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The ruling FOG (Forces of Greed) spin news stories in their favor and keep the masses distracted with celebrity gossip and reality shows. Each week on Clearing The Fog, host Margaret Flowers* features guests who are working to expose the truth and offer real solutions to the current crises faced by our nation and the world. Knowledge is power, and with this knowledge you will be empowered to act to shift power to the people and weaken the corporate stranglehold on our lives. This podcast is brought to you each week without advertising.

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*Clearing the FOG was founded by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese in 2012 on We Act Radio. Kevin died in 2020.

One Year After The Coup: The Struggle For Democracy In Peru

December 4, 2023

On December 7, 2022, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo made a poorly-calculated attempt to thwart right-wing plans to remove him from office. This resulted in his immediate imprisonment and the installation of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as the de facto head of government. Boluarte quickly pivoted to align with the right-wing forces. In response, there were major protests throughout the country. For this anniversary, and also the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, Clearing the FOG speaks with Peruvian journalist and activist, Luis Garate, about the current situation, how left-wing forces are organizing and what people in the United States can do to support the social movements’ demands for new elections and accountability for those who murdered and injured hundreds of activists over the past year.

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Guest:

Luis Garate

International Delegation Pushes For Opening The Rafah Border To Gaza

November 27, 2023

Recently, an international delegation traveled to Cairo, Egypt to visit the Rafah border crossing and pressure the United States to allow aid to be brought in to Gaza. Hundreds of trucks carrying aid are lined up at the border waiting for permission to enter. Clearing the FOG spoke with Sara Flounders, one of the members of the delegation, about the current situation in Gaza, the role of the United States in the genocide of Palestinians, how the current conflict is impacting the United States’ drive to protect its hegemony and the blow back in Western Asia. Flounders also discusses the incredible solidarity across the world with Palestine and the numerous creative actions in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

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Guest:

Sara Flounders

As Wars Expand, Veterans And Others Plan Peace Walk To Washington, DC

November 6, 2023

The Israeli War on Palestine, made possible by US support, is beginning to become a regional conflict. In addition to this, the US is backing conflicts in Ukraine targeting Russia, in the Horn of Africa and in Latin America and increasing its aggression against China. Congress is appropriating hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon while the majority of people in the United States struggle to meet their basic needs each week and the climate crisis worsens. To raise awareness about this, Veterans for Peace is organizing a Peace Walk 2024 from Augusta, Maine to Washington, DC, arriving in July to protest the NATO meetings being planned then. Clearing the FOG speaks with Tarak Kauff and Ellen Davidson, two of the Peace Walk organizers.

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Guests:

Tarak Kauff

Ellen Davidson

Fighting Colonial Oppression, Genocide From The United States To Palestine

October 30, 2023

On November 4, people from across the country will gather in Washington, DC for the 15th Annual March to the White House organized by the Black is Back Coalition. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chairman Omali Yeshitela about the theme of this year’s march, building an anti-colonial free speech movement in solidarity with peoples who struggle around the world. Yeshitela is one of the Uhuru 3, who are facing 15 years in jail for their activism. Yeshitela speaks about the historic ties between the black and Palestinian liberation movements. Then, Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, joins the program to speak about a new legal brief on the complicity of the United States with Israel in its commission of genocide and other war crimes.

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Guests:

Chairman Omali Yeshitela – In 1972, Yeshitela formed the African People’s Socialist Party which he chairs. He built the worldwide Uhuru Movement and the African Socialist International with branches now active in the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and on the continent of Africa.Many of the most critical and legendary campaigns of the African community over the past 40 years have been led by Chairman Omali and the Uhuru Movement.The campaign to free Dessie Woods, an African woman sentenced to 22 years for killing a white attempted rapist with his own gun in the 1970s, reverberated throughout the world with its slogan, “Free Dessie Woods, Smash Colonial Violence!”The historic Measure O, the Community Control of Housing Initiative placed on the ballot in Oakland, CA as a land and housing reform measure in 1984, won 22,000 votes and raised forever the struggle for African community control of housing.In 1996, the Chairman united and mobilized the African community following the rebellions sparked by the police murder of 17-year-old TyRon Lewis just four blocks from the Uhuru House in St Petersburg, FL. The Chairman launched the demand for “economic development, not police containment,” forcing the U.S. government to send in the Civil Rights Commission for hearings.

Chairman Omali succeeded in making reparations a household word with the establishment of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African People which was first held in Brooklyn, New York in 1982. Hearings of the tribunal, which determined that U.S. owes African people in the U.S. $4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor alone, have been held thirteen times.

In 1976 Chairman Omali formed the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the organization of white people under the leadership of the Party. Chairman Omali also founded several mass organizations including the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (INPDUM), which for more than 20 years has been in the forefront of defending the African community from police violence and other colonial attacks.

Other organizations created by Chairman Omali include the All-African People’s Development and Empowerment Program (AAPDEP), the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) and the Black is Back Coalition (BIB). Read more here.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught from 1991-2016, a former criminal defense attorney, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She lectures, writes, and provides commentary for local, regional, national and international media. Professor Cohn is cohost of Law and Disorder on WBAI radio in New York and heard on 150 stations nationwide and online. She is founding dean of the Monique and Roland Weyl People’s Academy of International Law.

Professor Cohn has served as a news consultant for CBS News and a legal analyst for Court TV, as well as a legal and political commentator on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and Pacifica Radio.

The author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice (with David Dow) and Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd), Professor Cohn is editor of and contributor to The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, and Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

One of her books was cited in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and her articles have appeared in numerous journals such as Fordham Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, and Virginia Journal of International Law, as well as The National Law Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and Chicago Tribune. Her frequent columns appear on Huffington Post, Truthout, Truthdig, Consortium News, CommonDreams, Counterpunch and ZNet.

She has been a criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels, and was staff counsel to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Professor Cohn is the U.S. representative to the advisory board of the Association of American Jurists, and a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Read more here.

The Commons Is An Antidote To The Crisis Of Capitalism

October 23, 2023

Building on a recent interview with climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann where he talked about the severity of the climate crisis and the urgent necessity of action, Clearing the FOG speaks with David Bollier of the Schumacher Center for a New Economy about the paradigm-shifting concept of The Commons. Bollier travels around the world, particularly to European and Global South countries where The Commons is part of everyday public discourse and activities to learn about ways that people are creating structures to meet their needs outside of the market and the demand for growth.

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Guest:

David Bollier is an author, activist, blogger and consultant who spends a lot of time exploring the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. He’s been on this trail for about twenty years, working with a variety of international and domestic partners. In 2010, he co-founded the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally. More recently, he became Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

David’s work on the commons takes many forms — as an author and blogger; frequent international speaker; conference and workshop organizer; contributor to book anthologies; designer of courses on the commons; and advisor and strategist. He has hosted an educational film, This Land Is Our Land: The Fight to Reclaim the Commons; taught “The Rise of the Commons” course at Amherst College as the Croxton Lecturer in 2010; served an expert witness for the “design commons” in a trademark lawsuit; and contributed chapters to numerous book anthologies.

David was Founding Editor of Onthecommons.org and a Fellow of On the Commons from 2004 to 2010. He has written, co-authored or co-edited twelve books.  His first book on the commons was Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Commons Wealth (2002), a far-ranging survey of market enclosures of shared resources, from public lands and the airwaves to creativity and knowledge. Then he extended this analysis in his 2005 book, Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture, which documents the vast expansion of copyright and trademark law over the past generation that has enclosed our cultural commons. In 2009, he published Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own, which describes the rise of free software, free culture, and the movements behind open business models, open science, open educational resources and new modes of Internet-enabled citizenship.

The book that most encapsulates David’s thinking on the commons is his 2014 book, Think Like a Commoner:  A Short Introduction to the Commons, which has the virtue of being relatively short as well. It has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Korean and Greek, with a Chinese translation now in the works. Two other fairly recent books on the commons include The Wealth of the Commons:  A World Beyond Market and State (September 2012, Levellers Press), which he co-edited with Silke Helfrich.  He co-authored Green Governance:  Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Commons (2013, Cambridge University Press), with the late Professor Burns H. Weston.

In 2014, David also co-edited, with John Henry Clippinger, From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond:  The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in a Digital Society (ID3 and Off the Commons Books)  The anthology of 15 essays describes new tech developments that are enabling new forms of self-organized governance, secure digital identity and user control over personal data.

From 1984 to 2010, David worked with American television writer/producer Norman Lear on a variety of non-television, public affairs projects.  For many years, also, he was Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and co-founder and board member (2001-2011) of Public Knowledge, a Washington policy advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the information commons. In 2012, he won the Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy for his commons work from the American Academy in Berlin. This entailed a residential fellowship and travel in Europe.

David lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, a place that knows a lot about commoning and so inspires a passionate hometown loyalty.

Palestinians’ Legal Right To Resist; Their Fight And Showing Solidarity

October 16, 2023

On October 7, Hamas fighters broke out of Gaza, the world’s largest open air prison, and directly attacked the Israeli State, including military facilities, illegal settlements and airports. Israeli Occupying Forces responded with sophisticated weaponry targeting civilian housing in Gaza and schools and hospitals where people sought refuge. Israel has now stopped all water, power and aid to Gaza. To understand what is happening and Palestinian rights under international law, Clearing the FOG speaks with Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, who resides in Bethlehem. In support of Palestinians’ right to resist, massive rallies and marches are taking place around the world. Clearing the FOG also speaks with Priscilla Lynch and Clara Wagner about their direct action last week targeting L3 Harris, which provides military equipment to Israel, as part of a campaign by Demilitarize Western Mass.

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Guests:

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh is a scientist, author and activist, and is the founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH) and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University where he teaches. He started off in the field of medicine working in the USA, but returned to Palestine in 2008. Qumsiyeh formerly worked at Duke University and Yale in the medical field. He returned to Palestine in 2008, where he established the PMNH. Today the Museum has 8 employees, and Mazin and his wife, Jessie, where they are employed full-time as volunteers. The associated PIBS currently works with women entrepreneurs and also has a native animal rehabilitation facility.

Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books. In some of his writings, Mazin describes the catastrophic environmental impact of Israeli settler colonialism on the land of Palestine. He also shares how Palestinian civil society organizations are working to research, educate about, and conserve Palestine’s natural world, culture and heritage in the face of the current Israeli state’s human rights and environmental abuses. Meanwhile, he does not demonize the people of Israel, themselves, and his works reflect this. Rather, he strives for Peace, education, wellness and prosperity for all the Peoples sharing of that land.

PMNH’S school programs work with students at mixed and single gender schools to develop environmental clubs which plant gardens and recycle while also promoting entrepreneurship projects that give back to their communities. Emphasizing a philosophy of respect, PMNH’S volunteers, staff, and participants are encouraged to respect themselves, others and the environment by creating and maintaining a healthy sustainable environment for all living things. Working in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and the Environmental Quality Authority, PMNH is developing new ways to educate and empower women to create a healthier environment that increases local productivity via ecotourism, permaculture, and home-based projects. PMNH’s staff also worked with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to start an educational empowerment program for women in rural communities.

In the early 2000s Qumsiyeh became more active in political and social causes, particularly Palestinian rights. Since 2003 he has served as Vice President of the Middle East Crisis Committee and in 2000 he co-founded al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, where he was national treasurer and media coordinator until 2004.

Mazin Qumsiyeh received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Jordan, before getting a Masters in Zoology from the University of Connecticut. He completed a PhD in Zoology/Genetics from Texas Tech University in 1986 and went on to do a Clinical Cytogenetics fellowship with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee and a Clinical Molecular Genetics fellowship with Duke University.

Every Degree Matters: Why We Can’t Give Up On Climate Action

October 9, 2023

As the impacts of the climate crisis become more evident, people are understandably struggling with how to respond. Clearing the FOG speaks with climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, author of “Our Fragile Moment: How lessons from Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis,” about the reality of our current situation and how major climate changes in the past have shaped the world and human societies. Mann urges people to avoid a doomsday mindset and explains that the actions we take now to stop fossil fuels and to develop resilient systems, no matter how bad it gets, matter for the future of humanity.

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Guest:

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM).

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research interests include the study of Earth’s climate system and the science, impacts and policy implications of human-caused climate change.

Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001 and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. He has received a number of honors and awards including NOAA’s outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2012 and was awarded the National Conservation Achievement Award for science by the National Wildlife Federation in 2013. He made Bloomberg News’ list of fifty most influential people in 2013. In 2014, he was named Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. He received the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One in 2017, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and in 2020 he received the World Sustainability Award of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He received the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society in 2021 and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2023. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is also a co-founder of the award-winning science website RealClimate.org.

Dr. Mann is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and six books including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, The Tantrum that Saved the World and The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet and Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.

Julian Assange May Be Extradited To The United States This Month

October 2, 2023

Why that matters and what you need to know.

Julian Assange may be extradited to the United States as soon as this month. His last avenues to appeal the United Kingdom’s extradition order are being exhausted. Clearing the FOG speaks with Kevin Gosztola, an investigative journalist and author of “Guilty of Journalism: The political case against Julian Assange,” about why the power structure is targeting Julian Assange, the charges against him and how his trial in the United States will be constrained to prevent him from defending himself. Gosztola also discusses the bigger picture of the impacts of Assange’s case, especially how it will embolden more attacks on journalists who expose wrongdoing.

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Guest:

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof, host of the “Dissenter Weekly,” co-host of the podcast “Unauthorized Disclosure,” and member of Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). He is the author of “Guilty of Journalism: The political case against Julian Assange,” available through Project Censored.

Journalists Fight Back Against Attacks On Our Right To Know

September 25, 2023

Information control in the United States is growing stronger as journalists face more restrictions on their ability to speak with people who work for the public good in agencies and institutions from the local to federal levels and are being targeted through illegal raids and confiscation of their equipment. Clearing the FOG speaks with Kathryn Foxhall, a journalist who works on freedom of information, about another journalist, Brittany Hailer, who is suing over restrictions on her ability to interview employees at a local jail where an unprecedented number of deaths are occurring. Foxhall explains why these restrictions are human rights abuses. Clearing the FOG also speaks with Seth Stern of the Freedom of Information Foundation and Bobby Block of the Florida First Amendment Foundation about journalists’ legal rights and their new Know Your Rights Guild for journalists.

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Guests:

Kathryn Foxhall has been a Washington reporter, mostly on health, for over 40 years, including 14 years as editor of the American Public Health Association’s newspaper. She has become a point person for the Society of Professional Journalists and others in opposing the new culture of gag rules. She was awarded the 2021 Wells Key, SPJ’s highest honor for members, specifically for that work.

Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He oversees FPF’s efforts to defend press freedoms and stand up for journalists and whistleblowers who have been denied their rights. Prior to joining FPF, Seth practiced media and First Amendment law in Chicago for over a decade. Before that, he worked as a reporter and editor in the Chicago and Atlanta areas. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Bobby Block has had a four-decade career in journalism, including contributing to the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of 9/11, which earned a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News in 2002.

He co-authored the book “Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security,” and has reported on various conflicts across the globe, including Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the executions of more than 8,000 men and boys by Serbian forces in a Bosnian village in 1995.

Block assumed his leading role with the Florida First Amendment Foundation on Feb. 1. In a press release announcing his hire, the foundation points to a “callous disregard for the law” in the erosion of First Amendment rights in Florida.

“Never has the work of the Foundation been more essential than it is now at a time when reporters and citizens across Florida are being stonewalled and denied their right to access government information,” Block said in a statement. “Public records and Sunshine laws are being routinely disregarded across Florida with seemingly no fear of reprisals. This cannot be allowed to stand for the sake of our democracy.”

In addition to the Wall Street Journal, Block has also reported for the Tribune Company, Reuters and the Independent of London. He has also contributed to the New York Review of Books.

‘Climate Bill’ Enriches The Fossil Fuel Industry As Communities Suffer

September 18, 2023

One year after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Big Green groups hailed as a ‘climate justice bill,’ the truth is surfacing that this legislation is lining the pockets of the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of frontline, especially Black and Indigenous, communities. Clearing the FOG speaks to Anthony Rogers-Wright, a national racial and climate justice advocate, about the ways Joe Biden and the Democrats are failing to address the climate crisis and Big Green groups are turning away from climate justice to embrace Green Capitalism. Rogers-Wright also describes better alternatives to the Big Greens and where people can focus their efforts effectively to struggle for a just and livable future.

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Guest:

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright serves as NYLPI’s Director of Environmental Justice. In this capacity, he guides and coordinates the organization’s EJ strategy, litigation, organizing and advocacy initiatives. Prior to joining NYLPI, Anthony was the Policy Coordinator and Green New Deal Policy Lead with the Climate Justice Alliance, where he assisted with developing and promulgating local, State, and federal organizing and policy strategy for the alliance’s 74 grassroots, frontline-led organizations across the country. A veteran of social justice campaigns, Anthony helped lead the effort to make the former Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative the first health insurance provider in the state’s history to remove transgender exclusions from all of their policies in 2012. He has acted as a policy advisor for numerous candidates for elected office including Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in 2020, and Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns in 2020 and 2016 when he represented the campaign during testimony to the DNC Platform Committee. Anthony was selected as one of the Grist.org “50 Environmentalists You’ll Be Talking About” in 2016. He’s written numerous articles discussing the axiomatic nexus of the climate crisis and racial injustice and has spoken on the subject at universities throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Anthony serves on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth, Backbone Campaign, and Center for Sustainable Economy, as well as the Advisory Committee for Evergreen Action, and is blessed to be the father of his energetic and very loquacious 8-year-old son, Zahir Cielo (aka “Bean”). He received his B.A. in Environmental Science and Policy, and his master’s degree in Community Development, Environmental Science, and Public Policy from Clark University in Worcester, MA.

As A Working Class-Led Global Movement Rises, Elites Are Panicking

September 11, 2023

Around the world, a major organizing effort is underway, led by civil society and unions with the International People’s Assembly, to build a working class movement for alternative systems that address the many crises we face. A series of regional conferences called the Dilemmas of Humanity are taking place in preparation for an international conference in South Africa in mid October. Clearing the FOG speaks with Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News about the recent meeting in Atlanta, which is part of this process. Puryear speaks about the significance of the Stop Cop City movement and the necessity of leadership coming from frontline communities in the South. He also talks about the threat of nuclear war and the growing state repression of activists and journalists who dare to challenge the wealthy class.

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Guest:

Eugene Puryear is a longtime journalist and community organizer currently-based in New York City. Eugene helped to organize a number of the large-scale demonstrations that took place against the continuing U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was a key leader In the struggle to free the Jena Six in 2007, and a founder of the anti-gentrification group Justice First, the Jobs Not Jails coalition, DC Ferguson Movement and Stop Police Terror Project-D.C. Puryear is the author of the book Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America, and spent five years in radio prior to helping found BT News.

This Is How We Challenge The Power Of Big Pharma

September 4, 2023

People in the United States pay the highest prices for pharmaceuticals, and Big Pharma spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying to keep it that way. The United States is also experiencing a growing shortage of medications from antibiotics to cancer treatments and more despite being a wealthy country. Clearing the FOG speaks with Dana Brown of the Democracy Collaborative to understand what is behind the high prices and shortages. She also describes solutions to these crises and how states across the country are taking action to directly confront the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over our lives.

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Guest:

Dana Brown is the director of health and economy at The Democracy Collaborative, where her research focuses on health and care systems, the pharmaceutical sector, and economic transformation for health and well-being. Brown is the author of “Medicine For All: The Case for a Public Option in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Democracy Collaborative, 2019).” Her work has also appeared in outlets such as STAT News, The Hill, The Guardian, The New Republic, and In These Times.

Previously, she was the director of The Next System Project, which The Democracy Collaborative launched in 2015 as a platform for exposing the systemic failures of our current economic system and presenting alternatives.

Brown holds a BA from Cornell University, an MA from the Universidad del Salvador (Argentina), and is currently pursuing an MS in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

New Film: Colonialism And Capitalism Are Decimating Our Forests

August 28, 2023

Award-winning producer, activist and artist Eleanor Goldfield has a new documentary out, To The Trees, about forest defense in the Redwood Forests of Northern California. Beautifully filmed and composed, Goldfield shows the decimation of our old-growth forests and efforts to stop this crime while placing the struggle in the broader context of colonialism and capitalism. Clearing the FOG speaks with Goldfield about how she connected with forest defenders, the experience of making the film and what we can all do to protect our last remaining Redwoods, the giants of carbon sequestration. Aptly named, To The Trees will inspire you to embrace and protect our forests.

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Guest:

Eleanor Goldfield is a creative radical, journalist and award-winning filmmaker.

Her work focuses on radical and censored issues via photo, video and written journalism, as well as artistic mediums including music, poetry and visual art. She is a board member of the Media Freedom Foundation, the co-host of the podcast Project Censored along with Mickey Huff, and co-host of Common Censored along with Lee Camp.

She also assists in frontline action organizing and trainings. Follow her work at ArtKillingApathy.com, where you will find information about her previous documentary “Hard Road of Hope.”

Niger Is The Latest West African Nation To Rise Up Against Neocolonialism

August 21, 2023

At the end of July, the Presidential Guard of Niger, backed by the military, unseated the current president, Mohamed Bazoum, in a coup supported by the people. In response, the United States and France, with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), began planning a military intervention to return Bazoum to power. West African nations, including Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, quickly declared solidarity with the new government, a move that could turn a military intervention into a greater regional conflict. To understand what is happening in Niger and how it fits into the bigger picture of the rejection of neo-colonialism and US hegemony, Clearing the FOG speaks with Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire.

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Guest:

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire, an electronic press agency that was founded in 1998. He has worked for decades in solidarity with the liberation movements and progressive governments on the African continent and the Caribbean.

Azikiwe is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science/Public Administration and Educational and Administrative Studies.

He is the co-founder of several Detroit-area organizations including: The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, and the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs.

Between 2007-2011 Azikiwe served as the chairperson of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights(MCHR). For additional three years Azikiwe served as President and later Vice-President of MCHR. He is currently a board member at large in the organization.

Azikiwe has worked as a broadcast journalist for the last 22 years and has hosted and co-hosted programs on several radio stations including, WHPR in Highland Park, MI, WDTR in Detroit, WCHB in Detroit, CKLN in Toronto and WDTW in Detroit. In 2010 he launched a weekly two-hour blog talk radio program entitled the “Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast.”

Azikiwe is often solicited by various newspaper, radio and television stations for comment and analysis on local, national and world affairs. He serves as a political analyst for Press TV and RT worldwide satellite television news networks as well as other international media in the areas of African and world affairs. He has appeared on numerous television and radio networks including Al Jazeera, CCTV, BBC, NPR, Radio Netherlands, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Belgian Pirate Radio, TVC Nigeria and others.

Azikiwe has traveled and lectured throughout the United States and Canada. In the 1990s he conductd field research in the Southern African nations of South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho.

Between 1984-2000, Abayomi Azikiwe served as the editor of Pambana Journal monograph series published at Wayne State University in Detroit. During this period, Azikiwe published twenty-four monographs dealing with the history and political economy of the Pan-African world and the international community in general. There were two research discussion papers on Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Studies in 1992. Azikiwe also formed and directed the Pan-African Research & Documentation Project from 1991-1999 at Wayne State University.

He is the author of numerous articles and monographs and his writings have been published in the Tanzania Citizen, Zimbabwe Herald, Malawi Nation, Southern Times in Namibia, The New Worker in England, Africa Insight in South Africa, the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal, The 4th Media in Beijing, Capital Asia in Malaysia, the Albany Tribune, Black Agenda Report, The San Francisco BayView, News Ghana in West Africa, Pambazuka News at Oxford UK, Allafrica.com, the World Financial Review along with others publications.

Azikiwe has published chapters in three books over the last seven years: “Haiti: A Slave Revolution,” NYC (2010) and “Gaza: Symbol of Resistance,” World View Forum (2011) and “The Illegal War on Libya,” edited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (Clarity Press, 2012).

He is the author of recent pamphlets entitled “What You Should Know About the The Hidden War in Congo, Past & Present (2008), “Africa and Imperialism,” (2011) and has four articles in another pamphlet entitled “U.S. Hands Off Libya.” (2011)

In September 2016, Azikiwe published a book entitled “Pan-Africanism, Gender Emancipation and the Meaning of Socialist Development: Revisiting the Role of Women in Nkrumah’s Ghana”. Later in 2017, Azikiwe published the book “Notes on the World Socialist Movement: From the Soviet Union to the Bolivarian Revolution.”

Also in late 2017, the PANW editor published the book entitled: “Rebellion, Crises and Social Transformation: Lessons From the July 1967 Detroit Rebellion and Beyond.”

Victims Of The East Palestine Train Disaster Still Fighting For Their Lives

August 14, 2023

On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern Railroad train carrying 150 cars, some containing toxic chemicals, derailed in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio on the border with Pennsylvania. The residents in the immediate area were evacuated but the 100,000 gallons of chemicals, including vinyl chloride, that spilled spread throughout the region. Now, over six months later, many residents still cannot return to their homes. Hilary Flint of Enon Valley, Pennsylvania, the vice president of the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment joined Clearing the FOG to describe what happened, the failures of the local, state and federal governments to provide what affected residents need and how they are organizing to pressure President Biden to grant Governor DeWine’s request for an emergency declaration and more.

Listen here:

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Guest:

Hilary Flint is the vice president of the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment.

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