Clearing the FOG with co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese

In this episode, Clearing the FOG brings back excerpts of a discussion from November 2018 with the now-deceased Glen Ford, the co-founder and Senior Editor of Black Agenda Report, and Kevin Zeese, the co-director of Popular Resistance, about fascism in the United States. This interview covers the origin of fascism in the United States and how it was emulated by European Nations and brought to Lati...

As the Israeli State intensifies its violence against and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, international Palestinian solidarity organizations are making new plans to challenge the illegal Israeli occupation. Clearing the FOG speaks with retired Colonel Ann Wright who recently represented the US Boats to Gaza campaign at a meeting of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition in the United K...

The recent elections by the Israeli State will likely bring to power what author and activist Miko Peled calls "the most openly fascist government" in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Peled wrote about Netanyahu, a known war criminal who was re-elected as Prime Minister, in Mintpress News. In this interview on Clearing the FOG, Peled explains why the danger to Palestinians has never been grea...

The United States seized the opportunity when protests over the death of Mahsa Amini started in Iran to push a narrative of mass dissent and repression in the country. This is a narrative the US used in the lead up to its invasion of Afghanistan. There are other signs and evidence of US interference in Iran to foment regime change and justify military intervention. The US Special Envoy to Iran sai...

If you live in the United States, you probably believe that the problems in Haiti are cholera and gang violence and that the Haitians need our help in the form of a multinational military force to 'restore order.' Clearing the FOG speaks with Chris Bernadel of the Black Alliance for Peace's Haiti/Americas Team about the bigger picture of the United States' long term interference in Haiti to suppre...

The proxy war between NATO and Russia being waged in Ukraine has taken a dangerous turn and the risk of nuclear annihilation is growing as a result. Clearing the FOG speaks with Scott Ritter, a former US Marine intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector, who explains that the recent murder of Darya Dugina, the attack on the Nordstream Pipelines and the bombing of the Kerch bridges a...

Today is Indigenous People's Day, still celebrated by some as the violent colonizer Christopher Columbus Day. Clearing the FOG speaks with Jean-Luc Pierite of the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB) and United American Indians of New England (UAINE) about the growing recognition of the trauma and murder of American Indian children who were sent to assimilation centers called residentia...

Last week, more than 1,000 fast food workers at San Francisco International Airport went on strike for three days over low wages, health benefits and pensions. They had not received a raise in more than three years and many worked multiple jobs. Workers building the new US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras have been on strike off and on since early July over a new contract that deprives them of fai...

On October 8, people around the world will take action to demand that Julian Assange be freed. Tens of thousands of people have registered to surround the British Parliament on that day. In the United States, people will demonstrate at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Clearing the FOG speaks with Randy Credico, a political satirist, host of Live on the Fly: Assange Countdown to Freedom...

In 2014, Congress used a midnight rider added to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to hand the Indigenous Sacred Land at Oak Flats in Arizona over to a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, Resolution Copper, to mine, which would destroy the land and pollute the local water. Apache Stronghold and its allies are fighting to protect the land and with it, their cultural identity and religious freedom....

Residents of West Jackson are in the midst of a severe water crisis due to the failure of a water treatment facility and don't know when they will have clean water in their homes again. The state is failing to get water to everyone, so many local groups are organizing mutual aid efforts. The governor refuses to access federal funds to fully repair the city's water infrastructure, which has been fa...

Railroad workers voted overwhelmingly this year to go on strike after more than two years of contract negotiations. The Biden administration prevented a strike by appointing a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to hold hearings. That board released its recommendations recently. Clearing the FOG speaks with Michael "Paul" Lindsey, a railroad engineer and member of Railroad Workers United, about the...

Forty years ago, residents of Philadelphia won a subsidized housing community in the area known as Black Bottom after fighting the discrimination and displacement being used to clear the way for University City. Now the city is allowing that community, 72 residences called University City Townhomes (UCT), to be sold for gentrification. Clearing the FOG spoke with Rasheda Alexander, a resident of U...

On August 5, lightning caused a fire at an oil supertanker base in Matanzas, Cuba. The fire caused the collapse of three large oil tanks, killed 16 people and wounded 146 people. Immediately, friendly nations sent aid, including $70 million in oil from Russia, but the United States only provided technical advice to the neighboring Caribbean nation that has been crippled by six decades of the US' e...

On July 29, the FBI conducted a surprise raid on the homes and offices of leaders of the African People's Socialist Party and Uhuru Solidarity Movement (APSP-Uhuru) in Florida and Missouri under the pretext that they were co-conspirators in an indictment of a Russian national, Alexander Ionov. In the raid, documents and electronic devices were stolen. The raid was coordinated with the Biden Admini...

As heatwaves, droughts and wild fires ravage the planet, pressure is building on the White House and Congress to take substantive action to address the climate crisis. More than a thousand organizations in the United States have come together as the People vs Fossil Fuels coalition with the demand that President Biden declare a climate emergency and use his executive powers to stop fossil fuel ext...

July 30 will be the 57th anniversary of the passage of Medicare, widely celebrated as Medicare's birthday. People are taking action across the country this week in support of a National Improved Medicare for All single payer healthcare system culminating in a national march and rally in Washington, DC on Saturday (find info at M4M4All.org). Clearing the FOG speaks with Dr. Ana Malinow, a leader of...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) recently met in Madrid, Spain where they launched their new strategy to go global, extending what Chris Hedges calls "the most dangerous military alliance on the planet" into Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Clearing the FOG speaks with Joe Lombardo and Pippa Bartolotti of the United National Antiwar Coalition, who were in Madrid for th...

A little known fact, even to those who work there, is that the AFL-CIO organizes in support of US imperialist policies that drive a global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, negatively impacting US workers too. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center is one of the four core components of the National Endowment for Democracy. Clearing the FOG speaks with Kim Scipes, a co-founder of the new...

The recent US Supreme Court rulings set legal precedents that will further erode human and civil rights and empower corporations as well as open the door for more cases that will advance Christian and capitalist ideologies. Clearing the FOG speaks with two legal experts, Shahid Buttar and Marjorie Cohn, about the specifics of the recent decisions on abortion, gun rights, school prayer, and the EPA...

On June 19, Colombians elected the first leftist president and the first Afro-Colombian vice president in history. This was possible, despite being in a repressive state, because of a strong national social movement that organized an effective national strike in the spring of 2021. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charo Mina Rojas, an Afro-Colombian human rights defender and leader in the 2016 peace p...

Much attention is being given to the impacts the conflict in Ukraine and the US sanctions on Russia will have on our food supply this year, but farmer Jim Goodman, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, explains why our food system has been in crisis for a long time. Goodman discusses how the causes of the broken food system - corporatization, consolidation, a rigid supply chain and the...

Activists just completed the "Walk for Appalachia's Future" through West Virginia, North Carolina and Virginia to highlight the impacts of fossil fuel extraction on communities and the land. At each stop, they held events with local activists to learn about their struggles and make broader connections. The Appalachian region is a sacrifice zone - rich in mineral wealth that is extracted by large c...

The Biden administration is ratcheting up its provocations of China as part of the National Security Strategy of Great Power Conflict, with the President going so far as to say the United States would intervene militarily over Taiwan. The US is also trying to push another trade agreement that would exclude China. On top of that is a propaganda campaign designed to build political support for the N...

From June 6 to 10, the Biden administration will host the 9th 'Summit of the Americas.' The event, organized by the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), is turning out to be another huge foreign policy embarrassment for President Biden. In response to the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, an unprecedented number of Latin American and Caribbean Nations are refusing to atten...