[Peace-discuss] AWARE on the Air on UPTV for 19 Aug. 2014 [#292]

[C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXCPs2sWmo


{INTRO} 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 34th week of 2014. AWARE was formed a dozen years ago to oppose the wars conducted by the Bush and Obama administrations.

This summer the Obama administration has been responsible for the murder of thousands of people. President Obama has killed thousands of men, women, and children with his ongoing drone strikes alone. And he knows what he has done. "Turns out I'm really good at killing people," Obama has said. "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."

Thousands more have been killed by governments authorized and sponsored by the Obama administration in Ukraine, Israel, and militarized American police departments (many of them trained by the Israeli government).

Many people think that these crimes are the result of carelessness or ineptitude on the part of the American chief executive, but unfortunately that’s not true. Barack Obama was elected to protect the profits of the One-percent, at home and abroad. And the interests of that One-percent are directly opposed to the interests of the vast majority of the people of the world, including a majority of Americans.

Obama of course is not alone in these crimes. Since the second world war, all American presidents, working to control the world economy, have been willing to kill literally millions of people to insure that world wide economic control. In 1948, the leading state Department planner, George Kennan, wrote,

“...we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction ... We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

That was US government policy in 1948 and remains so down to today.

Of course this flies in the face of what the US pretends to be - pretends particularly to the American people, who generally believe that the US government seeks to promote democracy and prosperity around the world. But that isn’t true, as can be seen from the actions of the current administration, particularly in eastern Europe and southwest Asia.

And now, this week, we’ve seen how this policy of “maintaining the disparity” works here at home. In Ferguson, MO, less than 200 miles from where we sit, militarily-equipped police are rioting against public protests over the police killing of an unarmed teenager, a shockingly frequent occurrence in America, the country that also imprisons far more of its citizens that any other country in the world, including Russia and China. Last year, in total, British police officers ... fired their weapons three times. The number of people ... fatally shot was zero. In Ferguson, one police officer shot Mike Brown twice as many times as British Police fired their weapons all last year...

As we saw in the Occupy movement, these police actions are coordinated by the federal government thru the Department of Homeland Security and “fusion centers” of local police forces. The Obama administration is deathly afraid of “civil unrest” as Americans come more and more to understand that their declining economic circumstances come from the Obama administration’s refusal to fulfill its policies of hope and change. Obama is, after all, working for someone else.

Your watching AWARE ON THE AIR. Our program, like similar independent programs around the country, is devoted to exposing and reversing the Obama administration’s policies of austerity and war. We’ll consider some aspects of the current situation tonight with reports and comments from Karen Aram, Karen Evans-Levy, Ron Szoke, and Ya'aQov Ziso.

And we'll begin with Ron Szoke - on “Mission Creeps”...
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{OUTRO} You've been watching AWARE ON THE AIR, presented by members and friends of the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana, a local peace group - in the 34th week of 2014 [August 19].

~ It's what White House aides call “Terror Tuesday," the day each week when President Obama picks out some people to be murdered by drones or US death squads (the "special operations command”). The president's underlings - notably CIA director John Brennan - compile a list of who should be executed, and the president then chooses from "baseball cards" who will die. The assassinations are carried out in secrecy - the administration doesn't release accounts of the people they kill - but literally thousands of men, women, and children have been killed on Obama's order. Most Americans don't know that the US is running this terrorist program. It’s thoroughly unconstitutional - Obama should be impeached for it.

~ Thanks to Jason Liggett for direction & production -- thanks to whom also this program & others like it will be available on YouTube.

~ Finally, AWARE honors those who reveal the crimes of the US government - which the rest of the world knows about, but Americans don't - Manning, Assange, Snowden, and others - who are being persecuted by the Obama administration.

We’ve had requests this week to participate in AWARE’s anti-war demonstrations, which are held on the first Saturday of the month, 2-4pm, at the intersection of Main and Neil in downtown Champaign.

~ Now this is Carl Estabrook for Karen Aram, Ron Szoke, Karen Evans-Levy, Stuart Levy, David Johnson, David Green, Ya'aQov Ziso - & other members & friends of AWARE - saying in the words of the late Edward Murrow, “Good night - and good luck."

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