for making a living from fields and rivers to progressing to industrial growth. but the government and the oil companies had their own dreams, and instead they were left with the lands contaminated. and that's a promise on fulfilled. despite a $1000000000.00 clean up fund, leave you and documents to fee that the agency responsible for the f $1.00 has completely failed to deliver results lazy. i was complaining goodman, who was this boy that does good move on the blow of everything like for you and to do we of everybody's died. i am in a boat with professor then by the needs of a, the called the nature of the hydro, carbon pollution reputation project. hyper what his leadership is on this committee . recently, then, like you've been some dates warned that he could face a restful fading 7 times before a committee investigating mismanagement of the project. for one month.

as i saw you got on, i mean, are we are we are we are despite the $1000000.00 budget, the clean up doesn't appear to have made an impact. nowhere near large scale f. what needed to hear this land? yet as the government, the fast to restart or production many fee, a repeat of the fast for the families of the albany, $9.00 activists executed for opposing or the exploitation in 1995. this struggle feels like it back to the last we've not been able to do any of that. please do those who are our lead us us. we are inspecting that day. we continue with

the judicial most of them have been there many not there. we get the money and that one done, the money to many agony is no longer just the feeling in albany land. it's a fate. what should have been prosperity has become a legacy of suffering already hash and as a 0 or going to land nigeria more on all the stories on our website at around 20 at dot com, serial viney. and we'll have another options here and use out for you in about 13 minutes. stay with us for upfront coming up next. next on the the,

there's no limit to how a dream continue to study in your own event, you know, counter and things with donald trump. back in the white house, video questioning whether the age of liberal democracy is coming to an end. so what does the 2nd trump term mean for the united states over the next 4 years? and what impact will his foreign policy have on the middle east? this week and upfront, i ask those questions to fill up the prize winning journalist on the war correspond . it presents the procedures. thanks so much for joining us for us. yeah, mark, thanks good to see. but now we are now officially at the beginning of the trump

administration. part to this is the person who has previously tried to deploy the military against what he described as radical left of lunatics. he's still supporters that they might not ever need to vote again after his victory. this somebody called from mainstream media outlets to be investigated for treason. what do you see it? some of the most significant challenges that the united states going to face over the next 4 years of what you just name them except everything was put in place by the democrats to begin was the party of censorship is the democratic party. the party of war is the democratic party, the party of mass surveillance is the democratic party, the party, the turbocharged, neo liberalism, whether it was an after the destruction of the welfare system, the deregulation of the c. c. a, the tearing down of firewalls between investment and commercial banks class siegel is the democratic party. all you have to do is flip a switch, and he has an authoritarian state, including of course,

all the executive orders. so those, those, pre, the orders. this is interesting because there are a lot of people watching who would see the policies you've laid out. uh, as the product of republican administrations, they say, you know, the shrinking of the government, the expansion of the military. that's reagan, stuff they'd save. you mass criminalization. you know, it happens because of republican efforts to change the status quote. they would, they would look at all of these policies and say, hey, democrats were complicit. but this is really republican. it's not, it's rooted in jimmy car. jimmy carter began it reagan pick it up. uh, but uh, the most seismic damage was done under clinton, perpetuated by bush obama and everyone else. and what you had was essentially the merger of 2 parties into one party. and that's why with the rise of what my friend, glen forward used to call the trunk, the white man's body. you have. so you had a transformation which was in the clinic. ministration was pivotal, where the,

the democratic party transformed itself into the republican party. and the republican party was push so far to the right, it became insane. and cold and trust you have to think of trump is a cult figure, not as a political figure. and uh, and so i know the democratic party is as or more complicit and then with the breakdown of the republican party and it transfer of its allegiance to trump. you saw the establishment wing of the republican party merge with the democratic party lives cheney. i mean harris's vapid celebrity filled issue list campaign was, you know, president was, it was promoting her endorsement by dick cheney a war criminal who left office was 13 percent approval rate. i mean, shows you how utterly out of touch the democratic party has become. but let's say the ruling class, i mean they live in an echo chamber, which is perpetuated by the media. so they actually don't have

a clue about number one, the damage that they've been split their whole. i mean 30000000 mass layoffs since 1996. and i, i know half of my family comes from romaine. i've seen what nafta does. their reaction is not one i embrace, but i understand the desperation, the anger of the legitimate anger, the towns that but like where my grand parents are from a mechanic falls means the bank is boarded up. i mean, i remember as a boy, they were never made a lot of money, but my grandfather worked in the post office and were d constructing all of these institutions that once he had a pension, he had a stable income. that's a for that. and i should have gone and the democratic party is as complicit. let me tell you for things i want to drill down on some of these things. you use it a lot of really important things. one of the things you just talked about was an out of touch elite. we're certainly single growing concentration of wealth and

political power among a very small group of people. i think most notably of the fact that trump is a symbol of the richest set of advisors and cabinet members in american history, they're worth a collective $450000000000.00. and of course, there's increased corporate influence and billionaire influence over the democrats and republicans over the whole political scene. how much of that context is important for understanding the future of american democracy? is american democracy under threat because of this under threat. it doesn't exist. i don't think it exist a, it's a veneer. it sits the end of the roman m, r. you have the symbols, the iconography and the language of a democracy, but the internally, corporations, and all the guards have seized all the levers of power. i looked at this election as a battle between corporate has an oligarchy. corporate has the democrats. they want something very different from holland barks. corporate just wants to build

a they want the car on that kind of decorum that obama had or bush at, or is it? bush was an idiot, but at least you have some, you know, they could clean them up a little bit and abide. you know, whatever is cognitive failings, were they, they, because they want stability, especially in terms of trade agreements because they make investments overseas. takes a while for a return on a profit, corporate just want something different from all gods. all the darks are about chaos they're about is the ban. instead. deconstructing the administrative state why? because it is a pure form of warranty, a capitalism. and by that i mean that they make their money by setting up told books, amazon, you know, all these digital media platforms it's, it's not about producing goods. and the more that the state is deconstructed, that's why they want to abolish the department of education. everything that we need to as a civil society becomes privatized, and so that's what all arcs want,

and the, all the guards have what they want and, but that's what this bottle was about in terms of, if we, if we strip away it's uh, you know, the kind of trivia or the cultural differences between the 2 parties that add its, cor, was what it's about. and so we have, as you point out, i mean, we have now an oligarchy system. but as aristotle wrote, once you create an oligarchy system with those kinds of inequities, then you are only 2 choices, are tearing a revolution. you, you talk about people choosing fascism, the people or the conditions being set for people to almost have no alternative choice. and you've written about this, this idea you wrote an article in fact that i thought was super interesting. how fascism came. now that term itself has roots in most of the needs of thor terry rule in the world war one. uh, i think of brutal oppression. i think of the crushing of dissent. uh,

is it not hyperbolic at this moment in history to say that that's what we're facing here? well, every fashion system has its own peculiar characteristics. so you mentioned mussolini that was rooted in ancient rome and the glory of augustus. and all this where as german fascism was rooted into tonic mists and uh, spanish fascism under franco was something different. robert paxton, when he writes his book, the anatomy of fascism, he calls the client the most authentic fastest movement in american history. a and and again, paxton in the book says that it won't come with jack boots and the swastika, it will become with the christian cross and mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. and i certainly came away after spending 2 years with the christian right, with the belief that these people that they had politicized and used christianity to build a native freshest stick movement. of course,

grounded in white supremacy. um and uh and, and you've seen the trump has no way the allergy is just a grifter, but he is fill that area of logical void with these figures like mike huckabee, you know, who, who calls the westbank, judy and scenario, or the, his un ambassador who said, you know, they, they suddenly, us foreign policy is rooted in biblical missed, but that's where we're headed. and so, yes, i see it as, especially as the system disintegrates, and in terms of voting for, well, i mean, any totality or a movement is grounded in magical thinking and, and when the real world becomes so onerous, so oppressive, so exploitive and you engender that kind of despair and all the writers have to tell a terry newsome ground the rise of totality or in movements hannah error and fritz to all of them in despair. which is what's happened to a significant part of the country. then you reach out for magical thinking. that's

what trump offer. see? he, you know, not it is coherent, but fascism is not really a coherent 80 ology. that's a weight in his book. male fantasy talks about how it's really at his core about hyper masculinity. if you look at trump is a coal figure in margaret's fingers book colts in our midst. it's about endowing your coltish leader with the potent power. let me ask you something i want you to put your, your christian head on for a minute. you're actually or data i am here and administer. oh that's i don't make that public to much buttons. all right. the father was admitted to the us, right. i got a need for that. so that yet, so trump's victory rally. there was a prayer said and it struck me and i really thought, what would chris have just say? the person reading the prayer said president, trump, we set the name of the lord upon you. and we declared that no weather in florida against you will prosper. that every tongue that rises up against you in judgment

will be condemned. and if god be for you, who can be against you as wow, i've heard that, that pray. a lot of times i've heard this scripture from isaiah a lot of times in black church and other churches didn't expect it to hear it said over donald trump. when you hear what do you make of dollar tree mark worshipping the freedom of luck. it's i dollars, heresy, a. it was a split. it's the sac realization of human and political power, which is probably the greatest in any religious institution can make up the mega churches work like this. and i learned this from an era, you have the man, they have much better seats and we do in the presbyterian church, they're comfortable, they kind of recline, they've got nice music. i mean, nice, it's all cheesy and lights and they make you feel good. but that is the form of it, not what she calls, indoctrination and all factors movements do that. they bring you into the warm embrace. i mean that's the propaganda. sorry. then they move you to the back room

for indoctrination. i went to both, so i went to these prayer meetings and one of the things i saw on these prayer meetings was the, the paint on the part of family members who had, quote, unquote been saved. and their family members who worked and, and they, they occupied these mega churches occupy all your educational time, your religious time, your social time, your leisure time, whatever it is. so, you know, it's their propaganda. i mean i, i dug deep inside to this leviathan called the christian right. call that i call american fest as the nationalist, right. i mean, yeah, the complete nationalist and you know what they are is the journey they are are, are essentially equivalent of the so called german christian church, established under the fascist in germany. where on one side you have the christian cross and the other nazi fine. let's be clear, mark. this church has bankrolled by the very 1000000000 our class that we talked

about. why? because with magic jesus, you don't need labor unions with magic jesus. you don't need health care because magic jesus is going to give you a cadillac and, and make all your dreams come true. and then, and that use that shift from a reality based world, into the world of magical thinking. and once people shift in to that world of magical thinking, you can't reach them. so rational argument is that gonna come through the trump administration to point out even more? yeah. that's what these are the people who want. they just want they want the 1st time to but yeah, but trump was totally unprepared. on focus. he didn't. now he's got heritage 2025. i mean you've seen from, you know, they now they're organized. i mean, trump is a very limited intellectually, very limited figure he's, he's a carnival barker and he, he, you know, is his 1st administration was dogged by one crisis and resignation. i mean, was this chaos? yeah, that's different. this time it's attention. let me put it because i have to talk to

you about guys. if all the reasons it's something you pay careful attention to. it's been a lot of time. obviously in guys a, during the 7 years, the report for me at least and this past this past summer you were the west bank. you're writing your forthcoming book, which is called a genocide for told reporting on survival and resistance in occupied a house by a 1st i guess. what do you make of the ceasefire? and particularly the idea that uh, president trump played a pivotal role in making it happen. optics, he wanted a pause. i mean, i think a cease far. it will probably stand a little bit beyond that, but it's really a pause, embalming for the presidential inauguration. it will last. i mean, look, you know, the history of the middle east pretty well to but every agreement hills real has ever made with the palestinians has done in phases. that whether that camp david,

whether that's as low, whether it's all the seas far agreements. and israel gets what it wants in the 1st phase, and then violates every other face. that's a pattern. they've never broken it. so they want the hostage, they want to thinks they want the hostages, as many as they can get back. and they want to normalize relations with saudi arabia and the so called around the courts. once they get that, i mean, nothing you, i was already said. yeah. and the uh, the trump special envoy in the middle east has already said that if they quote unquote violate the palestinians, the agreement, then the mass slaughter will begin. and of course, as soon as the mass slaughter was paused and guys, so they turned on the west bank, especially jeanine, so particularly yeah, they, they're not done. i mean, you know, anybody who thinks that their campaign of a ration dispossession of the palestinians is it's a, we've, and we've seen these kinds of pauses before. so i think that i was, you know, i've been, i worked a lot in gaza. i have a lot of friends and go as i and some of them are dead. some of them got out and

some of the movie and heard from weeks there probably buried under the rubble. i mean, i think for a lot of us who spend time, there's been really difficult emotionally to watch this live stream genocide and not just the indifference of the united states, but complete complicity. the fact that people could vote for harris or biden. i mean that's, you know, genocide is not normal governance. i mean, do we have any more align left? i mean, and when i get your thoughts on the end of the patient, um the end of apartheid and whether those things can actually be achieved. uh, not too long ago we spoke of a sheet of vanity who, who is professor emeritus and he stated that it was connection to the us and western europe is freight every day. and that israel is becoming, include increasingly isolated. on the global stage. he said, sooner later, public opinion is going to have an impact and it's going to cause support for

israel to stop. do you agree with that position? yes, but it might take a generation, a generation short because this old, older generation still has a fealty to israel. that the younger generation, including juice to not, i mean i was in a lot of students for justice in palestine meetings and campuses across the country . and what 3040 percent of them are george. so uh yeah it's, it's, it's terminal. but it's, i don't know what you want poppy, the great is really a story and has talked about, i think at 1.3 years, i don't think it's that quick. i think that these, i think that's how surprised some people are saying we're a few years away from that. yeah, i don't know. like a generational way. yeah. yeah. because that next generation isn't going to have that kind of loyalty. now that's why is real as investing so much of its capital in the christian christian design as in the christian fashion. because they have this warped, perverted biblical view of christ returning and the rapture, which isn't even in the bible. and i mean that is core. if you really examine is

pretty anti semitic, but they, i think even israel has realized that the younger generation of jews are lost cause and so there they have wedded themselves to the christians. honest people like mike huckabee is about to become the ambassador or the un and basset or understand they're not alone. i mean they're so, but that's what, that's a naked kind of fascism. we didn't get into israel's distortions itself. it is, it does a pro fascist system. yes. yahoo! label, woods, you know, the great is really floss for kind of saw it coming. and you know, nothing. yahoo is not stupid, nothing. yeah. he's pretty evil, but he's not stupid. he said, everybody thinks the world is moving towards that kind of enlightenment and no waiting. that's why bills relationships with autobahn and others is know, it's moving towards this kind of authoritarian is on my work. i'm, we're come, we're then we're what's coming next and you may not be wrong. um, so israel's, you know, becoming a space, i'm probably even for as rarely. it's

a very despotic place. people who have the courage to decry the genocide and the occupation our prayers getting leaves in me raw. so he's amazing journalist from motus, i mean they have become total outliers within their own society. you deal with journalism. you are the middle east bureau chief of the new times for several years, and of course you quit because they reprimanded, you know, i didn't quit. going to keep reminding me when i see them, what they do is suddenly the, you're the middle east bureau chief for the near times. it's like the old soviet party where you get to stand up, you know, with all the other old people and look at the made a parade or whatever. and then you suddenly find yourself and as you can stand, so you're on the right. i mean, they put you in a dead end and they knew i'd leave. so, but i ran into the executive editor a couple years ago, the mckinney ran across the room, so we did not fire you with them. okay. okay, so, so you do with that, i want to clear that up for your new york times, viewers, they're not there. but what,

what ever experience you had there was in direct response to your opposition to the right. yeah. or yeah. so, but also palestine. yeah. and promised that because i had taken vacation time and written a magazine piece and harper's called the gaza diary, and the times when apoplectic and when that was published, i was told you will never report from middle east again. so it already been banned for the middle east. i posed the iraq war and that was it from that moment. and so now do you see any different 10 or a news rooms? do you hear any different sensibilities from the journalism world? has coverage changed on the middle east since that time gets worse? far worse. yeah. so i will look at the reporting on gaza. look at the reporting on the student protests. you know, they go up to columbia and race off to the hotel house and talk about how, you know, to a students, quote your students saying they feel uncomfortable. well, you know what, it's a genocide, you know, perpetrated by design just project that you support. so maybe you should feel

uncomfortable usually that was worse than say, 1982 during the invasion or 11 or, or in the early. yeah. does. yeah. yeah, the whole, i mean, you know, we don't have time to critique the new york times, which was always going to lead us publication. beholden to centers of power. never good on is real. but the space has shrunk, because that's commercial because the, you know, they've lost so much advertising their digital subscriptions. don't they bring in significant revenue? but digital subscribers are very fickle about canceling. so uh yeah, there's less, i mean there was space, i work for them for 15 years. i mean i was a management headache but, but to that space has shrunk and from control. and they cater for commercial, not for journalistic reasons, to they, they've silo themselves, and they tater, to a particular demographic, their farm or obsequious to that demographic than they were. when i worked there, i got to ask you one more question. a given what we're facing, our traditional forms of protest or defense enough or

does the scale of the crisis, the intensity of the suffering people are experiencing right now? does it demand a more radical response in what, what we've traditionally done? yeah, it demands a more radical response because we have to destroy the system. we have to destroy the ruling class. and the only mechanism we have to destroy the ruling class is by disrupting economic, social and political life. that comes through mass mobilization primarily through labor and especially for the strike. we have to rebuild militant labor movements that shut the country down. uh, that's the only the way out of this and, and the hollow guards have understood this for a long time. it's why they have made more against organize labor for a long time, only 11 percent of us, a workforce is unionized. but we have to regain that militancy. we have to understand who our enemy is and that if we don't break the back of that and many

enemies, things are going to get worse and worse and worse. and we have to understand the only power we have is collective and it will require sacrifice. and i mean, we have the bloodiest labor, worse of any industrialized country. hundreds of american workers were killed. thousands, probably tens of thousands. we're blacklisted. you know, joe hill, you know, all of this, you know, that we're, we got to look back because of the capitalist class. i know they're, they're going to use every vicious mechanism they have because it's all and you, you saw the way, you know, they essentially made it impossible for me without that corporate money. bernie sanders would have run against drop the 1st time around. and i believe we would want, but they destroyed it. they destroyed that possibility. so are you hopeful that we're close to that moment? are we on the precipice of a radical moment of resistance that we in the verge of toppling power? no, because the left has been so decimated, so we don't have the left we have in the thirty's. europe went one way fascist. we went another way, which was kweisi socialist. but our left has been so decimated and destroyed. i

fear that we don't have the forces of resistance that can, you know, create the kind of space and socially quality and liberty that is, is, should be fundamental to an open society. so no, i'm actually very pessimistic. however, um, you know, that's where i fall back on my religious tradition where it doesn't matter. i mean, you come out of the black prophetic tradition, you know, boy, if anybody understood the world around them and the forces against them, it works because the, the, you know, black america and the black prophetic traditions. but they fought anyway. and they fought any way because it wasn't finally what they achieved empirically. it was who they were, it was their own dignity, and we have to protect our own dignity. the soul is real. and if we don't stand up against these rapacious forces a radical evil,

our soul will die. and we may not win, but we must save our soul. is where it is. thanks so much for joining me. thanks for the in february 1958. the french ear correspondence a nation village near of curious border, getting more than 70 people. what happened in the sac he had showed that the colonial status quote, will sound sustainable. the sick used to be uses attack resounded as far as the united nations. of the real world exams, the incidence that put those you in were of independence on the stage. the story of the massacre now to 0. the sun rises really into the, the

history was written. the age of it came, theory is here, the be students and it totally the timeless journey connecting communities adoption was never a benevolent effort. my family didn't need to be separated. my family needed to be supported. this isn't just about korea, this is a global industry opening up the conversation. would you say a conferences are, do people have low stress? because it won't be this out. the forget for people who are actually facing them front of climate change with fresh perspectives from less are heard. voices the stream, explores the key issues of our times on. i'll just hear a lot of the stories that we cover a highly complex. so it's very important that we make them as understandable as we can to as many people as possible, no matter how much they know about

a given chrisy. so issue the smell of that is all over power. as long as you say we're correspondence, that's what we strive to do. the of the ones that are of any age good to have you with us. this is the news, our life from the coming up in the program today. the joy mixed with grief, policy and prisoners freed from is really jails, speak of the holistic conditions they enjoyed. and now many returning to gaza or finding their loved ones were killed in their homes, reduced to rubble. that's on, you know.