Sometimes I find Amy Goodman both too careful and too compartmentalized these days. She's got an institution to protect and favorites to promote, and that can sometimes mean that Democracy Now! is less than it could be.
But yesterday, Amy spent a good deal of her show with Nancy McLean talking about what's really going on in our rancid political culture and who's behind it and I think it's a segment well worth watching and considering.
Showing posts with label Democracy Now. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy Now. Show all posts
Friday, June 30, 2017
Monday, May 25, 2015
Ancient History -- Memorial Day Edition
When I lived in California, I would frequently go to the Vietnam Memorial in Capitol Park in Sacramento on Memorial Day where the names of thousands of Californians killed in the Vietnam War were engraved on a stone monument.
I knew some of those listed on the memorial, several men and one woman who I'd gone to high school or college with, who'd been drafted or who volunteered because they were from a military family, or they felt a call of duty and didn't know what they were getting into, or maybe for other reasons.
I successfully resisted the draft. I had no intention of volunteering, not for that godforsaken and morally bankrupt war on a vibrant, blameless nation and its people. But I couldn't approach the monument in California's Capitol Park without bursting into tears, and I can't even look at a picture of it now without choking up. I knew some of those who died in Vietnam whose names are engraved on the monument, and I knew many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees who made their way to the US and tried to fit in as best they could in this deeply strange land rather than take the risk of staying in their ruined home countries.
Constantly I ask "Why?" Why did this monumental misadventure happen?
In 1963 or 64 I wrote a paper in a high school class defending the nascent war in Vietnam as something necessary for the good of the nation and the good of the world. Well, this was what the propaganda was telling us at the time. The conflict was small scale -- at least from the distance that Americans saw it -- and the outcome was supposed to be assured: a western-style democracy on the crescent of Indochina. Who could argue with that?
Then it started becoming clear that this whole thing was a lie. From the overthrow and assassination of Diem a few weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, to the highly dubious Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to the Tet Offensive and the hundreds of thousands and then millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians slaughtered in their multitudes, the forests defoliated, the cities and villages flattened or burned to cinders with napalm, the refugees created, the survivors traumatized, the troops brutalized -- until they revolted, mutinied. It was monstrous. It was wrong.
I marched and chanted and carried signs against the draft and the war and on behalf of those who suffered from the oppression and injustice that this monstrous war represented. And ever afterwards, I have been dubious of any call to war by our August Leaders, for they have learned nothing from the Vietnam disaster -- well, nothing but how to keep the sights and sounds of war out of the public consciousness unless "victory" is certain.
Democracy Now! has run a Vietnam: the Power of Protest retrospective. It's good to remind ourselves.
Peace is more than the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.
And so I still call for
DIGNITY JUSTICE COMMUNITY
PEACE
 |
| Image by Ron Fulks from Vietvet.org |
I successfully resisted the draft. I had no intention of volunteering, not for that godforsaken and morally bankrupt war on a vibrant, blameless nation and its people. But I couldn't approach the monument in California's Capitol Park without bursting into tears, and I can't even look at a picture of it now without choking up. I knew some of those who died in Vietnam whose names are engraved on the monument, and I knew many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees who made their way to the US and tried to fit in as best they could in this deeply strange land rather than take the risk of staying in their ruined home countries.
Constantly I ask "Why?" Why did this monumental misadventure happen?
In 1963 or 64 I wrote a paper in a high school class defending the nascent war in Vietnam as something necessary for the good of the nation and the good of the world. Well, this was what the propaganda was telling us at the time. The conflict was small scale -- at least from the distance that Americans saw it -- and the outcome was supposed to be assured: a western-style democracy on the crescent of Indochina. Who could argue with that?
Then it started becoming clear that this whole thing was a lie. From the overthrow and assassination of Diem a few weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, to the highly dubious Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to the Tet Offensive and the hundreds of thousands and then millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians slaughtered in their multitudes, the forests defoliated, the cities and villages flattened or burned to cinders with napalm, the refugees created, the survivors traumatized, the troops brutalized -- until they revolted, mutinied. It was monstrous. It was wrong.
I marched and chanted and carried signs against the draft and the war and on behalf of those who suffered from the oppression and injustice that this monstrous war represented. And ever afterwards, I have been dubious of any call to war by our August Leaders, for they have learned nothing from the Vietnam disaster -- well, nothing but how to keep the sights and sounds of war out of the public consciousness unless "victory" is certain.
Democracy Now! has run a Vietnam: the Power of Protest retrospective. It's good to remind ourselves.
Peace is more than the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.
And so I still call for
DIGNITY JUSTICE COMMUNITY
PEACE
Saturday, September 6, 2014
If Peace Will Come
I haven't seen the latest update, but as of last night, a ceasefire had been brokered between the pathetic and barbarous Ukrainian "army" and the resistance fighters in the rebel oblasts in the south and east.
Comprehensive peace has not been brokered, far from it, and with recent resistance advances including an offensive to take Mariupol, combined with crippling Kiev losses (the Saker says upwords of 40,000 Kiev recruits and draftees have "died" -- exactly how is a matter of conjecture) the likelihood is that the resistance will press whatever advantage it has and hold on to whatever territory it controls. This is how these sorts of things tend to go, no?
Reports in Western media -- to the extent there have been any during the Ukrainian civil war -- have tended to glorify the mighty-mighty Kiev junta forces battling bravely against the combined hordes of Genghis Khan and Stalin. Of course the visuals, to the extent there were any, proved the lie of the propaganda. The blasted cities and the ruined villages were implied to have been the result of rebel bombardments of innocent Ukrainian sites, massacres were implied to have been committed by the rebels, and any territory was being recovered from the Russian-backed rebels, or from the Russians or from Putin himself.
It was all nonsense and lies, as was made clear by the few intrepid reporters on the ground who managed to keep their wits and heads and told the truth in something close to real time.
The Odessa Massacre on May 2 was an eye-opener, to say the least. Dozens were burned alive in the Trade Union House, many others shot on sight by rampaging Right Sektor thugs, and others still succumbed to toxic smoke inhalation when the building was burning after being set alight by the Molotov cocktails thrown from the crowd of "patriots" outside. A few were likely beaten to death by thugs in the crowd when they tried to escape the building, and some few succumbed to mortal injuries they sustained when they jumped from windows in that stairwell where the fire burned most fiercely.
I watched what was happening on the livestream as it was taking place, and though the viewpoint with the livestreams is always narrow, what I saw was obviously at variance with Kiev's and the Western media's efforts to portray the Odessa Massacre as the fault of the victims alone.
The civil war got under way in earnest after that, the Kiev junta realizing that if the truth were to will out over the propaganda, the junta likely could not be sustained. Defensive positions were taken up by the resistance to the junta in the Donbass, troops marshaled by Kiev were assembled, and the fight was on.
Cities, towns and villages were shelled and burned -- by Kiev, not the Resistance -- and a million or more civilians were made refugees. It was like multiple Sieges of Sarajevo during the civil war in the Former Yugoslavia. Monstrous. But we got little real news once Graham Phillips stopped reporting from the area and the VICE News squad appeared to become embedded with the Kiev forces.
The MH-17 passenger jet was apparently shot down somehow, with the loss of nearly three hundred souls, and of course, "Putin" (the Devil) was blamed for it, though even at the earliest stages of reporting about it, the likelihood was that Kiev was behind the tragedy -- somehow.
The confusion surrounding what happened to the plane has been magnified by the relentless anti-Putin propaganda from Kiev and the West, and by the adamant refusal of the Western governments involved in the "investigation" to share or release data from the flight recorders and air traffic controllers. It's an obvious cover-up. If the plane was shot down by fighter planes tailing it, as some eyewitnesses assert, then the reasons for a cover up are plain to see.
But we don't know, and we may not know for a year or more of continued obfuscation. If then.
Meanwhile, the propaganda out of Kiev and Western media celebrated victory after victory by the Glorious and Manly Troops of Kiev in their furious and relentless battles against the Putin-driven slaves of the East.
The Glory never stopped -- until it did, last week. Word came that hundreds, maybe even thousands of Kiev's Glory Troops had been wiped out, many others deserted and ran away, huge volumes of equipment had been abandoned and seized by the rebels and the jig was up. Kiev could not resupply the remnant troopers, and there was nowhere for the Glory Troops to go, even if they could retreat or advance. They were surrounded, their equipment was used up or destroyed, there would be no more Victory.
Even the Freaks in Kiev understood what had happened. There was no more Ukrainian Army, and the National Guard (Nazi Storm Troopers) had been decimated. Resupply was impossible. The Rebels had -- apparently -- won.
Putin issued a roadmap for a ceasefire, and in Minsk, the Kiev junta broke bread with the Rebel leaders, the plan was discussed, modified, and agreed.
The guns, at least most of them, fell silent for the first time in months.
People breathed, for a moment, a sigh of relief.
Of course, the competing Sides in this proxy civil war have an interest in keeping it going for as long as needs be. The Sides being US-EU-NATO vs Russia. The people of Ukraine matter not at all to the Sides. The people of Ukraine can be sacrificed with no loss to the Sides. In fact, the destruction of the physical plant of the Donbass and the displacement of a significant portion of the population seems to be in the interests of both Sides, and it's been accomplished to a surprisingly efficient degree. Thousands have died -- possibly tens of thousands, it's hard to say -- and cities, towns and villages have been laid waste. More than a million have been sent scrambling as refugees.
The political objectives of the Rebels seem to have been agreed to -- something that could have happened to stave off the civil war in the first place -- and the remnant Kiev troops appear to be able to return home unmolested.
It's as if the civil war didn't have to take place at all if this was to be the outcome.
Except that it seemed to me from very early on that physical destruction and depopulation of the Donbass was the point of the exercise, and once that was accomplished -- as it apparently has been -- there was no point in going on with it. Ceasefire!
Well, we'll see. NATO and Washington are hinting darkly that they are preparing for another round sooner rather than later, and Putin-the-Devil has been known to rattle a few sabers himself suggesting in passing that if he wanted he could "take Kiev" in two weeks; oh, and don't forget, Russia still has nukes.
Ahem.
So it goes. For the people of the Ukraine, I hope this is the end of the military campaign against a portion of the population, but you never know when freaks are in charge -- as they certainly are in the West.
We shall see.
Stephen Cohen was on Democracy Now! yesterday before the ceasefire was agreed-to. Here is what he had to say:
Seems pretty obvious to me...
Comprehensive peace has not been brokered, far from it, and with recent resistance advances including an offensive to take Mariupol, combined with crippling Kiev losses (the Saker says upwords of 40,000 Kiev recruits and draftees have "died" -- exactly how is a matter of conjecture) the likelihood is that the resistance will press whatever advantage it has and hold on to whatever territory it controls. This is how these sorts of things tend to go, no?
Reports in Western media -- to the extent there have been any during the Ukrainian civil war -- have tended to glorify the mighty-mighty Kiev junta forces battling bravely against the combined hordes of Genghis Khan and Stalin. Of course the visuals, to the extent there were any, proved the lie of the propaganda. The blasted cities and the ruined villages were implied to have been the result of rebel bombardments of innocent Ukrainian sites, massacres were implied to have been committed by the rebels, and any territory was being recovered from the Russian-backed rebels, or from the Russians or from Putin himself.
It was all nonsense and lies, as was made clear by the few intrepid reporters on the ground who managed to keep their wits and heads and told the truth in something close to real time.
The Odessa Massacre on May 2 was an eye-opener, to say the least. Dozens were burned alive in the Trade Union House, many others shot on sight by rampaging Right Sektor thugs, and others still succumbed to toxic smoke inhalation when the building was burning after being set alight by the Molotov cocktails thrown from the crowd of "patriots" outside. A few were likely beaten to death by thugs in the crowd when they tried to escape the building, and some few succumbed to mortal injuries they sustained when they jumped from windows in that stairwell where the fire burned most fiercely.
I watched what was happening on the livestream as it was taking place, and though the viewpoint with the livestreams is always narrow, what I saw was obviously at variance with Kiev's and the Western media's efforts to portray the Odessa Massacre as the fault of the victims alone.
The civil war got under way in earnest after that, the Kiev junta realizing that if the truth were to will out over the propaganda, the junta likely could not be sustained. Defensive positions were taken up by the resistance to the junta in the Donbass, troops marshaled by Kiev were assembled, and the fight was on.
Cities, towns and villages were shelled and burned -- by Kiev, not the Resistance -- and a million or more civilians were made refugees. It was like multiple Sieges of Sarajevo during the civil war in the Former Yugoslavia. Monstrous. But we got little real news once Graham Phillips stopped reporting from the area and the VICE News squad appeared to become embedded with the Kiev forces.
The MH-17 passenger jet was apparently shot down somehow, with the loss of nearly three hundred souls, and of course, "Putin" (the Devil) was blamed for it, though even at the earliest stages of reporting about it, the likelihood was that Kiev was behind the tragedy -- somehow.
The confusion surrounding what happened to the plane has been magnified by the relentless anti-Putin propaganda from Kiev and the West, and by the adamant refusal of the Western governments involved in the "investigation" to share or release data from the flight recorders and air traffic controllers. It's an obvious cover-up. If the plane was shot down by fighter planes tailing it, as some eyewitnesses assert, then the reasons for a cover up are plain to see.
But we don't know, and we may not know for a year or more of continued obfuscation. If then.
Meanwhile, the propaganda out of Kiev and Western media celebrated victory after victory by the Glorious and Manly Troops of Kiev in their furious and relentless battles against the Putin-driven slaves of the East.
The Glory never stopped -- until it did, last week. Word came that hundreds, maybe even thousands of Kiev's Glory Troops had been wiped out, many others deserted and ran away, huge volumes of equipment had been abandoned and seized by the rebels and the jig was up. Kiev could not resupply the remnant troopers, and there was nowhere for the Glory Troops to go, even if they could retreat or advance. They were surrounded, their equipment was used up or destroyed, there would be no more Victory.
Even the Freaks in Kiev understood what had happened. There was no more Ukrainian Army, and the National Guard (Nazi Storm Troopers) had been decimated. Resupply was impossible. The Rebels had -- apparently -- won.
Putin issued a roadmap for a ceasefire, and in Minsk, the Kiev junta broke bread with the Rebel leaders, the plan was discussed, modified, and agreed.
The guns, at least most of them, fell silent for the first time in months.
People breathed, for a moment, a sigh of relief.
Of course, the competing Sides in this proxy civil war have an interest in keeping it going for as long as needs be. The Sides being US-EU-NATO vs Russia. The people of Ukraine matter not at all to the Sides. The people of Ukraine can be sacrificed with no loss to the Sides. In fact, the destruction of the physical plant of the Donbass and the displacement of a significant portion of the population seems to be in the interests of both Sides, and it's been accomplished to a surprisingly efficient degree. Thousands have died -- possibly tens of thousands, it's hard to say -- and cities, towns and villages have been laid waste. More than a million have been sent scrambling as refugees.
The political objectives of the Rebels seem to have been agreed to -- something that could have happened to stave off the civil war in the first place -- and the remnant Kiev troops appear to be able to return home unmolested.
It's as if the civil war didn't have to take place at all if this was to be the outcome.
Except that it seemed to me from very early on that physical destruction and depopulation of the Donbass was the point of the exercise, and once that was accomplished -- as it apparently has been -- there was no point in going on with it. Ceasefire!
Well, we'll see. NATO and Washington are hinting darkly that they are preparing for another round sooner rather than later, and Putin-the-Devil has been known to rattle a few sabers himself suggesting in passing that if he wanted he could "take Kiev" in two weeks; oh, and don't forget, Russia still has nukes.
Ahem.
So it goes. For the people of the Ukraine, I hope this is the end of the military campaign against a portion of the population, but you never know when freaks are in charge -- as they certainly are in the West.
We shall see.
Stephen Cohen was on Democracy Now! yesterday before the ceasefire was agreed-to. Here is what he had to say:
Seems pretty obvious to me...
Friday, March 8, 2013
Compare and Contrast -- Hugo vs Hugo
The outpouring of grief over the death of Hugo Chavez is matched by the contempt of a certain class of want-it-alls who rule us and seek to rule Venezuela once again.
But the contrast isn't just between grief and contempt. It's between celebration and lies, between accomplishment and fabrication, between admiration and insult.
This is the Class War limned in bright tropical colors, the global war between the haves-who-want-it-all and everyone else.
The day after Hugo's death, two sectors of what passes for 'lefty' media in the United States -- the Diane Rehm Show on NPR and Democracy Now! on Pacifica -- demonstrated just how deep those divisions run, even on the so-called Left.
Rehm had three panelists, one of whom was a stone liar rightist from Venezuela now on wingnut welfare at the Carnegie Institute. His lies were nonstop, pure propaganda, and they went essentially unchallenged by the other panelists, let alone the hostess (who tolerates no challenge to her perspective and authority on her show). The other panelists were Tom Gjelten of NPR and Geoff Thale of something called The Washington Office of Latin America. Gjelten presented the US government line on the matter of Chavez and Venezuela and Thale presented a somewhat softer version of the Government Line.
Rehm was at sea, vaguely drifting around, but knowing that Chavez was indubitably A Bad Man. Socialist dictator that he was. And all the rest of it.
Transcript
Listen
Interestingly, many of her callers, emailers and commenters seemed to be fed up with the, shall we say, anti-Chavez bias of the program and said so more or less politely. Diane feigned perplexity and badly mischaracterized the comments she was receiving apparently throughout the show.
Read the commentary
I don't ordinarily listen to Rehm. I did because of the topic. I was disgusted and offended.
Later, Democracy Now! presented what I thought was a much fairer and more people centered, rather than government-institution centered, remembrance of Chavez, for good and ill. What was striking to me was that several of those speaking about Chavez and Venezuela had personal knowledge of him and Venezuela. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez had interviewed him (albeit in New York) and Eva Golinger had been one of his friends and advisers in Caracas. I don't recall offhand, but it could be that other panelists had known him personally. At any rate, even when they didn't necessarily approve of some action or policy of Chavez and his government, even when they acknowledged that he and his government got some things wrong, they certainly saw him as a worthy figure with profound influence in Latin America and beyond.
Quite the contrast with the Diane Rehm Show.
Democracy Now! Video and transcript.
Now of course I should not consider Diane Rehm and NPR to be the "left" -- and ordinarily I wouldn't do so. But in the United States, the mainstream media, like government, is divided between rightists and fascists. There is no "left" at all. Consequently, various outlets within the rightist-fascist mainstream are designated "left" -- NPR, PBS, MSNBC, the "Communist News Network," so as to have demons to thrash, even though all of the mainstream outlets are pretty much on the same page, and it is a page that's written by Ailes and Murdoch.
Meanwhile, Pacifica has ventured pretty far from its radical/revolutionary -- and yes, leftist -- roots, having been captured in a sense by Puritans and Propertarians. I won't go into the Take-Over sturm und drang here, but it was dramatic to say the least. While there is a leftist gloss to the place still, it shows (to me at least) far more signs of straightlaced libertarianism than Leftism in much of its programming, including the flagship Democracy Now!
The American media and what's fundamentally wrong with it, however, are topics for another day.
Let it just be noted in this instance that NPR and Diane Rehm performed the role of FOX "News" to in contrast to Democracy Now! doing a creditable version of an MSNBC "moderate" take.
That is all...
But the contrast isn't just between grief and contempt. It's between celebration and lies, between accomplishment and fabrication, between admiration and insult.
This is the Class War limned in bright tropical colors, the global war between the haves-who-want-it-all and everyone else.
The day after Hugo's death, two sectors of what passes for 'lefty' media in the United States -- the Diane Rehm Show on NPR and Democracy Now! on Pacifica -- demonstrated just how deep those divisions run, even on the so-called Left.
Rehm had three panelists, one of whom was a stone liar rightist from Venezuela now on wingnut welfare at the Carnegie Institute. His lies were nonstop, pure propaganda, and they went essentially unchallenged by the other panelists, let alone the hostess (who tolerates no challenge to her perspective and authority on her show). The other panelists were Tom Gjelten of NPR and Geoff Thale of something called The Washington Office of Latin America. Gjelten presented the US government line on the matter of Chavez and Venezuela and Thale presented a somewhat softer version of the Government Line.
Rehm was at sea, vaguely drifting around, but knowing that Chavez was indubitably A Bad Man. Socialist dictator that he was. And all the rest of it.
Transcript
Listen
Interestingly, many of her callers, emailers and commenters seemed to be fed up with the, shall we say, anti-Chavez bias of the program and said so more or less politely. Diane feigned perplexity and badly mischaracterized the comments she was receiving apparently throughout the show.
Read the commentary
I don't ordinarily listen to Rehm. I did because of the topic. I was disgusted and offended.
Later, Democracy Now! presented what I thought was a much fairer and more people centered, rather than government-institution centered, remembrance of Chavez, for good and ill. What was striking to me was that several of those speaking about Chavez and Venezuela had personal knowledge of him and Venezuela. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez had interviewed him (albeit in New York) and Eva Golinger had been one of his friends and advisers in Caracas. I don't recall offhand, but it could be that other panelists had known him personally. At any rate, even when they didn't necessarily approve of some action or policy of Chavez and his government, even when they acknowledged that he and his government got some things wrong, they certainly saw him as a worthy figure with profound influence in Latin America and beyond.
Quite the contrast with the Diane Rehm Show.
Democracy Now! Video and transcript.
Now of course I should not consider Diane Rehm and NPR to be the "left" -- and ordinarily I wouldn't do so. But in the United States, the mainstream media, like government, is divided between rightists and fascists. There is no "left" at all. Consequently, various outlets within the rightist-fascist mainstream are designated "left" -- NPR, PBS, MSNBC, the "Communist News Network," so as to have demons to thrash, even though all of the mainstream outlets are pretty much on the same page, and it is a page that's written by Ailes and Murdoch.
Meanwhile, Pacifica has ventured pretty far from its radical/revolutionary -- and yes, leftist -- roots, having been captured in a sense by Puritans and Propertarians. I won't go into the Take-Over sturm und drang here, but it was dramatic to say the least. While there is a leftist gloss to the place still, it shows (to me at least) far more signs of straightlaced libertarianism than Leftism in much of its programming, including the flagship Democracy Now!
The American media and what's fundamentally wrong with it, however, are topics for another day.
Let it just be noted in this instance that NPR and Diane Rehm performed the role of FOX "News" to in contrast to Democracy Now! doing a creditable version of an MSNBC "moderate" take.
That is all...
Friday, March 23, 2012
Cecily McMillan With Amy Goodman
Sounds like she really can't remember much of anything about that night.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
It's Greek To Me
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/29/greek_parliament_approves_40b_bailout_some
I heard Weisbrot on an NPR story the other day discussing the Greek situation with an absolutely giddy bubblehead who was practically peeing herself over how the Greek parliament would be forced to submit to the demands of Greece's creditors, and how the People of Greece would be punished -- finally -- for their profligacy.
Weisbrot was literally shocked at this woman's complete idiocy and said that if this were happening in the United States, millions more would be forced out of work than already can't find work, and the Recession would go on indefinitely. Is that what she wanted? He pointed out that what is happening is a devastating blow to the ordinary people of Greece, and there is no way in hell that they deserve to be forced to pay for demands of bankers.
She sputtered for a bit, but could not suppress her glee at seeing other people forced under the thumb of the powerful.
My stomach was churning through the whole interview. But that's the state of our media: loves it when other people are forced to comply with the demands of the Powerful. Loves it.
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