Alright y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio and I got Kevin Zeese on the line from comehomeamerica.us Hi Kevin, how are you?
Hey Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great, appreciate you joining us today.
And now listen here, I think that comehomeamerica.us is the most important thing in the whole wide world.
Why don't you tell everybody about it?
Well, Come All America is an effort to bring people from across the political spectrum together if they oppose war, militarism, and empire.
We don't care what your political views are on other issues, whether you're a libertarian or a progressive, a liberal or a conservative, a republican or a democrat, or an independent or a third party member.
We just want to bring people together who oppose war and militarism.
We look at the power of the military industrial complex, their control of the congress, and we see that in order for us to be successful in challenging that military machine, we need to unite and put our side or other differences and unite together to really work to reduce the political power of the military industrial complex and their minions in congress.
It occurs to me that you could probably use millions and millions of dollars, am I right?
I think that's very true.
The military industrial complex certainly spends hundreds of millions of dollars to control the political process, and we can't compete with them dollar for dollar, but I think we can compete with them person for person.
I think the more we get out the message about U.S. empire and its negative impact on our national security, on people's lives around the world, and on our economy, the more people who will support our views and the quicker we'll end this militarism of our foreign policy.
Let's stay on that for a second, the money.
Somewhere in America there are really rich peaceniks, right?
No question.
Why don't you talk a little bit about your fundraising efforts so far and how people can help you.
I suppose it's possible that there are a few people of actual means who listen to this show that might could get inspired and want to really help this project.
I mean this is the anti-imperialist league of Mark Twain and them for the 21st century.
This is what we've got.
This is the best peace organization, the best hope for organizing left, right, libertarian, and everyone else on this single issue that we have.
It's got to be supported.
I appreciate that, Scott.
We have been doing a lot of outreach for fundraising, and we do have some contributors who are coming forward but nowhere near enough.
What we want to do is to really develop a grassroots-based, focused congressional districts, especially critical ones initially and then more broadly.
And we're going to do that by doing town halls across the country, bringing together at colleges especially so we can get young people involved, bringing together the Young Americans for Liberty and the Peace Out Now Left and everything in between to really develop that kind of grassroots space is what it's going to take.
This is not going to be undone quickly or easily.
We want to develop a grassroots space, town hall meetings, college campus events.
Then we want to do a national conference.
We've already published one book.
We'll publish more.
We see this as a three-pronged task of education, organization, and mobilization, and we do all three of those.
And the first task is education and the second is organization, and that's where we are at the beginning point right now.
If you go to the comehomeamerica.us site, you'll see a lot of activity there.
People are blogging and writing and discussing and debating from different parts of the political spectrum.
We're going to keep building that up as well.
We've already published one book called comehomeamerica.us, which you can order on the website.
It's a book that provides three broad categories.
First, it's a history.
As you mentioned, the Anti-Imperialist League is a great example, a history of opposition to war that has pretty deep roots in both the left and right in the United States.
We look at the current conflicts and how they're undermining our national security and causing more damage than they are doing anything positive, and how they're now undermining our economy.
Then we look at the future as what kind of a potential movement is needed in order to really undo the power of the military-industrial complex.
And so that's where we're looking.
That's an education process to let people see that there has been a history like that.
And there have been really strong eras when anti-war movements have slowed the movement to war, and we want to bring that kind of thing back.
We see the war effort right now.
It's 55% of our discretionary spending at the federal budget level to spend money on weapons and war.
We spend as much as the whole world combined on it, and it doesn't make us more secure.
In fact, it makes us a target.
It makes us less secure, and it's undermining our economy.
One of the things about an empire is you have to keep the countries that are part of your empire happy.
Those client states want our jobs, and those transnational corporations want the cheap labor.
So our government is shipping jobs overseas, destroying our middle class, and keeping the client states and the transnational corporations happy.
I was just yesterday, I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about Procter & Gamble.
They now have an hourglass marketing strategy.
What that means is a company that built themselves on the middle class now sees the middle class is appearing, and they're going to have an hourglass strategy for the wealthy on top and the poor on the bottom and forget the middle class because they're not going to be there anymore.
That's where our country is going, and it's largely because of the empire strategy that our leadership has taken that results in jobs being shipped overseas to client states.
Also, it seems like the American population more and more is made up of refugees from the countries we destroy overseas, which just helps, in many cases, drive down the cost of wages here.
The refugee issue, and it's not just the United States, but it's even worse in the regions where we have military conflict.
Iraq alone, you saw 2 million people refugeed within their own country, leaving their homes to go somewhere else, and you saw 2 million more refugeed outside their country, leaving their home country to go to nearby countries or sometimes the United States.
What that does is cause conflict throughout the region, destabilization throughout the region, and it causes destabilization in Iraq.
People forced to move to other neighborhoods in Iraq, that creates conflicts in those neighborhoods.
It's the same thing in the countries they're forced to go to.
So we keep on with this militarization approach and occupying of countries with puppet governments as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It leads to destabilization in the regions, and that just causes more conflict and keeps our military-industrial complex happy, making profits, destroying countries and rebuilding countries and fighting wars.
All right, now, there's a lot of people who already get it, and at this point we've got to focus on the organization part of this.
I mean, we are, by definition, the unorganized masses.
You can have a very small percentage of the population that collects dividend checks from their Lockheed investments.
You see, there was an article, I'm sure you saw this, a few weeks back about Boeing spends $4.4 million, a lousy, measly $4.4 million per quarter, lobbying Congress to give them tens of billions of dollars.
Now, they can afford, I mean, $4.4 million would be a hell of a lot for come-home America, but you can see how they can afford to organize.
They can afford to be effective.
There's actually a story today about the new super-congress, super-committee in the Congress is being heavily lobbied by the, I forgot what they call it, but the Defense Manufacturers Association, or whatever it is, lobbying group.
They're not even shy about it.
That's right.
And so how do you get hippies and curmudgeon-y old right-wingers and libertarian capitalists and all these different people to actually really come together in one thing, working together, calling their congressmen together, showing up at rallies together to really make this difference, Kevin?
I think the key to people is to give them a confidence that we actually can succeed, that we actually can make a difference.
I think there are a lot of people who see the mistaken militarism of foreign policy, but they feel like the powers that be that profit from that are so powerful they can't be overcome.
And I think we have to somehow show them we have a strategy and that we are starting to put together.
We've already shown that with very little money we've been able to take some small steps, and I hope that gives people confidence in trusting us to handle their resources and their time to actually take some big steps.
So we can make a difference.
All we can do is get organized and mobilized, and that's what we're trying to do.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We're going to be right back, everybody, with Kevin Zist.
He's at votersforpeaceandcomehomeamerica.us.
Please go check out the letter.
Sign it.
Pitch in.
Comehomeamerica.us.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and on the line is Kevin Zist from votersforpeaceandcomehomeamerica.us.
This is the new Anti-Imperialist League, the new America First Committee, the new End This Phony War Now Committee.
Comehomeamerica.us.
And, Kevin, you guys have really done a great job in rounding up people at the high end, too, not just the masses of us no-names out here in the world trying to end this war.
Well, Scott, now you're not a no-name.
You have a radio show, Scott.
Come on.
Well, it's the radio show with the smallest audience in all of America.
There are more people listening to the gardening show on Sunday morning.
But the point is that you've got a lot of real somebodies have signed on to this thing to set a good example for people that, oh, hey, I like that guy, and he signed it kind of thing, huh?
Well, you have to try to show that there are people who others recognize that are with us.
We need to show the grassroots that they're joining something that is led by people who have some stature, who have some name recognition, and whose opinions they trust.
And if you look at comehomeamerica.us, you'll see a sign-on letter that lays out our position, and it's signed by a couple hundred people.
And it includes people from many of the past Democrat and Republican administrations.
It includes people who ran for president as Greens, as Libertarians, as Socialists.
It includes academics from a wide range of political viewpoints and writers from different political viewpoints.
So if you look at that list, you will find people on there who you identify with.
They have religious people from all sorts of religions.
We have the General Executive Secretary for the Council on Churches to Muslim advocates.
So we have a wide range to show that the breadth of anti-war perspective in this country covers all political viewpoints.
It's not limited to progressives, not limited to Libertarians.
It covers all political viewpoints, and people should feel comfortable being part of what we see as really an organization that reflects America.
And I really think as we get into this further and people learn about American Empire, which is the largest empire in world history, we have more than 1100 military bases and outposts compared to Rome and Great Britain at their peak at 35 and 37 respectively.
So we are way bigger than those very famous empires.
And yet in the United States, the empire is pretty much never discussed.
Political leaders don't discuss it except for maybe Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.
Otherwise, no political leader discusses the American Empire.
Same with the media.
If it was discussed, people will understand that this is a key source of our economic problems at home.
Not only does it drain the budget, the federal budget, because it's the largest line item in the discretionary spending in the federal budget, but it's also draining us of our economic vitality.
We are sending jobs overseas to keep our client states happy, so it's a major cause of undermining our democracy.
And it's also resulting in this concentrated corporate power of transnational corporations who really dominate the federal government.
This is big finance.
This is Wall Street.
This is the military-industrial complex.
They're all part of this militarism and profiting from this militarism.
And the bankers, you know, throughout our history, whenever we have a war, we can't afford it.
And so that means we go into debt further, and that makes the bankers wealthy.
It makes the Federal Reserve wealthy.
It means the Federal Reserve prints more money, loans it to the banks at less than a percentage, and the banks loan it to us at multiple percentages, and we go into debt to the banks.
And so all these issues are tied up in an empire foreign policy, and I think when people understand that, there will be even more widespread opposition to it.
Right.
Well, and the polls show that the people are with you mostly, but I think what the people aren't is sure that this is really the consensus.
All the propaganda on TV still has it that this is all very necessary and defensive, and as you say, they never talk about the empire at all.
You know, military, anything that they'll talk about is, you know, fighting the terror war against the terrible terrorists and leave out anything else.
If you limit your media information to the corporate media, the traditional media, you're going to get corporate and government messages.
That is what they do, and there's a very tight relationship.
You know, I hear the liberal media.
I kind of laugh at that because it's really not a liberal media.
It's a corporate media, and, you know, the New York Times, for example.
And a statist one.
What's that?
And a statist one.
A very statist one.
Corporate tied with big government really giving the messages they want us to hear.
You really need to find other sources of news, and once you start to do that, by the way, once you start to find other sources of news, once you stop watching the cable news networks, and then if you go back to them in a few weeks after being off them and you look for other sources of information, when you go back on the cable news, you can see the propaganda very clearly.
It's much easier to see then.
But we still regulate.
Here's the thing, though, Kevin, and I know you know.
A lot of people, they've got jobs, they've got families, they've got to take their kid to football practice and whatever.
They don't have time to do all this independent research.
They're basically going off of what their impression is about what the consensus is.
If all the dads in the neighborhood are pro-war, then the boys are pro-war.
If all the dads in the neighborhood know better, then the kids do too, basically.
And that's the way it kind of spreads around.
What's the sort of zeitgeist of the moment, the impression, rather than the facts?
And I'm not sure that we've really gotten there yet, where people understand that actually everybody knows this is all a bunch of crap.
That's exactly right, and I think we're starting to get to that tipping point.
You're right, we're not there yet, but I think the tipping point is being reached where people are more aware and are ready to take action, are kind of fed up with the crony capitalist economy, with the corrupt government that's funded by big business interests, with President Obama going around raising a billion dollars to get reelected, holding fundraisers that cost $35,800 to get into.
That's $1,000 more than the median income of Americans.
So the median income of Americans is not enough to get you into an Obama fundraiser.
So people are starting to see that, and I think shows like yours, the independent media that's developing, that's where it's going to come from.
The credibility of the corporate media is at its lowest point ever.
It's in the 20s, you know, 20% to 30%, depending on the poll, now believe the corporate media.
And so we're making progress on that front, plus we're building the independent media and getting the truth out in a whole variety of forms, including Antiwar Radio, Antiwar.com, so many outlets out there that are starting to spread the truth.
Well, and again, for people just tuning in, I'm talking with Kevin Zese.
The website is comehomeamerica.us.
This is our best shot at creating a new anti-imperialist league, a new mass movement, an organized, dare I say centralized, single organization to bring together those who are participating in this consensus that this whole war is a bunch of crap and it has to be called off.
They desperately need your help.
They need you to sign the letter to Obama and the members of Congress, and they need your donations.
It's comehomeamerica.us.
This is the best shot that we've got.
And I'll tell you something here, Kevin.
I saw your talk at the New York City Liberty Fest thing over the weekend there.
And what you did, basically, was you got up there and you unapologetically stated, and we need to stop it right now, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think that that alone, that attitude alone accomplishes a lot because I think most people, you know, they just have images stuck in their head from the hippies of the Vietnam War era or something like that, and they just tend to think that the anti-war movement is made up of little twerps who wouldn't go and fight to protect themselves and don't really know anything, want to sit around singing kumbaya and give peace a chance, but that they just, whatever, those hippies are just going to have to leave the defending of the country to the people who are tough and know better.
And it's very rare that people hear someone say, oh, I'm anti-war, and I'm unapologetically anti-war, and let me tell you why you're wrong in such a strident way like that.
They kind of just assume that you don't know.
If you did, you would join up the army.
I think that's a really good point.
I think it's very important for us to stand tall that way.
I think we need to rebrand the anti-war movement.
We need to rebrand it as a very patriotic movement that's doing what the Constitution says.
We're citizens who are striving to create a more perfect union.
The Constitution calls no standing armies.
We have a massive standing army, the biggest military in world history.
George Washington warned us about getting entangled in foreign affairs.
Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.
This is not some radical left or right perspective.
This is the American viewpoint.
And I think we need to rebrand the anti-war movement as the mainstream, not as a lunatic fringe, but as a mainstream political viewpoint that's good for our national security, it's good for the world, it's good for our economy, it's good for the rule of law, and it's good for democracy.
And, in fact, the militarist foreign policy is bad for all those things.
It undermines the rule of law.
It undermines the culture embarrassment that we've gone through in the last 10 years.
It undermines the economy.
We're in collapse now in large part because of military spending.
It undermines democracy because look at the control that the military-industrial complex has over our economy.
It undermines all these things that we need to be building up.
So I hope people will get involved and come to comehomeamerica.us.
Sign up, send money, participate, because that's how it's going to change.
Hell yeah.
Thank you so much, Kevin.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
Keep up the good work.
All right, everybody, that is the heroic Kevin Zeese.
Voters for peace and comehomeamerica.us.
Show up over there.
Participate.
This is our chance, our best chance.
