Clearing The Fog With Co-hosts Margaret Flowers And Kevin Zeese

There is a struggle right now to push the World Trade Organization to waive patent protections for medicines, vaccines and technology used for the COVID-19 pandemic. James Love of Knowledge Ecology International explains why that would be an important but not sufficient step to increase access to medicines and vaccines. There are steps governments could take right now to share critical information and expertise to lessen the disparities between rich and poor nations in access to vaccines. Love goes on to explain how there could be greater openness in sharing information in general and how pharmaceutical research and production could be done in ways that improve innovation and make access more equitable. He points the way to where activists can best focus their energy on this issue.  For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

For Memorial Day week, Clearing the FOG speaks with David Swanson, the cofounder and executive director of World Beyond War, an international organization that is working to abolish all war. World Beyond War will hold its annual conference virtually from June 4 to 6. The conference, called "From Weapons Fairs to War Zones: Unraveling the War Machine," will bring activists together to share how they are stopping weapons corporation exhibitions, divesting from war, closing foreign bases and more. They will discuss what type of world they are working to create. David also speaks about his recent book, "Leaving World War II Behind," that debunks the myth of that as "the last good war." For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

A case brought before the United States Supreme Court by three Native American women, who have been representing themselves, may decide the future of the 1975 Indian Self Determination Act. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charmaine White Face, a petitioner in the case, about her fight to stop the privatization of an Indian Health Service facility, Sioux San Hospital in Rapid City South Dakota, that serves 325 tribes in the area. She describes how the privatization is harming the health of the people who use this historic hospital. To her knowledge, this is the first effort to privatize an Indian Health Service hospital. If the privatization is allowed to continue, which has been done without the consent of the people who are impacted, it will set a dangerous precedent for all tribes and allow any federal agency to take a similar illegal action. Read more and support their effort here.

Colombians have been on a national strike since April 28 with protests in 500 cities and blockades that have shut down the major highway. The protests were sparked by a proposed bill that would place the burden of financing the country's debt on the people while cutting taxes for the wealthy, but economic conditions for most people have been in decline for a long time. The government has responded to the protests with violent repression by its militarized police that is funded and trained by the United States. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charo Mina-Rojas, a human rights defender in Colombia who was a leader in the 2016 peace agreement, about the protests, the conditions, and the political environment in Colombia. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The Biden administration claims to care about the climate crisis but it is currently allowing a dredging project to proceed in the Matagorda shipping channel to open the way for crude oil exports in Texas. Not only will this drive a surge in oil extraction, but it will also increase mercury pollution by digging in a Superfund site left by the aluminum company, Alcoa. The project will decimate the struggling local fishing industry. To stop this project, veteran activist and shrimper, Diane Wilson has been on a hunger strike since April 7. Clearing the FOG speaks with Diane about her current hunger strike and her long fight to protect the waters in her area. For more information, visit PopularResistanceorg.

The United States' drone assassination program is illegal under international law, but the whistleblower who exposed it, Daniel Hale, is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent describes who Daniel Hale is and why his act of leaking information about the program to a journalist is akin to Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers. Gibbons also places Hale's action in the broader context of FBI surveillance, the war on whistleblowers and other truthtellers, such as Julian Assange, and the assault on our right to know. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The second and final round of the presidential election took place in Ecuador on April 11. Clearing the FOG speaks with Leonardo Flores, the Latin American campaign coordinator for CODEPINK who served as an official election observer, about that election and the many ways the United States and the corporate media worked to prevent the election of the popular leftist candidate, Andres Arauz. The election of a banker, Guillermo Lasso, means the neoliberal assault on the people will continue. Flores speaks about the resistance in Ecuador and the general state of the Pink Tide in South America. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The northern portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline is stopped for now, but there is another pipeline under construction, Enbridge's Line 3, that will also carry tar sands from Canada. Resistance to the pipeline is widespread and escalating with direct actions to shut down construction and solidarity actions. Clearing the FOG speaks with Dawn Goodwin, co-founder of the RISE Coalition, about the history of the pipeline, the harm it will cause, and how people can take action to stop it. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The myth of black buying power - that black people collectively hold trillions of dollars in wealth and that they could improve their economic status if only they 'spent their money more wisely' - has been used for more than a century to take the focus off the systemic racism and uphold capitalism. Dr. Jared Ball, author of "The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power," explains what is behind this myth and why it is still actively embraced today despite evidence to the contrary. He talks about what power is and what we must do to build it. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The Biden administration is doubling down on aggression toward Syria and a small group of progressives is openly supporting US intervention. Clearing the FOG speaks with Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone about who is behind a recent open letter taking leftists to task for opposing the US' foreign policy in Syria, the truth about the US' military presence and economic warfare there and how the corporate media are misleading the public as well as how Syria fits into the Pentagon's global great power conflict strategy. Blumenthal is the author of "The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump" and is an expert on the region. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Last year, after the United States so brutally and openly assassinated the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and the commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al -Muhandis, the Iraqi Parliament voted for the United States to cease its occupation of the country. The United States has not done that, but the resistance to US occupation in Iraq is growing. Clearing the FOG speaks with Iraqi sociologist Sami Ramadani about the history of internal resistance to the Saddam Hussein regime, how the devastation caused by the United States impacted that and the current state of the resistance. Ramadani described the "Biden Plan" to divide Iraq into three sectors and to maintain the US presence in the region to protect US oil interests. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Members of the Sanctions Kill coalition are currently in Nicaragua as guests of the Friends of the ATC (the Association of Rural Workers) to learn about the Sandinista Revolution and the impacts of the recent economic war being waged by the United States against it. The ATC is a member of the global Via Campesina movement. Nicaragua is putting concrete programs in place to uplift its people by focusing on eradicating poverty, providing basic necessities such as health care, education, retirement security and more and empowering sectors of society that are typically at a disadvantage. A major focus of the Nicaraguan government is achieving food sovereignty using farming methods that are rooted in sustainable and organic methods and supporting small farmers. Clearing the FOG speaks with Erika Takeo of the Friends of the ATC, Antonio Tovar of the Farmworkers Association of Florida and Paul Oqwist of the Nicaraguan government. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

While the Equality Act that passed recently in the House is getting attention, the critical struggle for the rights of transgender people is taking place in state legislatures. This year, 26 states have legislation that would criminalize the provision of gender-affirming care to youth, ban transgender students from participating in athletics and more. This is an increase from 20 states last year. These bills are being pushed through by conservative Christian groups. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the ACLU LGBT project, who is tracking the bills and working to stop them. We discuss what these anti-transgender rights bills would do, where they are imminent and what people can do to stop them. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The current student debt burden is over $2 trillion and it is crushing the economy. Defaults on student loans are high and for most borrowers, especially those who are people of color, their loan balances are rising instead of falling. Clearing the FOG speaks with Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice about the impacts of the student loan burden and how to resolve this crisis. He makes a critical point about why it is President Biden, as he promised on the campaign trail, and not Congress, who cancels student debt and why that would be a powerful way to stimulate the economy. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The state of Maryland and Baltimore City in particular have been dominated by Democratic Party politics for decades, yet many residents struggle under a repressive police force, a lack of affordable housing, gentrification, inadequate investment in schools and in majority black communities, environmental pollution, and more. Black workers in the state have spent the past ten years building their own political structure, the Ujima People's Progress Party, to challenge the Democrats and now having established a base of support, they are working to achieve ballot access. Clearing the FOG speaks with the state organizer, Nnamdi Lumumba, about building black worker power in the state by engaging with communities around the struggles they are facing, building self-sufficiency and providing political education. He explains why this is necessary at this moment in time and how it fits into the broader picture of building political power on the Left. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Jovenel Moïse's term as president in Haiti ended on Sunday, February 7, but he is refusing to leave office with the support of the Biden administration, the United Nations and other western imperialist countries and institutions. Moïse was placed in power by the United States and is ruling unilaterally by decree. He is violently repressing anyone who challenges his power. Clearing the FOG speaks with Wilkenson Bruna, a filmmaker and political activist in Haiti, about the dire situation, the events surrounding Moïse's refusal to step down and what people in the United States can do to support the rights of the Haitian people. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

President Biden declared early in his presidency that he wants to advance racial equity. The new Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin, the first Black person to serve in that role, announced his intentions to root out racism in the Pentagon. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) recently launched two new campaigns calling for specific actions the Biden administration can take to end militarization of black and brown communities and to end the 'forever war' on Afghanistan. Clearing the FOG speaks with Ajamu Baraka, the national organizer for BAP, about these initiatives and the imperative to build the antiwar, anti-imperialist movement during the Biden administration. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

On January 22, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect. This treaty, which is supported by more than two-thirds of the countries in the world but none of the nuclear states, is groundbreaking in many ways and is a significant step toward nuclear disarmament at a time when the threat of nuclear war is the highest it has ever been. I speak with Seth Shelden of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons about the treaty, how it came about, what it will do and what people in the United States can do to press our government to ratify it. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Baltimore Maryland is a majority-black but hyper-segregated city. Following the uprising in Baltimore in 2015 in response to the police murder of Freddie Gray, Dr. Lawrence Brown, a public health expert at Morgan University, a historically black university in Baltimore, found that historical context and data were missing from the conversation about what was happening. Thus, he wrote "The Black Butterfly: The Politics of Race and Space in America." In this book, Dr. Brown describes the history of and the players who created the urban apartheid and how Baltimore became a template for many cities across the country. His book, available through Johns Hopkins University, provides the data, language and solutions necessary for the struggle to dismantle systemic racism. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

In the last years of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected duopoly politics and challenged the roots of the crises we face, what he called the triple evils of racism, capitalism and militarism. As many people active in the Civil Rights Movement moved into the Democratic Party, Dr. King taught that the movement must be independent of political parties and be "the conscience" of them. For this, Dr. King was shunned and hated. In this interview from MLK Day in 2015, Kevin Zeese and I spoke with Kymone Freeman, co-founder of We Act Radio in Washington,DC, JasiriX, an activist and artist out of Pittsburgh, PA, and Cat Brooks, an activist in Oakland, CA about the revival of the radical Dr. King and how they are continuing his work in their communities. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.