May 23, 2024 - Blood Money
18:35
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| 🎵Outro Music🎵 | |
| so | |
| All right, welcome to the latest episode of Blood Money TV. | |
| Today we have a very special guest, Medea Benjamin. | |
| How are you doing today? I'm doing very good, thank you. | |
| So for the viewers that don't know you, Medea, if you could give a little bit of background. | |
| You know, from my end, for the viewers, I was in Congress a couple of months ago and I noticed that Medea Benjamin and her crew were out there trying to speak to every congressional member. | |
| To really notify them about what's happening in terms of Gaza, Israel. | |
| So, Medea, I'm going to pass the mic on to you. | |
| Tell us about your background. | |
| You've been doing this for years. | |
| I've seen videos of you in front of Barack Obama, our current president. | |
| Take us through your journey of how you got started in your activism. | |
| Well, I got started a very long time ago during the days of the Vietnam War when I was in high school and there was a draft at that time and our loved ones were being sent off to a place thousands of miles away that they didn't know who they were supposed to kill and why they were supposed to kill them. | |
| And I realized at that point that war is terrible, that governments lie to us, that we shouldn't allow them to just drag us into war. | |
| And so in one way or another, I've been an anti-war activist my whole life. | |
| Now, I have had to get jobs to pay the rent and that kind of thing, but I never let go of that activism. | |
| And especially after 9-11, when the U.S. wanted to use that as an excuse to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, Then I started, I co-founded with my colleague Jody Evans a group called Code Pink that was a play on words with the A color-coded alert system that George Bush had. | |
| I don't know if your listeners are old enough to remember that. | |
| Oh, I remember that. | |
| Yeah, code yellow, code orange, code red. | |
| Right. And it was a justification to go to war instead of using the diplomacy, using the court systems, bringing individuals to justice. | |
| So we created Code Pink, and I've been doing that ever since, in one way or another, since 2001. | |
| Wow, wow. So, you know, I'm a Gen Xer, and I got to tell you, being a Gen Xer growing up, I think amongst people that were conscious in my age class, we were always wondering what happened to the baby boomers, because there used to be all these peace marches in the 60s. | |
| People were against the Vietnam War, and then Iraq War happened, which was basically Vietnam War 2.0, but you kept it going. | |
| What made you decide to keep Well, I knew that there was always this war machine that President Eisenhower had warned us about back in the 1960s, always searching for an enemy. | |
| So there was the U.S. Overthrowing of governments from Iran to Guatemala, U.S. wars in Central America, the U.S. involvement in all kinds of overthrows of governments in the Middle East. | |
| And I also spent time in Africa. | |
| I worked for the United Nations for a while. | |
| And I saw that even there, when there were governments that tried to do something to improve the lives of people by changing the system. | |
| That the US would suddenly appear funding a paramilitary group to try to overturn any progressive governments. | |
| I saw the same thing with sanctions being used against Cuba, against Venezuela. | |
| So I guess having seen the effects of my government's policies around the world, it really makes me feel a responsibility that I should be actively involved as a US citizen to try to change my government's policy. | |
| Wow, wow. And so now you're working on what is happening in Gaza. | |
| I saw a number of your protests or activism while I was in Congress. | |
| Tell us a little bit about what has been going on with that. | |
| I mean, I noticed you walk up to every congressional member and talk to them. | |
| What is the response you're getting? | |
| When you say certain facts, how are these individuals reacting? | |
| Well, it's funny you should say that right now, because right behind me is a press conference. | |
| I'll turn my camera around with a number of congresspeople that I hope to be talking to when we finish this interview. | |
| Some of them are nice, like this group here is more of a progressive group, and they would be with us on things like trying to withhold Weapons to Israel right now. | |
| And many of them are just the opposite, are terrible. | |
| And they want to keep sending weapons to Israel. | |
| They don't care about the tens of thousands of people who have been killed. | |
| So it's a different response. | |
| I must say that there are very few Republicans, with maybe the exception of one from Kentucky, Tom Massey, who actually have a good position And that he'd rather see things funded in the United States than sending billions of dollars to keep wars going in Ukraine and in Gaza and elsewhere. | |
| But for the most part, the vast majority of people in Congress are hawks that are indebted one way or another to the big weapons industries, as well as the pro-lobby groups, like in the case of Gaza, the group called AIPAC. Wow, wow. So I'm curious, like, do you think there's ever going to be an end to this? | |
| You've obviously been doing this for two decades plus. | |
| We've seen war after war after war. | |
| It seems as though, you know, Afghanistan you brought up, right? | |
| You know, we went and fought a war for 20 years and then left them with $90 billion something of equipment. | |
| I mean, is this nonsense going to end? | |
| Are we going to start focusing on the American people? | |
| Well, that's a big question. | |
| I mean, today we were in a meeting that was talking about the need to keep funding the war in Ukraine. | |
| We just gave $61 billion towards that. | |
| It's now over $100 billion that we've spent. | |
| And you have to ask, who is this government for? | |
| Is it for Is it the military-industrial complex that needs these wars to make their profits? | |
| Or is it for the American people? | |
| And that's why I say I wish there were more Republicans who were saying that. | |
| You know, they talk about fiscal conservatism day and night, and yet they're willing to spend almost a trillion dollars on militarism. | |
| So I think there should be a much, much stronger conversation in this country, no matter what your politics are. | |
| Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever. | |
| There should be much more of a conversation on how do we cut this war machine? | |
| How do we cut hundreds of billions of dollars that we're spending to keep wars going that are creating such suffering around the planet and instead be using it to help people in this country and to deal with things like the climate crisis? | |
| Wow, wow. So let me ask you something about the Republicans, right? | |
| We hear this, you know, MAGA movement, right? | |
| America First. But then, you know, I go to somewhere like Richmond, Virginia. | |
| You know, a month and a half ago, I was in Richmond, Virginia. | |
| I mean, it looks like a third world city. | |
| And I'm wondering, how does America First parallel itself with sending all our money abroad while there's potholes, there's homelessness, there's just absolute urban decay happening in so many of our cities? | |
| Well, it doesn't. | |
| It just exemplifies what I've been saying about how we're so misspending our money with almost a trillion dollars going to war. | |
| Imagine what we could do with that trillion dollars. | |
| And every major city in this country has so many people who are unhoused, has so many people who don't have decent health care. | |
| And look at all the young people that are in terrible debt after just trying to get a college education. | |
| So there's so much we could be doing to help people here at home, and I find it absolutely disgusting that we have allowed our government to just get on this military treadmill. | |
| You know, we go into offices in Congress and you see little models of things like F-35s and say thank you to the congressman from Lockheed Martin or one of those big weapons manufacturers. | |
| I mean, that's just a boondoggle and it's a way of You know, taking our hardened tax dollars and putting them into weapons and making big profits for companies instead of doing what they're elected to do, which is take care of their districts. | |
| And then, of course, they turn around and say, well, we need those jobs. | |
| You know, we've got to make those weapons because they're the best jobs in our county. | |
| And, of course, you know, it's a vicious cycle once you get that. | |
| But studies have shown that the jobs created in the weapons industry, it's the worst way to create jobs. | |
| You create the fewest jobs with those kind of things to say nothing of the fact that they are meant to kill people. | |
| Wow. So let me ask you about the Democrat versus Republican side of things. | |
| In terms of what is happening in Gaza, in terms of the military-industrial complex, is this a uniparty issue or is there a divide there? | |
| Is there one party that would prefer to have peace, would prefer to fund things within the United States as opposed to funding wars? | |
| Well, I think the Democrats, to a small extent, but I think for the most part, it's a bipartisan issue. | |
| You know, the Democrats, at least there's a progressive caucus within the Democratic Party, and some of them are decent on this issue. | |
| But there's a real bipartisan consensus in this country that We have to be, quote, tough on security. | |
| And that means, you know, giving away so much of our resources to the military. | |
| Yeah, yeah. Now let me ask you about Gaza, right? | |
| So I've been talking to a lot of people about what is happening over there. | |
| Some people seem to take insult at this claim that there's a genocide happening there. | |
| How do you typify what is happening in Gaza? | |
| How do you explain to people exactly and accurately what's happening in Gaza? | |
| Well, I think genocide is the right word. | |
| You know, the International Court of Justice is very careful with its wording, and it said it was a plausible genocide. | |
| But as each week goes on, it becomes more and more evident that this is indeed a genocide. | |
| I think when you look at Over 35,000 people killed in the course of seven months. | |
| When you see the majority of the people in that country have been displaced, they're living in tents, they don't have adequate water, adequate food, the healthcare system has been decimated, all of the universities have been destroyed. | |
| I mean, this is destroying a people, and that's what genocide is about. | |
| So I think it's very clear that that's what's happening now, and that we have to do whatever we can to stop it. | |
| Every day that goes by, there's more and more people that are being displaced, and now they're telling them, you know, they told them to move south, move south, go to Rafa. | |
| Now they've got over a million people stuck in Rafah, where they are bombing every single day, and there's no place safe for people to go. | |
| So it is a catastrophic situation with disproportionate violence being used by the Israelis as they seek revenge against what happened on October 7th. | |
| But they are not allowed by law to use this level of violence and have this kind of destruction. | |
| On people that had no involvement, most of the people in Gaza are children, are under the age of 18. | |
| They didn't elect Hamas, they didn't participate in anything on October 7th, and they certainly shouldn't be held responsible. | |
| What do you think they're, like Netanyahu's goal, what is Netanyahu's ultimate goal, you think, with Gaza? | |
| What do you think is really happening there that they don't necessarily tell us is the reason why this is all going on? | |
| Well, he says he wants to destroy Hamas, but it's not a doable goal, because as long as there is an oppression like there has been for 75 years of the Palestinian people, there's always going to be some kind of resistance, whether it's called Hamas Or it's called Islamic Jihad, or it's called PLO, or whatever you call it. | |
| And so if indeed that it is his goal, it's an unwinnable goal. | |
| And in fact, every time a bomb drops, every time a home is destroyed, every time some young man loses his family, you are recruiting more people to the resistance. | |
| Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're basically creating what they call terrorists. | |
| I mean, that's what it is. We see this reoccurring cycle of bombing a bunch of people, and then there's new terrorists, and then they wonder where the terrorists come from. | |
| Absolutely. They are creating so much hatred against the Israeli government that's going to have repercussions for decades to come. | |
| And so the most important thing is to stop the violence, to agree to a ceasefire. | |
| Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire last week and Israel didn't agree to it. | |
| So we've got to be pushing for that. | |
| Wow, wow. You know, when people, like, some people react to what you're saying and say, oh, you're anti-American, you're pro-Hamas. | |
| What do you tell to these people that try to say that, oh, your activism is somehow showing that you're supporting people like Hamas? | |
| You know, they go really extreme sometimes in making these claims. | |
| How do you respond to people like that? | |
| Well, we respond by saying we're pro-peace. | |
| We just want to stop the killing. | |
| We don't want Israelis to be killed. | |
| I'm Jewish. I certainly don't want to see Israelis being killed. | |
| And I don't want to see Palestinians being killed. | |
| And I know that what Israel is doing It's bad for Jewish people worldwide, because it is creating a rise in anti-Semitism. | |
| So I just go back to this issue of how are we going to stop the violence, and we're only going to do that by calling for a ceasefire and then really looking to solve the issue that's been going on for 75 years of Palestinians not having equal rights, not having the right to return to their homeland. | |
| That has to be dealt with if there is ever going to be peace in the region. | |
| You know, Madi, I have just one more question about the current status of what's happening in our U.S. government, right? | |
| So I watched you when I was in D.C. You were there every single day in Congress approaching congressional members with your team. | |
| It's very impressive, actually, because it seems like it's all grassroots, right? | |
| What do you think about this idea? | |
| Because one of the things we keep hearing is that, you know, these congressional members have this enclave called Washington, D.C., right? | |
| And they go there, they're secure in their own little private club. | |
| I've heard ideas that our Congress needs to be moved to the state where somebody is representing. | |
| Meaning, rather than having this big Congress in Washington DC, the congressional members are actually housed in the states Where they are representing the people. | |
| And so what that would do is that the person who's your representative is shopping at your, you know, supermarket, going to your coffee shop, hence with the people, in order for the people to hold those individuals accountable, as opposed to this kind of little private club that seems to exist in D.C. What do you think about that kind of approach in reformatting our government to make it more representative of we the people? | |
| I think so, too. | |
| And I've just got to go right now because there's a policeman approaching. | |
| I just wanted to talk to him. | |
| He's my friend here. But thank you so much for having me on. | |
| Thank you, Medea. Thank you so much for coming on the Blood Money Podcast. | |
| We look forward to seeing you again. | |
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