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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.
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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.
51
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?
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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.
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Beneath The Surface
Sunday, February 11, 2024 10:00 am 0:59:58
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Beneath The Surface
Sunday, January 28, 2024 10:00 am 0:59:26
Guests:
Frances Abele, Jonathan Sas, Luke Savage
Topics
Remembering Ed Broadbent, 7 Decades Fight for Equality
Ed Broadbent’s legacy: Seeking Social Democracy, 7 Decades in the Fight for Equality

Today we remember Ed Broadbent who died January 11, 2024, and honor his legacy. He was the very popular leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada between 1975-1989, first elected to the House of Commons in 1968 from Oshawa, Ontario, and always at the forefront of the parliamentary struggle for democratic socialism in practice. Ed was also Vice President of the Socialist International, the founding President of Rights and Democracy (promoting human rights around the world) and in 2011 he founded the think tank, the Broadbent Institute. Ed was known for his honesty and decency, often called the best prime minister Canada never had. He was an expert in the theory and practice of policymaking, and as his partner Frances Abele said, Ed was like a meteor in Canada. Ed was indeed a meteor, a beacon for social justice, and an all-around standup guy, warm and compassionate, brilliant, and fun to be around. The world has lost a fierce voice for working people, a champion of justice and genuine democracy.

Ed’s book, published in October 2023, is "Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality." He didn't want to write a memoir per se: he thought most political memoirs ended up being self-serving and self-justifying. He wanted to discuss the ideas in action he tried to exemplify and win while he was leader of the NDP in Parliament, and afterwards, with the Broadbent Institute, in other words ideas in action playing out in real history. To do this he engaged in dialogue with his three collaborators who join us today: Carleton University Professor Frances Abele, policy analyst Jonathan Sas, and Jacobin editor/writer Luke Savage ask Ed substantive questions that lead to a deeper discussion on the theory and practice of social democracy from Ed’s perspective as both theorist and practitioner. In the postscript to the book, Ed leaves us with an enduring vision and his hopes for what is to be done to build the good society for today and the future:

“To be humane, societies must be democratic – and to be democratic, every person must be afforded the economic and social rights necessary for their individual flourishing. On their own, political and civil freedoms are insufficient in the realization of that goal. I believed in 1968, and I believe today, that political democracy is not enough. In the twenty-first century, the rebuilding of social democracy must be our task. Social democracy alone offers the foundation upon which the lives of people everywhere can be made dignified, just, and exciting.”
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Beneath The Surface
Sunday, January 21, 2024 10:00 am 1:00:12
Guests:
John Nichols, Dr. James Zogby, Congressman Jonathan Jackson, Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel
Topic
Emergency Summit for Gaza
On Martin Luther King holiday weekend the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, The Arab American Institute, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) organized an Emergency Summit for Gaza, held in Chicago calling for a Ceasefire, Saving lives and Building Peace. The Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. helped organize the event and spoke from the floor. The first panel, facilitated by The Nation’s John Nichols, featured Dr. James Zogby, Congressman Jonathan Jackson and the FOR’s Ariel Gold. They asked themselves “What Can Be Done to Secure a Permanent Ceasefire?” A second panel considered Ceasefire on the Local Level. After resolutions for a ceasefire first passed in California and Michigan in Oct 24, 2023, other communities across the country organized to get city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions on the local level to advance the ceasefire debate. We hear from Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel.
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