Paul Haeder, Author

I will be banned from Ralph, this time, from another email and name . . . .

First up on today’s wide-ranging show, Ralph speaks to political scientist Adolph Reed about how American politics has started taking its cues from professional wrestling and how the left can rebuild itself. Then, we welcome Steve Silberstein from National Popular Vote to update us on their interstate compact’s progress. Finally, we’re joined by three interns from the American Museum of Tort Law—Dylan Bird, Gabriel Duffany, and Rachel Donovan discuss a rather unique summer assignment.

One of the things that struck me, especially, is during the pandemic it was striking to see how much full-blown animus toward government— or toward the idea of public and public goods—that there is out there in society at large. And we know Heritage (and the rest of the reactionary, the Koch brothers) have been fueling that and stoking that kind of resentment for as long as they’ve been around, frankly, right…But what’s different is that since the Clinton years, the Democrats have been just as likely to attack the idea of government or public goods and public services, right? And they’re more likely to do it backhandedly…So there hasn’t been any space for people to connect even the fact that they like to go to the public library or like to use the public park with this bipartisan, full-bore attack on the idea of government. And that has gone so far and so deeply within society. Adolph Reed

Of the states that have passed [the National Popular Vote compact], it’s mostly been with Democratic votes. Because for a while there’s been a theory that Republicans couldn’t win the national popular vote. That’s why they opposed it. But now that they have actually won the popular vote this time around, that theory which caused some of them to oppose it has gone by the wayside.

There’s no reason for [Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan being “swing states”]. You know, those states didn’t even exist when the constitution was established. It’s just purely an accident…Those states are not typical of the United States—each state is unique in some way. So, Wisconsin has a big dairy industry. Pennsylvania has coal mining or fracking or something like that. So the candidates just concentrate on those—what are really very obscure issues to most of the people in the country. These states are not typical. They are not representative in any way shape or form of the rest of the country.

Steve Silberstein

Shit:

Dylan Bird is a sophomore at St Lawrence University, pursuing a double major in Global Studies and Spanish on a Pre Law Track. Gabriel Duffany is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut, pursuing a double major in Human Rights and Communication also on a Pre Law Track, and he is an intern at the American Museum of Tort Law. Rachel Donovan is the Outreach Coordinator at the American Museum of Tort Law, and she is pursuing studies in education. All three recently worked as summer interns at the American Museum of Tort Law in the VoxBox Civic Engagement Summer Course, and they participated in Ralph Nader’s Dictionary Pilot.

It’s a very daunting task when somebody hands you a full dictionary—over a thousand pages or so—and asks you to read it front-to-back. Once you start to actually sink your teeth into it…I actually found it to be a very positive experience. Rather than simply looking up individual words and ending your journey there, the goal really becomes the exploration of knowledge.

Dylan Bird

For me, what really did stand out wasn’t the individual words. It was more so the process of defining that I found the most compelling. So it showed up to me in the linguistic sense that these aren’t exact definitions here. They’re more so measurements, gauges of people’s public opinions and definitions that would shift over time. So it was interesting to see how the evolution of words came, how meanings evolved over time with new technologies, new cultural moments. And as a news writer, I found that fascinating—the complexities of a word, the connotations that go with it, they can make or break the framing of any certain topic.

Gabriel Duffany

I think that this project could be very important for students of all ages because it’s not often that you would use a physical dictionary very much anymore—versus just going online and looking up a word. And now multiple definitions could come up—you may not even find exactly what you’re looking for, because words undergo new meanings on a near-daily basis. And I think having the chance to read the original definition may give students new meanings to words that they may have thought they had the knowledge of due to social media.

Rachel Donovan

Fuck it: Paul Haeder

Terminal Velocity: Man Lost of …

just now

Not so impressed with analyzing this or that dirty POTUS or administration. Christ, the news, man, get people on with in the trenches and hell-hole experience: Try and put this sickness through the Jewish or Talmudic or Torah filter? The Jewish leaders of Israel believe this is their rules based religion and crusades. Jewish Crusades.

Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report on December 28 in which it reported “deliberate killings, field executions, as well as sexual and physical assaults on women and girls from medical teams and displaced women in the area” at the hands of the Israelis.

The report goes on to reveal harrowing accounts of sexual assault against nurses, patients, and their companions:

Israeli soldiers forced women and girls to remove their clothing under threats, insults, and offensive slurs targeting their honour. Several women and girls also reported being sexually harassed.

One of the women expelled from the area told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “A soldier forced a nurse to take off her trousers, then placed his hand on her. When she tried to resist, he struck her hard across the face, causing her nose to bleed.”

Another woman reported that a soldier told a woman in their group: “Take it off, or we’ll force it off you.”

In another incident, a woman refused to remove her headscarf, prompting a soldier to tear her clothes, exposing her chest. One victim recounted being dragged by a soldier who forced her to press against him, saying, “Take it off now,” while hurling obscene remarks at her.

Similarly, a hospital staff member told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “The soldiers ordered us to remove our hijabs, but we refused. They then turned to the girls under 20 years old and demanded they remove their hijabs, but they also refused. The soldiers decided to punish us by taking two women at a time and forcing them to lift their clothes and lower their trousers under threats and coercion.”

Kamal Adwan’s destruction is latest in the relentless Israeli assault on Gaza’s medical infrastructure as the Zionist occupation attempts to make the besieged enclave unfit for human habitation. The Israelis have destroyed every single one of Gaza’s 30 plus hospitals, some of them multiple times. Palestinians with their resourcefulness and resilience have restored some of the hospitals to whatever level they could. But most of the facilities are barely functioning, if at all. Due to the crippling siege imposed by the Israelis and targeted attacks on doctors and other medical staff, the hospitals lack the resources to treat the flood of patients that Israeli bombardments are creating daily.

Reply Paul Haeder

Terminal Velocity: Man Lost of …

just now

Yikes. Oh, more automation Titans. And that was 23 years ago. What a fine mess, Ollie/Stevie, you’ve gotten us into.

“Steve Silberstein founded and served as the first president of Innovative Interfaces Inc., a leading supplier of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries.”

And here we are, with all those nerdy types, living large (or just plainly rich) off of those pregenitors of the AGI death grip machine.

Some of us so tire of these Silbersteins and their analyses, when in fact, they are-wre part of the problem we journalists and faculty face:

https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/the-nation-that-controls-the-food-

Even ex-Google Gulag engineers are saying, AI/AGI is worse than climate change!

Watch these two extremely wrong but oh so tech smart dudes with the Russian Jewish backgrounds:

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Without a Rolling Strike, Without Shut Downs and Sit Ins, Without a Brave ten Million Using Molotovs, Palestine (70 percent of the World) Will Never Be . . .

…Free?

https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/without-a-rolling-strike-without

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What? When was it a democracy? Kleptocracy. Oh, that new one, as we see the country is for, by, with, because of, always in the pockets of, inside and adoringly aligned with BILLIONAIRES.

Kakistocracy? Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

Three branches of government bought and sold, and the Fourth Estate just Presstitution, and education? Come on, AGI, bring on the useless eaters, learners, breathers. DO NOT READ books, please. The Kushner-Trump-Stephen Miller Minyan LLC is now under the watchful eye of that foreigner: Apartheid and Neo-Zionist Musk.

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Reply

I really would appreciate a definition of “working class” who is included, who is excluded.

Eric Brooks, Surviving The 21st Century

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What is this nonsense exploration on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour with Adolph Reed around Bernie Sanders..? The true left will *never* support or follow Sanders again. He utterly betrayed the movement by selling out to the DNC in crucial crippling ways, the most recent and worst of which is to drag his feet, equivocate, and do nothing substantial, to stop Israel’s genocide on Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Real leftists now *despise* Sanders. Talk of Sanders leading the movement again is an utter waste of time and energy.

don’s Substack

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Have ever noticed when a disaster strikes everyone asks , where is the government? But This time it’s going to be the other way around and

It won’t be easy , it won’t be fun , they bought the paint,, I hope they do a good job painting the house or maybe they will just take it down .

Good luck America, have a great day my friends.

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Howie Lisnoff

All three parts of this week’s program were fantastic! Adolph Reed’s discussion of the role of the federal government and the antipathy toward government during the past half century was one of the best assessments of how the far right has succeeded in capturing the imaginations or lack of imagination of so many. How can the left rebuild itself? A major problem on the left is that we’ve been fighting so many rear-guard battles for so long that many have lost sight of the big picture and where emphasis needs to be placed in political action. The Black Caucus has been about effective as the Progressive Caucus at a practical and meaningful level. After two stints in both the 2016 and 2020 Sanders’ campaigns at street level, I don’t know if a movement on the left for working people can succeed in any way.

Steve Silberstein’s voter initiative in the National Popular Vote may work, but depending on Donald Trump for any democratizing push may be like getting a fox to support veganism vis-a-vis chickens.

Having taught both basic remedial courses and independent study courses at the community college level for many years, I really liked your dictionary assignment. As a journalist, I’m connected at the hip to the use of words to make arguments and make them in an interesting and clear way.

Again, a tremendous program! Please read my article that appears in this weekend’s edition of CounterPunch: “”A Little Learning Is Not Such a Dangerous Thing.”

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Reply, Paul Haeder

Terminal Velocity: Man Lost of …

just now

Oh, the tired tiring Jewish conflicted self . . .

My secular connection to Judaism comes from my days of resistance to the Vietnam War and my connection to the New Left. I am a true believer of those ancient beliefs to repair a broken world and not to do to others that which one finds reprehensible. Even in the mayhem of the real world, those beliefs remain unshakable and they give me solace. Faced with the far right’s tenacity with the extreme chants of “Jews will not replace us!”, and with the US moving toward the right, the demand for informed believers on the left is as great as ever.

Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. He is the author of Against the Wall: Memoir of a Vietnam-Era War Resister (2017)

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Not much protein in that CounterPunch piece ;

Now the genocide in Gaza is accepted by some while the Holocaust is rightly condemned. That glaring hypocrisy leaves those of goodwill lost to catch their breath. Viewing those on college campuses banned for protesting contemporary genocide and sometimes threatened with expulsion, while their supporters are sometimes sanctioned, makes for a strange new world. With wars and rumors of war so rampant, and few formal tripwires to stop a nuclear war, many wonder where humanism and common sense developed over centuries of thought and action have been buried.

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More academics, on campus, and the end result is? Analysis paralysis?

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Pew Pew Pew. The fact is any Zionist must be called out as a genocide enabler. And, the Murdering Raping Maiming Starving Poisoning Polluting Thiefing Jewish State (sic) of Isra-Hell is, again, full of rabbis and schools and Jewish learning, teaching and beliefs.

This is hell on earth for the rest of the world. Judaism on parade, and how about one of those nuclear (stragetic?) bombs for Syrian arms and weapons depot? Nary a word in the mainstream or left-stream press.

If you want Israel, then you are a Zionist, and the project in Israel is of course secular and Orthodox and radically evil Jewish.