Ralph Nader on Gaza Ceasefire & Why Suppression of Palestine Advocacy Is the Real Problem on Campus

this news is funded by viewers like you please support our work at democracynow.org this is democracy now I'm Amy Goodman we end Today's Show with Ralph nater longtime consumer Advocate corporate critic four-time former presidential candidate we'll talk to him about several topics including his new book The rebellious CEO 12 leaders who did it right he's also the founder of Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper has been named by time and life magazines one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century but Ralph let's begin with us policy in Gaza amidst the protest Nationwide calling for a ceasefire senior Biden education official TK abash resigned this week he's the first Biden appointee over what he called Biden's quote complete unwillingness to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza Biden's facing reelection amidst a broader Middle East conflict Ralph you said quote Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations in Gaza what do you mean and what do you feel needs to happen well the important thing in in the US here is to focus on Congress in the white house because they are uh waste deep into in this genocidal War uh in in Gaza the Congress is basically a rubber stamp uh and doesn't even have public hearings as it shovels billions of dollars uh to Israel and it's about to pass unless Bernie Sanders and others who are opposed A 14.3 billion with a B dollar uh uh appropriation for Israel Military Arms and other uh aspects of the Israeli right-wing regime's priorities and that 14.3 billion is larger than the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency it's 20 times the budget of the occupation naal safety and health agency it's four times the budget of the National Park Service which has 300 million visitors so there is rising opposition uh to it in the Congress mostly among Democrats but not not enough and I think the Jewish voice for peace and other vant uh people who are resisting should focus more on the Congress as far as Biden's concerned it really gives a new meaning to hypocrisy he keeps saying publicly that Israel should reduce its impact on civilian casualties and let humanitarian trucks in at the same time he's sending ships full of M Munitions and cargo planes full of Munitions uh to Netanyahu H you cannot have uh humanitarian trucks coming in and it needs to be about 700 at least a day if you don't have a ceasefire because who's going to go in the the roads are torn up they they can't get to their destination the Hospitals and Clinics have been destroyed or disabled uh there's no markets there's no uh ability to receive uh these materials and the Israelis are letting in maybe 10 20 trucks a day uh but they're delaying uh hundreds and hundreds of trucks ready to come in which Biden has already paid for so so Biden is playing netanyahu's game but he's trying to get away with High futing adherence to international law we don't hear enough about the violation of international law us treaties gen Geneva conventions it's as if the US can do anything it wants in Syria and uh and Iraq and Israel can continue to bomb repeatedly in Syria and do other violent acts and the Press never raises the issue of Law Without law you have Anarchy you have all what you're seeing now and the US is very much involved and people are very concerned about a wider conflict here the Israeli is already struck in Beirut and uh you have the Red Sea situation with the houthi uh boats and us is all over the place aircraft carriers they have 247 drones over Gaza so that'll be a very good record when the the Reckoning comes after this war is over in fact you are American Ralph is that right your family from Lebanon yes um I wanted to ask you a question that relates to this you know the protests around Gaza on college campuses around the country ultimately have led to the ouer of two College presidents Liz McGill at upen and now you have claudean gay and I wanted to ask you about the protest yesterday led by Al Sharpton outside the New York office of the bill billionaire investor Bill Amman who helped lead a campaign that led to this week's ouer of the Harvard um University president the first black president of Harvard uh Claudine gay Amman Harvard Alum major donor of the University's publicly railed against Harvard and other schools for supporting Dei diversity equity and inclusion programs Al Sharpton vowed to keep protesting outside amman's office this is what he said we have started these weekly 1hour protests in front of Mr Aman's office he has said that the resignation of Miss Dr Gay at harit is not the end of it they're going to keep fighting till the end Dei which is diversity equity and inclusion that's the CL a war on all of us blacks women gays Dei was designed to bring fairness and equality to people that had been historically marginalized and eliminated so that's how sharpen as part of his campaign to OU gay as Harvard President Bill akman helped amplify allegations that Gade committed plagiarism in her academic work but now amman's wife the MIT Professor ner oxman is facing a plagiarism Scandal of her own business insiders revealed oxman plagarized parts of her doctoral dissertation at MIT on Thursday she apologized and admitted making mistakes of course there was no plagiarism panel that was set up that's the process at Harvard that would evaluate um president gay before she was ultimately I guess you could probably say pushed out by Harvard Corporation with a lot of pressure from these major donors like Bill akman your response before we move into your book on corporate Executives who did it right what's been revealed is the big donors to these universities especially private universities like Harvard Yale Princeton have been exercising their baleful influence for many years over the curriculum you know it's not uh surprising the Harvard Law School for for decades never had a course on corporate law corporate crime rather uh so these large donors now have been revealed to have enormous power over the board of overseers over Harvard University and that's the next investigation for Good News student newspapers like the Harvard Crimson the stuff on plagiarism it could be serious but not in this case given the review of the president's uh past uh uh writings but the the the big issue is the slaughter is the uh suppression of speech on college campuses dealing with the slaughter over there in Gaza and the fatality count uh is is grossly uh undercounted uh Amy I know you you refer to the official uh Hamas health authority count where they only count people whose names they know who died and so it's over 22,000 58,000 injury this is a massive undercount as the head of the global Health Department University edenburgh said in an article in in the guardian the other day there's going to be half a million Gins who are going to die before the end of this year not only from the bombing but from the effect of the bombing in terms of the destruction of the Health Care System infectious diseases the polluted water diarrhea which little children which is often a high rate of fatality and very quickly lack of any food no shelter 85% of the 2.3 million people homeless they have no connection to sanitation food protection the winter elements um my estimate now is at least 100,000 have died and more will die every day because of the effects that I've just described the World Health Organization said they've never seen a situation like this in decades at the the amount of number of children being killed in November it was 150 a day from the Israeli bombing and that's compared to uh two a day in Afghanistan and less than one a day in Ukraine so that's that's the main issue and and at the campus controversy talking about slurs and ethnic slurs and so forth what's behind it all is to uh repress the academic world from speak speaking out and acting uh on what our government is doing to make all this possible and then we also has to have focus on these corporations for a lot of this eight Israel bounces back into contracts for uh missiles Ron Boeing LED Martin they're raking it in and people talk about the lobbying this country supporting any Israeli government uh can do no wrong no matter how extreme uh we have to talk about the military-industrial complex here on capito Hill pushing for more and more of these immense sales and profits uh Ralph you just wrote a book um you are deeply critical right now of the corporations you just mentioned but your book is the rebellious CEO 12 leaders who did it right some may be surprised to see you this corporate critic um writing this book uh famous for unsafe at any speed the designed in D of the American Automobile among other things but in this last minute and then we'll do a postow interview talk about why you wrote it because there's not enough uh good yard sticks to evaluate the misbehavior of giant CEOs of these multinational corporations uh who distort markets control markets but they tell you when you take you criticize them for their Munitions production for opiates for fossil fuels for high drug prices so we're just meeting market demand well these 12 CEOs they uh they made profit but they reversed the business model focusing on protecting treating workers right consumers right uh and environment and they spoke out against War they spoke out against Amy uh Anita erotic of body shops spoke out against the the Cosmetic industry's harm on on young customers Ray Anderson changed his entire we have to leave it there but going to do part two posted democracy now.org Ralph nater author of The rebellious CEO 12 leaders who did it right I'm Amy Goodman thanks for joining us democracy Now is funded by viewers like you please give today at democracy now.org

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 45,934

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: c1lTD96NlBI

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024