[Peace-discuss] News from Neptune, tonight at 7pm on UPTV

[Carl G. Estabrook]

"The Election Results Edition" of News from Neptune will air tonight at 7pm on channels 6 and 99 in C-U, and online at 
<http://urbanapublictelevision.org/livestream>.

For more than 20 years, News from Neptune has been a spontaneous and unrehearsed discussion of the news of the week and its coverage by the media.

The program's name honors Noam Chomsky, who has been talking sense about American politics for more than twice the time we've been on the air. Chomsky has said that in the American media, “Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”

Tonight David Green and Ron Szoke join me to discuss the economic and military policies of the new US government - a new president, one-third of the Senate, and a new House of Representatives. That's possible even before the election, because in the US policy is insulated from politics. 

We saw in 2008 that a contentious election led to an astonishing continuity in policy. The peace candidate got a peace prize - and then tripled the size of the war. Obama has continued to expand it, while contending that he's not. He also expanded the Bush administration's bank bailouts for the 1% - without establishing a jobs program for the 99%.

In ancient rome, an auspice (Latin: auspicium) was literally "one who looks at birds", a diviner or augur who read omens from the observed flight of birds. In the Iliad, the story of the Trojan war, Calchas was the bird-diviner for the Greek general Agamemnon (iliad i.69). An augur would perform a ceremony (known as "taking the auspices") and would read flight patterns of birds in the sky for hints about the future. Depending upon the birds, the auspices from the gods could be favorable or unfavorable (auspicious or inauspicious). 

I think we're now quite capable of reading the auspices and predicting the future of US government policy - from the flight of mechanical birds, the murderous drones, as the Obama administration plans for ten more years of war. See Glenn Greenwald, "Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent" <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list>.

--CGE

PS - Last week's program, "The Eid Mubarak Edition," which aired on October 26, can be seen at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvncvNjr20A>.