[Peace-discuss] Invitation to record AWARE ON THE AIR

[C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

Members and friends of AWARE are invited to sit in and participate (if you wish) in this week's recording of "AWARE on the Air" on Urbana Public Television.

We record the program on Tuesdays from noon to 1pm in the Urbana City Council Chambers, 400 S. Vine Street, Urbana.  

The program is unrehearsed, but here is the planned introduction:

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Good evening & welcome to AWARE ON THE AIR. I’m Carl Estabrook.  

Our program is presented by members & friends of AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana, a local peace group, in the 32nd week of 2014, a week in which the Obama administration had two bloody hands in eastern Europe and SW Asia, squeezing the life out of men, women and children. The hands are called Ukraine and Israel, and we Americans are responsible for what the USG is doing with them.

In 2011, after killing US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his son in separate drone strikes, President Obama said, "Turns out I'm really good at killing people. Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." On his orders, five thousand people have been killed with drones, including two hundred children.

Last Friday, after the revelation that his CIA director John Brennan lied about CIA activities in regard to the still-unreleased Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture, President Obama admitted casually, “We tortured some folks."  Later it turned out that Obama’s claim to have banned all forms of torture was false. He admitted casually that he banned only SOME of the CIA’s torture techniques.

President Obama has in fact shown himself willing to kill thousands of men, women, and children as a minion of  “the one percent,” because the president’s crimes of torture and murder are certainly not in the interest of most Americans - only those who want to maintain the American one percent’s control over the world economy, which they have enjoyed since the Second World War. To maintain that control, Washington uses its 1,000 military bases around the world and “special forces,” active in 124 countries. (Their activities include kidnapping - we call it “rendition” - torture and murder)  

This month, murders are also being carried out by two client states of the US, Israel and Ukraine - the bloody hands of the Obama administration in Europe and Asia. Israel has massacred almost two thousand people in Gaza, mostly civilians, and the US-backed (and installed) government in Kiev has killed almost as many in eastern Ukraine, the Donbas region; and its war has resulted in the destruction of a commercial airliner that killed 298 men, women, and children. 

Who is responsible for mass murder in Gaza and Donbas? Of course their leaders can be blamed for Israel and Ukraine’s committing what the Nuremberg Tribunal called “the supreme international crime” (i.e., worse than terrorism): waging aggressive war. But the final responsibility lies with the President of the United States. Without the support - economic, military, political, and diplomatic - that the U.S. government provides, Israel’s crimes would not be possible - and neither would the coup and military assaults by the Ukrainian government. 

President Obama fails to stop Israel’s ongoing murders in Gaza - as he could, with a word - because it’s been the policy of all U.S. administrations for two generations to allow the Israelis to continue their oppression of the Palestinians so long as Israel acts as a “stationary aircraft carrier” for US control of Mideast oil and gas.

In eastern Europe the US immediately violated its promise not to extend NATO to the borders of Russia and is now scheming to do so through Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. President Obama’s administration engineered the coup against an elected government in Ukraine and sent the CIA chief to encourage a Ukrainian army attack on the regions that resisted the new government - the first government in Europe since WWII to include fascist parties. 

How much longer will Americans put up with a murderous president in Washington, who can smile and smile and be a villain? Will the pictures of dead children for whom he’s responsible lead to his being driven form office, as Presidents Johnson and Nixon were? 

Will his failure to provide jobs and economic relief for millions of Americans - what he was elected for - lead to his impeachment? Will the real distress of most Americans finally boil over into direct opposition to the Obama administration?

The Pentagon thinks it’s a possibility: the Guardian newspaper in London reports that the US  military is preparing for mass civil breakdown. “The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands" - that is, against US citizens.

But Obama’s main task is to cover over the wars he’s sponsoring, the murders he’s committing, and the misery he’s causing. Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the wars of the Bush-Obama years, and the billions of collars spent on them that could have been used here at home. Obama was elected to end the wars and provide jobs. He hasn’t done either one, and Americans’ anger is growing. His job is to turn aside that anger. 

One way that’s done is to use a compliant media to misrepresent the Obama administration’s military and economic policy. Our task here at AWARE ON THE AIR - like similar independent programs around the country - is to combat that overwhelming propaganda. 

We’ll try to do that tonight with reports & comments from members are friends of AWARE...

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