Investigative reporter, Allan Nairn, warns of the autocratic drift of the Republican Party under Trump, and how important the midterm elections are in putting the brakes on it. And Paul Hudson of Flyers Rights updates us on the latest on airline travel from the traveler’s point of view.
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Allan Nairn is an award winning investigative journalist, who has reported on death squads in Central America, mass killings in Indonesia, and brutal paramilitary activity in Haiti. He has been jailed. He has been beaten. He has risked his life to tell the stories of brutal regimes, many of which have been backed by the United States. He has seen on the ground the bloody effects of those policies. Noam Chomsky called him one of the only true investigative journalists working today.
“Trump said, ‘Yeah, the economic possibilities of the American working class have collapsed. How are we going to solve that? We’re going to solve it with racism. We’re going to solve it with a wall. We’re going to solve it with scapegoating.’ Sanders took the opposite more constructive approach. But in the end, when Trump was up against Clinton, you had one candidate who was at least addressing the reality and another candidate, Clinton, who was denying it, saying, “Everything is okay. There’s no collapse of the American middle class.” And so some people, I think, were maybe naïve enough to believe so many of Trump’s lies. But others may have said, ‘Okay, he’s a liar. He’s a crook. But at least he’s acknowledging that we’ve got a problem.’” Investigative journalist, Allan Nairn
Paul Hudson has been a ground breaking public interest advocate for over thirty years: In the 1970s in energy and utility policy, in the 1980s for crime victim rights, in the 1990s to 2012 for air travelers and terrorist victims. He led the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing victim family organization and the Aviation Consumer Action Project. Today, he is the president of Flyers Rights.
“The first thing the organization did in 2009, it succeeded in getting what’s called the ‘three-hour rule’ enacted. That meant that the airline could not keep you on the tarmac more than three hours without letting you out of the airplane if you wanted to.” Paul Hudson, President of Flyers Rights
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7 Comments
> “But in the end, when Trump was up against Clinton, you had
> one candidate who was at least addressing the reality and
> another candidate, Clinton, who was denying it, saying,
> “Everything is okay. There’s no collapse of the American
> middle class.” — Investigative journalist, Allan Nairn
That is one of the most efficient and astute perceptions on
this downhill accelerating quagmire I’ve heard.
What bothers me so much is that the incompetence and idiocy on the
part of Democrats to do this same bungling act on every single issue,
factored in with the money that mystifyingly going to finance them
tells me that the big financiers of the Democratic Party are getting
exactly what they want — i.e. an incompetent political opposition that
they can command and control.
The barriers to political entry for a real opposition party have basically
become infinite with respect to the peaceful change within the system.
The global leadership class are doing nothing but facilitating the growth
of a cancer instead of responsibly leading all people to a stable and
prosperous future, while all pretending to be righteous and moral to
their people.
What kind of “pressure” is it to “threaten” the Democrats that you’re not going to vote for them if they don’t give you wages, medical care, anti-corporate, etc. if you don’t really mean it, and plan to vote for them anyway, and announce that fact on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour? I don’t appreciate that we are being confronted with another “crucial moment” when we have to vote for Democrats that do no good. Do the Democrats own the Ralph Nader Radio Hour? It doesn’t appear that Ralph’s views of third parties get much coverage, when he’s always got another MALE democrat on board. And where are the women on your show, Ralph? I’ve been listening for years and years, and am a great fan, but there’s a huge hole here where the women are hid.
I do believe that power is serving people egoist, not the purpose of-of leaders or it must not be a leader, aim. I believe also that, corruption, is anti-leader power is the hate of people against leaders against their regime and power. MR Nader,thank you, you believe, still in honesty, in serving, but, I do not believe, that leaders are angels, I believe that they are people, who can make mistakes and good decisions.
Every election it seems to be “THIS TIME” that we all had better just vote Democrat–otherwise, bad stuff is going to happen! I’ve got an alternative prediction: THIS TIME, if we just hand over our votes to Democrats again and they sell everyone out like they did every other time they’ve had a majority for the last couple decades, then NEXT TIME you’ll get someone EVEN WORSE than Trump. You think Trump is bad? You somehow think HE’S a “fascist”? Trump’s success didn’t pop out of a vacuum. Just wait for the right-wing opportunist that corporate tool Democrats will empower if they were to pretend to be the opposition and hand everything over to corporations one more time. Just wait until the next major financial crisis comes under their watch (and you better believe it is coming, the big banks have been warning about it for three years now) and they decide to screw everyone else over to bail out the 1% again. Allan Narin is correct about us living in a critical moment for American democracy. But he has a very short-sighted view of how populations swing rightward in the first place. THIS TIME is one of the most important moments we have ever faced to take a principled stand and say no to corporate slime. Fool people into thinking that corporate tools represent “the Left” one more time and you are begging for an actual fascist strongman to come in an enable genocide and world war.
Agreed Afdal. I have long gotten tired of every time there’s a Republican in office we are brow-beaten or scared into voting for candidates of the same party who, through their deep corruption and/or incompetence, gives us these political ogres to begin with. I’m voting Third Party, and if that irritates anti-Fascists so be it. Because voting for the Democratic Party, no matter who is on the ticket, is in the end a wasted vote.
Furthermore, if Trump is a symptom and not the disease (which I agree with), then voting him out and installing a corporate Democrat won’t magically reverse the course this country has long been heading on. The Dems may not put the pedal to the metal like the Republicans do, but they won’t hit the brakes nor turn the steering wheel either. One could argue, fairly easily, that the problems of this country run deeper than politics. Because as Karl Marx wrote in Capital Vol 1:
“…in short ‘the economic structure of society’, is the ‘real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’, and that ‘the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life’.”
Installing corporate Democrats will only delay the inevitable if our slave-based capitalist system is not only left intact but also fueled. And the Democrats are just as gleefully culpable of fueling American capitalism as the Republicans (bailouts, tax havens, money laundering ala The Clinton Foundation, etc). So what’s the solution? I don’t know, there’s enough wealth at the top to corrupt third (and fourth and fifth) parties, to undermine social movements or buy them out (as the Ford Foundation did with BLM, and what I suspect has happened with OWS, which suspiciously no longer takes donations), to destroy populist-left candidates (Sanders, McGovern, Henry Wallace). But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what the problem is.
Need another idea of a solution other than hysterically rushing to the polls and frantically voting Democrat. Because that’s precisely what they and Wall Street want.
No thanks Alan. I’ll vote Green.
Is choosing between ” the lesser of two evils ” really casting a vote ? Stop all the compromising of our liberties and freedoms .Use ears your eyes and your brains and vote Green ! Enjoy and be Well !