non-subscribers to see this at:
1 short additional comment. Compliments to Ralph for his decades of devotion to our USA. Compliments to Ralph for providing us wth stellar, astute speakers. Compliments to Ralph for the dozens of books he's written just for us. Compliments to Ralph for his it's "your turn folks", add to his legacy. I'll start wth 50 yrs ago Ralph slammed the brakes on "Seat Belts save life's" ..... Buckle Up those voices of gratitude. And hey- thanks Ralph.
This radio hour accompanies viewing the Mass Protest March on Washington Live Coverage, provided by Breakthrough news You Tube (live chat going on) 11/04/23 1:26pm Chicago time.
Thank you for your approval. Shalom
Please invite Norman Finkelstein to your show. He has never been on this show
Please address any history of plans to build a “Ben Gurion canal” through north Gaza to sabotage/circumvent the Suez.
Great guests deserve great questions. With that in mind, I want to thank David for asking Medea Benjamin about the concept of military spending as a jobs program. Medea’s answer is excellent, it is just a shame the question and answer are in the Wrap Up rather than the main show because it is a very important point which everyone should hear. We need to spend more time thinking about this concept and what we can do to gain politically-necessary full employment while also demilitarizing.
The concept of militarization as a job creator is not new. I believe we can infer this from President Eisenhower’s famed farewell address when he stated about the military-industrial complex: “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.”
The comedian George Carlin addressed the concept of militarization as a job creator many years ago and it is a fairly accurate representation of reality. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith also addressed this topic decades ago as well. Military bases and the military industry bring jobs to every part of the US. Many of the jobs are in some of the poorest areas of the country and militarization does, as President Biden has pointed out many times, bring economic opportunities to rural citizens, minorities, and other citizens who otherwise would not have many equal economic opportunities. Militarization also boosts the economic fortunes for some of the US’s most educated professionals. This includes professors and American public and private higher education in general.
All this said, there’s much that can be done to demilitarize while maintaining, or improving, employment. If we realize the US federal government’s ability to spend (something with Congress is largely unaware of at least based on their public comments), we can see that the US can nationalize the military industry. Nationalizing the military industry removes the investor pressure to keep the privatized military industry viable through continued growth in militarization. Surely there will still need to be spending on legitimate national security projects, but military engineering and manufacturing can be adjusted in real-time based on national needs such that if there aren’t pressing defense needs, we no longer need to maintain militarization spending. The same labor force can work on improving sustainable infrastructure and health technology. Even with better environmental policy, we’ll still need to deal with global warming fallout from the history of poor policy and so our ‘defense’ needs can shift to dealing with flooding and wildfire mitigation, for example.
Now, obviously, much of this nationalization can be funded by simply redirecting Congressional appropriations from militarization to demilitarization efforts. Most of Congress will say that demilitarization will ruin employment in their districts, but that is why everyone employed in the military industry must be guaranteed new, similar jobs working on demilitarized projects, the ones I mentioned earlier, in their community without onerous re-training. Engineering and manufacturing offices will be maintained so if national priorities change due to legitimate national security threats, disease outbreaks, or whatever, the defense workforce can quickly shift to meet the needs.
Medea is correct in saying that there is still a lot of work which needs to be done even if military industry is dismantled. This is a very important statement. We need to keep a well-paid nationalized workforce across the country which serves legitimate public needs and which realizes that public needs are not static. This is entirely feasible economically, but this policy can only be realized with informed macroeconomic knowledge. The continued promotion of austerity economics by many progressives, much less non-progressives, will not lead to demilitarization. There is much work and reform to be done in this area before we can dream of demilitarizing while achieving politically-necessary full employment goals.
I remember UMass Amherst econ professor Robert Pollin citing a study they did which found that every million dollars spent on the military created about 12 jobs whereas every million dollars spent on education created 25 jobs. And there were a number of other industries that did better creating jobs for the money than the military.
This is a good comment. I just looked up the journal article from Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier (2009) in the ‘International Journal of Health Services’ and there are some interesting findings. One of the more intriguing findings is that education is the one sector which not only creates more jobs than military spending, but it also creates jobs with higher salaries than the military jobs. Other sectors, such as health care and consumer goods, create more jobs, but at lower salaries. Of course, since education is mostly in the public sector, it is entirely possible that if healthcare is brought more into the public sector, as it should be, it would also create higher wages than militarization in a manner similar to education where minimum salaries are set by government policy and not the market. Naturally, increased spending on education, and healthcare, would almost certainly lead to increased productivity in other sectors as well.
Military spending, as it currently exists, is mostly a transfer payment from government to the private sector. It is not all that productive in the grand scheme of things because it doesn’t produce many jobs in between items being produced and then maybe being used in environmentally and humanity-destroying ways.
I think one important inference from Pollin’s research is that if we are to demilitarize, money should be redirected to other public sector initiatives and not used in economically nonsensical ways such as ‘paying down the national debt’ as is often posited by right-wingers and even some progressives. Just as the Internet started out as a military (public) initiative, we should maintain a public department of technology and innovation which helps to solve current healthcare and environmental issues. If necessary, this department can also work on legitimate defense projects, but when defense needs are met, the needs should be focused elsewhere. It can be a modern NASA of sorts before NASA became privatized. Innovations made through this department can flow to the private sector, in a way similar to the Internet, and innovations can be transferred to the developing world without the barriers caused by patents in the private sector even when corporate welfare was used to help develop those patents. This would help the US be an engine of progressiveness and humanity in the world rather than an engine of backwardness as we are now.
Obviously, we’re just scratching the surface in discussing how to keep people employed and productive in a demilitarized country. This is certainly a wonderful point of discussion so thank you for bringing it up. The possibilities are seemingly endless when we start thinking in an economically informed manner.
Excellent program! Thanks for doing two programs this week.
WBAI has been doing a good job on covering the Palestinian genocide. Scott Ritter among others was interviewed yesterday and believes that Israel is woefully unprepared: https://wbai.org/archive/program/episode/?id=44800
boycott.thewitness.news Provided by Truth About Palestine see companies & brands.
Thank you for your approval. Shalom
How did we allow the military industrial congressional complex and corporations in general to gain control of our political process?
We keep voting for big money candidates.
Ralph touched on the solution when he said we need to take on the current legislators in the primaries.
But what will we take them on with?
If we take them on with other big money candidates then those candidates would as legislators just continue to do what the current big money legislators do no matter what they promise while campaigning.
We must demand small donor candidates in both the primaries and general elections and enforce that demand with our votes by voting for small donor candidates or using a write in vote when there are no small donor candidates on the ballot in both the primaries and general elections to register a vote against the big money candidates and to create and demonstrate demand for small donor candidates in future elections.
If we start now we can begin to have an effect in the 2024 congressional elections with as little as 10% of the vote nationally. As more citizens participate in 2026 and 2028 it will become even more effective and yield greater progress in getting the big money out of politics.
Or we can wait another several decades for the big money legislators to get the big money out of politics with legislation that they have no intention of passing in those decades.
A lot of Politics in this show. WITHOUT MENTIONG IRAN and their involvement and treating Oct. 7th like a normal act of War is wrong. #Peace
It's that Wish I Was a Rothschild song and dance Jewish First thing. Not one Jew USA politician has called for a cease fire.
Blinken is emblematic of Ivy League Rabbi Assisted education.
Bomb babies? Let's shoot rabid dogs.
Blinken first? Hmmm. Thought experiment.
Arab leaders on Saturday urged an immediate ceasefire in Israel's military offensive in Gaza, pressing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to convince Israel, but the top U.S. diplomat said such a halt right now would only allow Palestinian militant group Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again.
In a rare public disagreement at a news conference in Amman, foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, standing alongside Blinken, repeatedly pushed for a cessation of hostilities, saying the death of thousands of civilians could not be justified as self-defense.
As always, thanks for the evidence/law based discussion regarding the Israel/Palestine disaster. I have a question I wish Colonel Wilkerson would have addressed. Specifically:
To make Hamas ineffective now and forever, can't Israel simply takeover Gaza with its overwhelming military capabilities and root Hamas out without carpet bombing and killing untold thousands of innocent people?
If there is no military basis or justification for leveling Gaza then it is clear Israel's leaders' only motive is to make Gaza uninhabitable forever--killing those who can't or won't leave. There is an historical name given to such a strategy.
PS. If anyone is still reading the above comment I wrote, John Mearsheimer on the Lex Fredman podcast answered my question re: why Israel is not making a surgical attack to take out Hamas, rather than killing ever human in sight. He says it could and should have, but its leaders don’t care or want to. He compares the Zionist government’s response as an irrational act of rage, which has caused it to lose the sympathy and respect of most of the international community-- except for the support of the US government (which the world holds in similar disregard for its position).
Genocide tax? The Jews in Israel, many of them, want a real nuclear bomb dropped. And,
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari says, "The IDF will attack Hamas in any buildings, even hospitals, and is also ready to strike throughout the Middle East against any threat to the country's security."
So there goes Ralph's fami8ly's homeland: Mount Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in Southeastern Lebanon.
Are you going to get angry, Ralph?
How about getting EI on: Asa Winstanley; Ali Abunimah, Tamara Nassar ??? John ELmer?
https://www.youtube.com/live/N9J0_8cr4Eo?si=cpkKcUGTgHT2NgJ3
+--+
When are you going to get angry, Ralph, because measured lawyerly crap is what has gotten us into this dirty Capitalist Empire of Lies, Chaos, Hell, Destruction, Propaganda and Death!
Try Mike Jones for your Beltway Show -- He's an ex Brit in DOnbass:
Here you go --
https://m.vk.com/video-218275353_456239884
How about Brian and Angelo?
The New Atlas LIVE: US Prepares for Major Middle East Conflict as Global Power Wanes
https://www.youtube.com/live/IOVUb7cnkus?si=rpkKWoaG-EoKHXKA
+--+
Carl Zha?
https://www.youtube.com/@CarlZha
+--+
Eva Bartlett?
“They´re trying to silence any voices”
https://youtu.be/baY9kBEcm_I?si=yXIz-QQPMmErVfXk
+--+
Ben Norton?
https://youtu.be/JACTB8T35HE?si=Y4VUb0JLdTp1iNNa
+--+
Ralph Nader and his Crew need to GET INTO THE 21st Centure and mix it up with young people working hard. All the mainstream pundits and the publised New York or East Coast based authors?
+--+
MARWA OSMAN - Yemen's Willing Sacrifice for Palestine? Interview HER.
https://youtu.be/upzEvx8cI84?si=IrZKfu1ZvG2DlAFZ
+--+
Nah, I'm not telling you and your producers to do something beyond your control.
Later, Haeder
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/gaza-as-a-graveyard-for-children
I don't particularly notice many "political cartoons" but a recent one by Mike Luckovitch rerun in Long Island Newsday (pg. A17) from the original, "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution", captures an essence of what 's wrong with it ALL...even to my agnostic viewpoint if you will.
I can't copy and paste here but it reads (and hope this is clearly pictured by my word- attempt)
"A Two-Stone Solution"
Moses holding "Thou Shalt Not Kill" stone tablet left and "Love Thy Neighbor" tablet in his right.
Not sure if the Newsday link allows non-subscribers to see this at:
https://paper.newsday.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?edid=66bf8df1-5cfb-4320-be03-c13ce5dcde82
When I was in college, my pregnant girlfriend was bit by a rabid animal. The treatment she received aborted our child.
The Hamas murders should be killed.
Both the Palestinians and the Jews are pawns in the great power game btwn Russia,, China, and the US.
No one past puberty is innocent. If u are Palestinian, and you are not helping Israel kill the slaughters of innocents, you are guilty.
If you are Israeli and you can’t tell the difference between murderers and innocent civilians, you are guilty.
All the rest is bullshit.
end Israel
free Palestine