[Peace] Recent editions of AWARE on the Air

Wed Oct 5 15:53:29 UTC 2016

[For the record, here’s my introduction to AOTA #383, to which (I think) Brother Szoke takes exception.]

[1] Good evening and welcome to AWARE on the Air, a unrehearsed panel discussion of the US government’s wars and the racism they inspire. We are recording this at noon on Tuesday October 4 in the studios of Urbana Public Television, Urbana, Illinois. Our program is presented by members and friends of AWARE, a local peace group. The name AWARE  stands for “anti-war anti-racism effort.” I’m Carl Estabrook.

[2] AWARE was established 15 years ago - just after the attacks of 9-11-2001 - by citizens of Champaign-Urbana who saw that the US government - instead of going after the people responsible for the 9-11 attacks - would use those crimes as an excuse to continue making war in the Middle East, in order to ensure US military control of the energy resources of the region.

[3] The Mideast has been a particular concern of all recent presidential administrations because of its vast stock of oil and natural gas. The US doesn’t need oil from the Mideast, but Mideast gas and oil are needed by America’s economic competitors in Europe and Asia - so control over them gives the US a choke-hold over China, Germany, and other countries. But that control benefits only the American economic elite - the one percent - and not Americans in general, who’ve seen wealth concentrate in fewer and fewer hands at an accelerating rate throughout the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.

[4] AWARE’s purpose, like that of many other local anti-war groups across the country, is to stop the vicious war-making over which the current US president presides. Like all American presidents for more than a generation, President Obama is making war around the world. 

[5] Since World War II, US presidents have killed more than 20 million people in 37 nations - to “maintain the disparity” as American planners said 60 years ago, in that “we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population.” But “controlling all that we do makes others envious and resentful. But we shouldn’t let that deter us. Rather we should figure out how to maintain the disparity, chiefly with force ... and stop talking nonsense about human rights and democracy.” To do so, the US remains during the Obama administration what Martin Luther King called it long ago: “...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

[6] When the new president is inaugurated next January, Barack Obama will have become the first US president - ever - to have been at war throughout two presidential terms. He has attacked eight countries (two more than George Bush), and he is today conducting what has been called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - his drone assassinations. He has killed thousands of civilians with drones, including US citizens and hundreds of children. The New York Times says he chooses the targets himself, from lists prepared by the CIA.

[7] Obama was elected twice because the generally anti-war US public understood him to say that he would end George Bush’s wars. But he was lying. In office, Obama moved massively to expand Bush’s war in Afghanistan, and as he leaves office he promises 10 thousand US troops will stay there - along with mercenaries and ‘coalition forces’ (NATO). And US subversion of other countries in MENA - the Mideast and North Africa - continues apace.

[8] In a book on the last presidential campaign, he is quoted as follows: "'Turns out I'm really good at killing people,' Obama said quietly. 'Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.'" However ironically he meant it, the quote has not been denied by the White House, and it turns out to be true. 

[9] In addition to conducting wars throughout the Mideast, the Obama administration is acting with belligerence toward China and promoting an ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine; that war has already killed more people than Israel killed (with US permission) in Gaza in 2014. The president is risking war with both Russia and China, even nuclear war. He also commands a 70,000-member private army, the Special Operations Command, active in 130 of the 192 countries of the world. Their activities include kidnapping ("rendition"), murder, and torture. The US is plaguing the world with nothing less than death-squads, for the economic hegemony of our one percent!

[10] And not only is the Obama administration risking nuclear war, they’re preparing for it: President Obama has launched a 1o-year trillion dollar program to update nuclear weapons - and make them more usable!

[11] The Obama administration is also responsible for the vicious civil war in Syria, which has killed thousands and flooded Europe with refugees. Hillary Clinton - responsible for horrors in Honduras, Libya, Syria and elsewhere - as president would only continue and intensify the warmongering of the Bush and Obama administrations, the blowback from which is now producing terrorist attacks in Europe and America. 

[12] Clinton is the candidate of the ‘defense’ industries and Wall Street. Every indication is that these crimes will continue in the new administration, unless Americans demand that they cease, because Clinton is both a neoliberal (which means more inequality) and a neoconservative (which means more war). But - interestingly enough - Donald Trump isn’t. 

[13] Not only do the leading neoliberals support Clinton, but also the leading neoconservatives have fled the Republicans to support her. With Clinton as president, we're certain to get more war, in the tradition of the last 25 years. With Donald Trump as president, we might not. How can that be a difficult choice?

[14] But the CIA has demanded that Trump not be elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he not be elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless smears of Russian president Putin - demands that he not be elected ... These promoters of ‘perpetual war’ are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China's Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world's great power talking peace - however unlikely - would be farcical, were the issues not so dire.

[15] But there is in fact a presidential candidate talking peace - and a reversal of Obama’s war policies - even more than Trump, and that’s Jill Stein of the Green party. I and some other members of AWARE will vote for Jill Stein & Ajamu Baraka - the Green party’s nominees for president and vice-president - in 2016.

[16] We support the Green party’s demand to “

~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights; 
~ (2) end the wars [in the Mideast and elsewhere] and stop the drone attacks; 
~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 700 foreign military bases [neither Russia nor China has more than twelve]; 
~ (4) stop US support and arms sales to human rights abusers [notably Israel]; and 
~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament.” 

[17] That’s a call for a reversal of the Obama administration’s foreign and military policy. The positions of the Green party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, on both foreign and domestic policy - to say nothing of climate catastrophe - are far better than those of the major party candidates. And we shouldn’t be dissuaded from voting for Stein by the argument that voting for a third party helps Trump - because even his positions on war and the economy are substantially better than Clinton's. 

[18] There’s a lot of news about US government war-making this week, but you won’t hear much about it in the American media. We’ll mention some of it tonight, beginning with Ron Szoke - but first I’ll ask him about his animal companion, a stuffed alligator…

> On Oct 5, 2016, at 9:13 AM, Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> #382 has guests David Johnson, and Gus Woods, very worthwhile watch.
> 
> #383 has important information and worthwhile, once one gets through the first 13 minutes of Ron’s attempts to trivialize everything Carl has to say, and shock us all with his anti-political correctness, the "he said, and isn’t that awful, that mean person”, you know so junior high. 
> 
> 
>> On Oct 4, 2016, at 19:06, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com <mailto:carl at newsfromneptune.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Tuesday 4 October 2016 - AWARE On The Air - Episode #383: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE1QRvDSEKk <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE1QRvDSEKk>
>> 
>> Tuesday 27 September 2016 - AWARE on the Air - Episode #382: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMBgwx3fhCA <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMBgwx3fhCA>
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

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