Oligarchs, Billionaires And Reshaping The Economic-Political Landscape

We’re living at a time of profound changes in the institutions that previously governed our society. One hundred years ago V.I Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, observed that sometimes nothing changes for decades and at other times decades-long changes occur within several days.

This is what is happening now in America as the old institutions, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the universities, the media, the government, including Congress, governmental agencies, the elite law firms, educational institutions and most recently long-standing tariff policy are being reconfigured as instruments of authoritarian rule.

More than 800 billionaires form the upper crust in America. Three people alone own as much as the entire bottom, half of the population. Democracy, the rule of the people, however aspirational, no longer prevails. We have become an oligarchy, a majority of our people ruled by a relative handful. Our institutions have rapidly changed to reflect this new reality.

We are governed by an amoral man who’s only interest is in power and money, which is another form of power.

Guest – Professor Henry A. Giroux, author of many books and articles, including most recently a piece in Counterpunch titled Abducting Bodies, Silencing Dissent : Mamoud Kailil and the Rise of State Terrorism. Professor Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies department and is the Pablo Frère, Distinguished Scholar in Creative Pedagogy. Henry Giroux has authored many books, most recently with Anthony DiMaggio, titled, Fascism on Trial: Education, and the Possibility of Democracy.

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Critical Media Update: War Made Invisible

With respect to the Israeli/U.S. war in Gaza, peace talks limp along; Israel has accelerated its war in Gaza and the West Bank; and recent remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and president Donald Trump, make it clear that both countries intend, if they can do it, to ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinian people from Palestine, thereby bringing about the expected end result of their genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile here in the United States, President Trump has seized upon the claim of rampant anti-Semitism on our nation’s college and university campuses to deport non-U.S. citizen leaders in the movement on the campuses in support of the Palestinian side in the war, and to withhold tens of millions of dollars from the campuses until they eliminate the “anti-Semitic atmosphere on our campuses.” And, according to our guest today, press reporting in the mainstream media on the war has been less than clear and balanced.

Guest – Norman Solomon is the co-founder of RootsAction.org and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and is, in fact, the author or co-author, of 12 books, most touching on today’s topic in either close or tangential ways. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. The paperback edition of his latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” includes an afterword about the Gaza war.