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Beneath The Surface

Guest:

Gilbert Achcar

Topic

Explosion in Lebanon

Gilbert Achcar on the August 4 horrific explosion in his native Lebanon. Nearly 3000 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been sitting in the port of the City for seven years ignited, leaving hundreds dead, thousands injured, and hundreds of thousands homeless. Gilbert Achcar gives us the big picture, outlining Lebanon’s decades long history of corrupt neoliberal rule. He characterizes the political class’s rule as marked by exploitation, criminal neglect, sectarian divisions, and utter disregard for the population. This catastrophic explosion comes on the heels of economic collapse -- in the midst of a pandemic that de-railed one of the largest and broadest protest movements from 2019, now in the streets again demanding an end to the regime in power. We get Gilbert Achcar’s take.

Alan Minsky then joins us and we bring you Mike Davis and Jon Wiener on their new book Set the Night on Fire: LA in the 60s, which we are offering as our thank you gift for pledging your support to this program and KPFK.

Sunday, August 9, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:12

Beneath The Surface

Guest:

Alex Vitale

Topic

End of Policing

Alex Vitale, author of "The End of Policing," joins us for a deeper look into the nature and the role of policing as a critical component of maintaining our economic system, essentially as a tool of social control. Alex does not see police violence as an aberration to be reformed, but a feature of the system. We get his take on various reform efforts, how he sees police and camouflaged federal cops quelling the broad movement that has emerged in response to police killings, the demand to defund the police – and how he envisions public safety without policing. We are also offering his book as a thank-you gift for pledging your support to this program and KPFK.

Sunday, August 2, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:12

Beneath The Surface

Guests:

David Dayen, Arun Gupta

Topics

CARES Act II negotiations; Wall of Vets, Moms, Dads Portland

David Dayen on CARES Act II negotiations. Dayen carefully unpacked the details of the CARES Act, and now that it is expiring, he looks at the stalled negotiations to extend or replace it. The end of the CARES act means that the $600 lifeline supplement comes to an end -- unless Congress and the Senate negotiate a new package to deal with the economic catastrophe in the midst of the still surging pandemic. The mostly secret negotiations are stuck by divisions within the Republican Party, while the Democrats -- pushing their Heroes package -- don’t appear to have a clear strategy to win. We get David Dayen’s analysis.
Arun Gupta is reporting from Portland, where the daily protests are only growing. Trump’s Federal troops under 'Operation Diligent Valor' have galvanized opposition to their presence and their violent tactics, mobilizing the Wall of Mom’s (Momtifa), the Wall of Dads and now the Wall of Vets after a Navy veteran was beaten and gassed trying to talk to the federal agents. We get Arun Gupta’s description of the scene on the ground, as well as give his insights about the relationship between the Portland police and the Federal troops.

Sunday, July 26, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:11

Beneath The Surface

Guests:

Ken Klippenstein, Rob Wallace, Graham Christensen, Meleiza Figueroa

Topics

Unmarked Feds arrest Portland protestors; COVID & mutual aid

Ken Klippenstein, DC correspondent for The Nation, on the arrest of Portland protestors on July 14 by unidentified federal agents. The camouflage-clad agents with no insignia turned out to be from BORTAC, – Border Patrol. They scooped up and arrested Mark Pettibone and other demonstrators, pulling their own beanies over their faces as blindfolds, and hustled them into unmarked vans. Portland’s mayor and governor want these goon squads gone from their streets. This isn’t Pinochet’s Chile, but downtown Portland, and the Department of Homeland Security has now confirmed they’ll be taking these black op interagency cops nationwide. Ken Klippenstein obtained the Department of Homeland Security’s internal memo with talking points as guidance for the task force created for this coordinated program of domestic counterinsurgency – we get the story.

Evolutionary epidemiologist Rob Wallace on the underlying structural conditions that help explain the outbreak of infectious diseases, including the novel coronavirus behind this pandemic. He looks at the systemic roots of the globalized dystopia of capitalism in decline, touching on everything from industrial agriculture, habitat destruction, global commodity chains and travel networks to bring us the big picture. Graham Christensen, a fifth generation family farmer in Northeastern Nebraska and founder of GC Resolve joins the conversation along with geographer and eco-researcher/activist Meleiza Figueroa. They are working on ways communities are creating mutual aid efforts -- in the absence of government response -- that can be extended as we head into a second, more extended lockdown. Graham also talks about how to retool rural communities to survive, and all three are involved with Pandemic for the People. We’ll talk about their work and their research.

Sunday, July 19, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:12

Beneath The Surface

Guests:

Joel Jordan, Constance Penley

Topics

The Case Against School Reopening K-12 & Universities

Joel Jordan looks at the issues surrounding school re-opening at the K-12 level. The push to reopen comes from both the corporate and government sector, though the American Academy of Pediatrics has also stated that students do better socially, emotionally and academically in physical schools. The key, in a pandemic that is surging -- not leveling -- is safety for all concerned, students, teachers and their families. For business and government the push to reopen is all about the economy and freeing up workers from childcare so they can return to work. We get Joel’s views.
Constance Penley, President of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and UCSB Professor on the rush to bring students back to campuses at the university level in some form this fall. The issues are different for higher education than for K-12, but faculties across the board have questioned their institutions ever changing series of plans, rationales and procedures for bringing people back to campus without explaining why this is the right approach -- and more importantly, have left faculty input out of the equation in making the decisions that will affect their livelihood and health security. We get Constance Penley's take on what is behind this push and the fight to prevent putting everyone’s health at risk.

Sunday, July 12, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:12

Beneath The Surface

Guest:

Robert Brenner

Topic

Escalating Plunder

Robert Brenner on the Federal response to the shutdown of the economy in the wake of the Coronavirus. The punchline is that the COVID-19 bailout, or Cares Act, not only escalates plunder, it is predation on steroids in a stalled economy in worsening decline. In other words, the bipartisan establishment has concluded that they can only intervene and call it rescue by underwriting the rip-off already in motion, bailing out the one percent in the face of plunging production, employment and profits – what Brenner is calling predation. We get his analysis.

Sunday, June 28, 2020 10:26 am

0:33:24

Beneath The Surface

Guest:

Robert Brenner

Topic

Escalating Plunder

Sunday, June 28, 2020 10:00 am

0:26:25

Beneath The Surface

Guests:

Sarah Djato, Asia Bryant, Harry Litman

Topics

Defund School Police; Berman Firing, Bostock Decision

#StudentsDeserve are volunteer member-leaders in the forefront of the movement to defund the LA School Police, an idea education equity advocates have supported for years. Two #StudentsDeserve activist/leaders, Sarah Djato, a rising senior at Dorsey high school, and Asia Bryant, who just graduated from Hamilton High talk about their organizing, in partnership with Black Lives Matter LA, to defund school police and reallocate the money ($70 million of the LAUSD budget) to bring in counselors, services and programs that serve black and brown youth as “students, not suspects.” That idea has now been endorsed by UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles), and will be taken up at the LAUSD School Board meeting this week.

LATimes legal affairs columnist, former US Attorney Harry Litman joins us to discuss the standoff between AG William Barr and President Trump against Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman. Friday night Barr announced Berman would resign, but Berman refused, and Saturday afternoon Trump announced that he fired Berman. But it doesn’t stop there, and Harry Litman helps us understand the dizzying array of legal and practical questions this raises. Plus, we get Harry's analysis of the Bostock v. Clayton Country Georgia case announced last week that saw our very conservative Supreme Court come to an unexpected rule, by a vote of 6-3 that says Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status -- a hugely significant result.

Sunday, June 21, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:12

Beneath The Surface

Guests:

Shaun Scott, Mike Davis, Jon Wiener

Topics

CHAZ in Seattle; LA in the 60s

Shaun Scott, @eyesonthestorm, Seattle activist and former candidate for the City Council brings us his insights and reporting on the Seattle protests and the now ubiquitous demand to Defund the Police. But in Seattle we have seen something new -- the establishment of CHAZ, or the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a self-governed six block area in the business district that has been transformed into a universal community based on mutual aid.
Mike Davis and Jon Wiener are back with more from their compelling history of LA, "Set the Night on Fire: Los Angeles in the Sixties." In this moment of nationwide popular rejection of police brutality, immunity and impunity, the stories of the ferocious, racist and violent policing in Los Angeles in reaction to the popular social and political movements couldn’t be more relevant and instructive.

Sunday, June 14, 2020 10:00 am

1:00:13

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