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Beneath The Surface
Sunday, March 24, 2024 10:00 am 0:00:00
Guest:
Ilya Matveev
Topics
Russian Elections, Putin's Power & Weakness
Ilya Matveev joins us with his insights and analysis of the recent so-called election giving Putin a fifth term in power – an election that was stage-managed and fraudulent, with the exact result ordered from above. What was the point? Repression and persecution of critical voices against the war in Ukraine and Kremlin policy has been stepped up dramatically as has nationalist and anti-Western propaganda. The independent media has been silenced, public displays of opposition are immediately stopped and critics detained with growing sentences in prison. The economy hasn’t tanked, and the war has provided a source for military Keynesianism. Yet Matveev insists that Putin’s being able to order an exact electoral result is a sign of weakness, not one of stability. The horrific terror attack of March 22 underscores that Putin is not managing everything. We end with Ilya’s analysis of the character of Putin’s autocratic dictatorial rule – is it Bonapartist, authoritarian oligarchic capitalist, Stalinist, or fascist, or?
55
Beneath The Surface
Sunday, March 17, 2024 10:00 am 1:00:11
Guest:
Frantz Voltaire
Topic
Haiti in crisis
Frantz Voltaire, Haitian author, historian, filmmaker and publisher helps us untangle the continuing chaotic situation in Haiti after the unelected Prime Minister Arielle Henry agreed to step down in the face of an alliance of armed gangs who have taken control of the capital, closed the airports, and opened the prisons. No government is in charge and the power vacuum has been exacerbated by the almost complete withdrawal of the police force, while police stations have been burnt, and violent offenders are out of prison. Armed groups terrorize the population; murders, kidnapping, and rapes have more than doubled, and food imports through the ports are in chaos, threatening mass hunger and famine. Efforts by neighboring countries in CARICOM to create a transitional Presidential council got off to a rocky start when no Haitians were at the table to decide on Haiti’s future. That has been remedied, but whether anything effective can be produced is in question. We’ll get Frantz Voltaire’s analysis of what has happened, what’s next, and what could be.
48
Beneath The Surface
Sunday, March 10, 2024 9:00 am 1:00:11
Guest:
Warren Montag
Topics
Weaponizing Anti-Semitism
Warren Montag, Professor at Occidental College was recently targeted for a talk on campus on the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, showing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. In retaliation, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) campaigned to get him fired. We get the story of what happened in Warren's case and his understanding of how the very discussion of anti-Semitism has become weaponized to discredit and silence critics of Israeli policy.
41
Beneath The Surface
Sunday, February 25, 2024 10:00 am 1:00:12
Guest:
Pablo Abufom
Topics
Lessons from Latin American revolts to neofascism & back
Chilean writer - activist Pablo Abufom Silva spoke at UCLA on February 23, 2024 about how the social revolt in October 2019 in Chile that propelled Gabriel Boric to power and created a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution was defeated, with reactionary neo-fascist forces now ascendant. The UCLA event was sponsored by the UCLA Center for Social Theory and Comparative History in collaboration with The Political Sociology of the Global South Working Group (PSGS). Pablo Abufom was deeply involved in the social protest movement of October 2019, and has been on this program many times to discuss and analyze those events in Chile and everything that followed. In this talk, Pablo attempts to explain larger political and social phenomena on a global scale from the Latin American experience, considering the wave of revolts between 2018 and 2020, and looks at the rise of neo-fascism everywhere with Argentina as the most recent case. He asks what we can learn from the Latin American revolts of the last 5 years -- and admits it is a tragic question, because we ask it after being defeated, or at least, after the revolts were paralyzed by the power of ruling elites amid the acute pandemic crisis of Covid-19. My extended comments on Pablo’s talk follow his analysis of what moved people into the streets to struggle for a dignified life with all its social meaning, how that worldwide movement against neoliberal austerity failed to go further – and I ask for Pablo’s view on what it would take for the kind of organization to emerge that could take root and succeed?
27
Beneath The Surface
Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:00 am 1:00:15
Guest:
Ilya Budraitskis and Grusha G
Topics
Russia: Repression, murder, elections: Navalny & Kagarlitsky
There are many markers showing February 2024 to be a landmark month of cruelty – not least in Gaza, but also in Russia, where we turn our focus today. The murder of prominent oppositionist Alexei Navalny in the Arctic Circle penal colony Kharp on Friday, February 16, signals a turning point for Putin’s Russia, and underscores both the Kremlin’s power and its weakness.

We cover the turmoil in Russia in the leadup to the March 2024 Presidential election – an election rigged to keep Putin in place. We were scheduled to speak to Boris Kagarlitsky about conditions in Russia – but on February 13, Kagarlitsky’s appeal trial took place. He had been arrested in July 2024 for his consistent criticism of Kremlin policy and opposition to the war in Ukraine. Kagarlitsky spent 4.5 months in pretrial detention in the far northern Republic of Komi and was freed in December 2024. On February 13 the December verdict was overturned. Kagarlitsky was whisked from the courtroom into custody to begin serving five years in a penal colony. This was unexpected, brutal, and significant. Three days later, on February 16, Alexei Navalny died in the harsh Arctic Circle penal colony where he was being held.

Our guests today, Russian dissident activists and scholars Ilya Budraitskis and Grusha G. explain and interpret these events. Budraitskis says Navalny is a man the regime truly feared, and they subjected him to a slow, cowardly murder, drawn out over many months. The Marxist critic Boris Kagarlitsky is now in their hands – and international solidarity is required. This is happening in the context of the upcoming 2nd anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, and the approaching rubber-stamp Presidential election when the Kremlin looks to portray Russians as united behind Putin and his bid for a 5th term. We get their take.
20
Beneath The Surface
Sunday, February 11, 2024 10:00 am 0:59:58
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