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BRICS: An Anti-Imperialist Fantasy and Sub-Imperialist Reality? – Patrick Bond (pt 1/2)
Patrick Bond, political economist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, and Director of the Centre for Social Change, discusses the recent BRICS summit in Johannesburg. The BRICS countries continue to call for greater representation within Bretton Woods institutions, while their opposition to US-dollar hegemony has been feeble at best. Patrick Bond lays out the complicity of the BRICS and soon-to-be BRICS+ elite in corruption networks as they profit from Big Oil and Gas contracts and accelerate environmental disasters. This is part 1 of 2.

It’s Time to Roll Back NATO Itself – Larry Wilkerson
The U.S. is not defending democracy in the Ukraine. The insistence on NATO expansion is to keep Russia out of European markets and maintain U.S. dominance. Larry Wilkerson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.

“America Does Bad Things for Good Reasons” – Christian Appy on RAI (1/5)
This interview was originally published on May 26, 2015. On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Appy, author of “American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity”, discusses growing up with a broad faith that America is always an indispensable and invincible force for good in the world – and the seeds of his disillusionment with Americanism.

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Racist Dixiecrats – Bob Moses on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 6/9
Sad news that Bob Moses, a leader of the civil rights movement, died on July 25, 2021. We commemorate his work with a replay of his appearance on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, first released on June 20, 2014. Mr. Moses describes how in 1874 the white racist Democratic Party violently overthrew the Governor of Mississippi (who had been elected by a mostly black Republican Party), and how these Dixiecrats became a wing of the national Democratic Party right up to 1964, when the Mississippi Freedom Democrats ended their reign.

America’s Twisted Iran Policy – Barbara Slavin
The Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which the United States was a signatory to but abandoned under former President Trump, is unlikely to be revived. Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and journalist with extensive experience reporting from Iran, underscores Iran’s desperate need for sanctions relief. She argues that the JCPOA is an outdated framework, given President Biden’s refusal to sign an executive order to bring the U.S. back into the deal, and that current twisted American foreign policy greenlights Israel’s maniacal plans to target Iran.

Truman Delayed End of WWII to Demonstrate Nuclear Weapons – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 3/13
To intimidate the Soviet Union and prove to Congress the nuclear program should be funded, Truman dropped nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war; no scientist came forward to warn of the dangers to life on earth, says Daniel Ellsberg on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced November 2, 2018, with Paul Jay.
Mr. Jay –
I used to read, and comment on, TRNN on a regular basis, until, that is, you treated Jill Stein of the GP with such dismissive disrespect – with the same “rationale” you do here. The fact is she was the best candidate, certainly in ’16 and, I would argue, in ’12, for anyone of a progressive bent with regard to both domestic and foreign policy. Hers was the only platform, actually ON THE BALLOT, that was, in fact, a more robust version of all the things Sanders purportedly stood for, things that, along with his supporters, he turned his back on and betrayed when he backed first Clinton and then Biden in order to do “the most important thing – beat Trump!” And that turned out sooo well, didn’t it.
The arguments are DP memes I have heard since ’00 when Nader got his 3% and the DP knew it had to nip that in the bud lickety-split, hence “spoiler” – as if the DP (and the RP) hadn’t been in the process of “spoiling” so much of our lives for so long, “Nader gave us Bush” – nonsense, the SC gave us Bush (and has been primed to give us Trump), and, le piece de resistance, “3rd parties can’t win” – more nonsense, anyone on a ballot can win if enough folks vote for ’em – all designed to shame those of us who voted for what we wanted and needed, things you yourself seem to favor, into voting LOTE for another lousy Dem, over and over, and to convince us that “we had nowhere else to go” – when in fact we did, and have had, for at least a quarter of a century.
And, to our shame, we bought it, and still do – we have earned the sobriquet “snowflake” because we melt every time and chicken out when someone waves “that awful Rep!” in our faces – if, instead, we had “screwed our courage to the sticking place” and voted in ever greater numbers for that 3rd party Prog each time – the DP, no doubt kicking and screaming, with many epithets, would have gotten the message by now – “we better do what the people want or we are toast” – in the end what a politician needs at election time, more than money, is VOTES. Votes are our ONLY leverage, and we refuse to use them. We have lost decades doing this – time we could not afford to lose.
For years I have heard, as now, “we need a third party!” – well we have had one for years, and we don’t vote for ’em – each time it’s, “well we gotta vote LOTE this time, but then we’ll ‘organize’, and next time ….” – but “next time” never seems to come” …. the DP is pleased as punch …
When I listened to you here now, I heard an echo from years ago, more respectful and less dismissive, perhaps, than then – but, I am sorry, sir, IMO, it is just as destructive now, as when I heard it then …..
It feels too much to me like staying with an abusive spouse to vote Blue. I won’t swallow. Maybe Trump will make things so bad, the nation will go the way of the Soviet Union and we might have a chance to create a real democracy from one of the pieces. I don’t see any change if Golden Leghairs wins- he is already seeking advice from Larry Summers about how to handle the Covid-19 crisis. We are truly on our own. The U.S. is too corrupt, violent, and powerful to be reformed. It needs to die. Trump will get us to the breaking point far faster than the senile sexual abuser from MBNM.
May be this is all correct. However the moment I heard that Bernie was back on the stage I saw the policy of the democrats concentrating around two points:
A. As happened the last time, Bernie needs to be “taken out”. Including all the Progressives circling around him. Most of them will simply abstain from voting.
B. Biden needs to loose the election for the Democrats which he will most likely manage. Why? The USA will shortly fall into the abyss – it is falling already. That ist to happen unter Trump and he is needed for that.
AFTERWARDS the Democrats will come in as knights in shining armour and save the day.
…… well, that is what it looks like to me from afar and I don’t pretend to really know all that much about the US.
I hope you are right;
I fear you are not.
Very good discussion. It galls this Sanders supporter to even consider voting for the DNC’s puppet, but Jay’s point about emboldened right-wingers seems on point.
Paul Jay obviously has given a considerable amount of thought for his argument of voting for Joe Biden in the light of a reelection of Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, when one scrapes away the rhetoric of voting for Biden it is a tacit vote of confidence for a member of the criminal and illegitimate US government and its lickspittles in the Democratic Party.
Voting for either of the two corporate parties is voicing support for opposition of real change in the US government.
Nobody points out that we got Trump because of Democratic administrations like Obama’s. I can’t see much difference between blue or red neoliberals. Both parties are warmongers and feed the military-industrial-congressional-(high tech?) complex. Neither party cares if we die. Besides, the huge discrepancies between exit polls and voter results in Super Tuesday primary states showed that vote tampering is a real thing, and next to no one speaks about that. Desire for change without hope looks like another Trump administration.