Beneath The Surface with Suzi Weissman

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On Memorial Day we revisit the way our returning vets are treated –medically and otherwise –with Joshua Kors, who broke the story twice in The Nation, and went on to receive recognition and awards for exposing the scandal. We’ll ask him if vets are getting a better deal under the new administration.

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Tonight we begin with the danger and escalating instability of the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tariq Ali joins us, and he warns that no one in Washington knows what the war aim is and says that by continuing its war in Afghanistan, the US accepts the risk of destabilizing Pakistan. 

We then turn to Danny Schechter, the ‘news dissector’ on the credit card squeeze: The Senate so far has refused to limit interest rates credit card companies can charge to 15%, and now the New York Times is calling for a 36% total limit, including fees. Danny says credit cards have gone from being a luxury to a necessity to a noose.

And finally, on tonight’s program we turn to an analysis of the ballot propositions in tomorrow’s election with Jean Ross, Executive Director of the California Budget Project.

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Leon Despres, the former Chicago Alderman who fought the Daley machine from the left for 55 years died May 8 at 101. We will do a tribute to him next week on BTS.

On tonight’s program we begin with Jack Rasmus, who says it’s time to transfer the trillions paid to or allocated for bank bailouts toward bailing out American working and middle class families. He was part of a campaign kicked off this weekend by labor councils’ in the Bay area to “Bail out Working People – Not the Banks.”

Then Emil Draitser joins us to preview his book talk tonight at 6:30pm at the Westwood branch of the LA Public Library: the book is Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin. Emil will also be speaking at UCLA on Thursday afternoon. The book describes his childhood in the anti-Semitic, post-Holocaust Soviet Union, where he tried to reconcile Soviet values and those of his working class Jewish family. With humor and unforgettable stories, Emil Draitser presents a sweeping panorama of two centuries of Jewish history in Russia

And finally, LA based Chilean artist Guillermo Bert then joins us to talk about his solo exhibition that opens next weekend at the Museum of Latin American Art In Long Beach: his Bar Code Series (Blurring the Boundary Between Cultures and Commodities) reflects the ‘branding’ of concepts of consumerism, fusing government buildings and national symbols, as well as ancient Andean ceremonial relics with the Bar Code patterns (universal Pricing Code technology), reducing them to a single word or message that provokes political commentary and social questioning about the price of democracy, and the value of justice in our contemporary time.

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May Day (the first of May) was the scene of major demonstrations around the world. In France the day was historic as the two rival trade union federations united with other unions and the left to confront the Sarkozy government on behalf of workers in face of the deepening economic crisis. We talk to Michael Löwy.

And the torture investigations deepen as more call for the Obama administration to hire a Special Prosecutor to look into the Bush-Cheney torture program. Gary Kern, expert on Stalinist spies and torture, unearths some crucial missing arguments in the torture program.

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A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of more than 100 people in Mexico. The worrisome new virus — which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before — also sickened people in Texas and California. Confirmed or suspected cases have also been reported in Canada, Brazil, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Mike Davis, author of The Monster at our Door about Avian flu, says “The really dangerous swine wears suits.” He’ll tell us why.

Plus, Paul Mason joins us in our continuing coverage of the economic crisis. His book Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed, published by Verso today (April 27), tells the story, blow by blow, of the financial crash that destroyed investment banks and brought the global economy to its knees, undermining three decades of neo-liberal orthodoxy. He’s the Economics Editor of BBC Newsnight, so he had a ringside seat. It explains how we got here - from the shadow banking system, to subprime, to the commodities speculation that forced a billion people to go without meals in mid-2008. Paul says the neo-liberal era is over – and has a few suggestions about what kind of capitalism could emerge from its ruins.

And -- The first-ever Labor and Social Justice Fair at CSU Dominguez Hills will take place on Thursday, April 30, in prep for May Day, commemorating the martyrs of Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket Massacre, who were fighting for the eight-hour work day. We’ll talk to Mannie Lares and Vivian Price.

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Is Capitalism bankrupt? Are the rescue efforts just transferring/laundering money from the taxpayers to the financial fraudsters? We’ll talk to Matt Taibbi, who says the global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. He writes that Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution and Obama's top economic adviser (Lawrence Summers) is greedy and highly compromised.

Continuing in our “Sounds like Socialism” series, Bertell Ollman joins us to talk about the return of Marx: Surveys show that confidence in capitalism is slipping and in Germany Marx’s books are flying off the shelves. We’ll ask Bertell, who says difference between the real economy (Main Street) and the finance/virtual economy (Wall Street) is the latter is all about giving (or denying) people permission to use the goods and services that make up the real economy about the crisis of confidence in capitalism and where he thinks it will lead.

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The economy continues to be our top story as President Obama returns from the G20 meeting where he tried to persuade European economies to participate in large stimulus packages to coordinate the global response to a global downturn/depression/epic recession.

Max Fraad Wolff worries that justified public anger is getting in the way of understanding the rescue plan which spends REAL taxpayer money. He understands why the public is VERY, VERY angry but says we are ignoring the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury plans that bypass Congress and spend trillions, while we focus on Madoff and AIG bonuses. Instead, the public should focus on how to save millions of jobs, college educations, retirements, homes, hopes, enterprises and industries.

Christopher Phelps joins us to look beyond Economic Revival to an examination of New Deal approaches which are still viable -- and worth emulating. We’ll also talk about the role of labor – then and now.

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President Obama goes to London this week for the G20 summit meeting, tasked with rescuing, revitalizing and rebuilding the global financial system. In an incredibly prescient article, Peter Gowan argues against mainstream accounts, that the origins of the global financial crisis lie in the dynamics of the New Wall Street System that has emerged since the 1980s. Call it the era of plundering finance capital or, as Gowan does, the New Wall Street system. He traces the contours of the Atlantic model, and the geopolitical, ideological and economic implications of its blow-out. We’ll ask him what can be expected from the G20 summit, his views on the economic crisis and the prospects for the future.

In the second half of the program Richard Lichtman joins us for a philosophic and political exploration of the used and abused concepts of freedom and relates it to our current economic malaise.

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We’re in an economic meltdown with public anger boiling over at the bankers, insurers and bonus-getters among them. In the second half of the hour we’ll talk to Tom Geoghegan, fresh from his bid for Congress in Chicago, who has the cover story in the current Harpers Magazine: he writes that unlimited interest rates (aka usury) have destroyed the economy – and he has plenty to say about Labor in telling the story.

But first we’ll talk to John Nichols who has written in the April 6 issue of The Nation with Robert McChesney that the collapse of journalism threatens democracy itself and that’s why we need a government rescue. They say that the threat to newspapers and journalism in communities across America is the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the USA.

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Lizz Winstead, co-creator and head writer of the Daily Show joins us in studio to talk about the state of the bloated morning television talk-shows. Her send-up satire “Wake Up World” boasts that it is, “America’s only six-hour morning show.” Wake Up World responds to current topical news but its true goal is to capture and satirize all the conventions of morning shows. Lizz Winstead and her “Shoot the Messenger” group will have two performances in Los Angeles at the Steve Allen Theater on March 17 & 18.

UCLA economic historian Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence and The Boom and the Bubble returns tonight to explain the origins of the deepening economic crisis, the bail-outs and what we can expect from the Obama economic team.

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