[Peace] AWARE ON THE AIR for Tuesday 25 July

[Karen Aram]

There is some really good information here. Worth plowing through.

I have one suggestion in relation to the media. Unless DN has Stephen Cohen, Noam Chomsky, Alan Nairn, or a few other notables, don’t bother. They will have a few good things, specifically related to domestic, but geopolitical is little different from mainstream media.

The Real News with Aron Mate, or Paul Jay is worthwhile, online.

RT.Com<http://rt.com>: Online but often a lot of interference. If one has a roku, which I recommend, one can download the ap “Pluto” and from there download RT, with Crosstalk three days a week, and Chris Hedges weekly “On Contact” Lee Camp is on Redacted Tonight offers humor with news, but after he is finished don’t waste time on his colleagues. With roku, and Pluto, one can access any of the shows any time, or just have streaming non stop. They have other programs as well, and one can avoid Larry King’s pandering to celebrity.

On Jul 26, 2017, at 19:02, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:

(AWARE ON THE AIR didn't air this week, owing to indisposition; in its place we offer the following links and announcements.)

Dr. Know’s Research Notes for Week 30 of 2017 | J. B. Nicholson |
================================================

<http://traffic.megaphone.fm/FL8633314507.mp3> -- Glenn Greenwald sits in for Jeremy Scahill and provides a much-needed analysis of 'Russiagate', the 2003 Iraq invasion/occupation, and how we see the same 'with us or against us' tactic used to separate those who go along (Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Daily Show, all of the other comedy news and latenight programs except RT's Redacted Tonight) and those who are to be viciously described (anyone who demands evidence). Ignore the edited intro piece and skip to Greenwald's talk, that intro is so blindly anti-Trump it doesn't convey anything of what Greenwald gets into -- he wants evidence to stand behind the allegations -- I'm pretty sure Greenwald didn't edit the intro piece. The second interview is better than the first.

<https://www.blackagendareport.com/democrats_smear_jill_stein> -- Looks like Stein is coming back into the news in some small degree. The article doesn't mention the Stein-led recount effort (and it should have) but the Democrats still added her to a list of 40 other people and groups Trump Jr. was told to detail communications with by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As the article put it:

Every other person, business or organization on the list is a Russian
government official, played some role on the Trump campaign, or are or
are mentioned in stories about election hacking. There is no legitimate
reason for Stein’s name to be on this list. She makes clear that she has
had no contact with the Trump family or campaign. She is being thrown
under the bus in a classic smear tactic.

Russiagate has no evidence to back it up and never did, but it will have some added value for the Democrats in smearing Jill Stein and serving as a fake reason to justify hostility against Russia.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FCoA0UxCdk> -- 6 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a small robot ("Little Sunfish") with a camera has footage showing melted nuclear fuel rods in reactor #3. This is a big deal because:

- Teppco has a history of delaying pertinent news, lying about the scope of this disaster.

- 1600+ people died of Fukushima-related causes. Cancers attributable to Fukushima are now coming up. We won't know the tally for years to come, but there's no way this will be good. Maybe in 40 years these reactors will be decommissioned. I'll bet that in time we'll learn that tainted water dumping has been going on throughout and it's wise to reconsider getting goods made in or near that water.

- This is why nuclear activists like Dr. Helen Caldicott do their work and argue, convincingly, that we simply can't afford nuclear power. Caldicott is the author of many books including one of my favorites, "The New Nuclear Danger". At one talk she said "It seems that nearly a million people have already died as a result of Chernobyl despite what WHO says and the IAEA. This is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine because everybody should know about this." (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ITrXVJMKeQ> around 24s into the 9m recording which is worth watching), and the Fukushima disaster of Japan "many times worse than Chernobyl". She concisely covers the Fukushima reactors disaster and explains what happened, then points out that "Turkish food is extremely radioactive: Do not buy Turkish dried apricots, do not buy Turkish hazelnuts... The Turks were so cross with the Russians that they sent all their radioactive tea over to Russia after Chernobyl. 40% of Europe is still radioactive; farms in Britain, their land is so full of cesium they can't sell them." (5m59s). In another recording on YouTube she advises avoiding Japanese food for similar reasons: radioactive damage is cumulative over one's lifetime and the risk gets worse as you go through the seafood food chain (algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, humans) because each step concentrates more radioactive matter which seafood eaters end up consuming.

Date Tue 20:44
I wrote:

I'm listening to Nick Brana (draftbernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> representative) interview <http://traffic.libsyn.com/ral…/NADER_174_podcast_version.mp3> (Ralph Nader Radio Hour with a DraftBernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> representative) and Nader is nailing it on 3rd parties ("they can't win, the system is not responsive" and people "don't want to waste their vote"). [...]

Speaking of Bernie Sanders and why I don't think much of him:
<https://www.counterpunch.org/…/a-suggestion-for-bernie-on-…/> is Paul Street's latest which goes into more on this topic. Worth reading.

Russiagate
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq9PZFQnkv4> -- Ray McGovern says DNC "hack" was inside job: speed of copying was too great to have been done over a network. Finally -- mention of a detail that not only makes sense but helps narrow down the set of people who know how the data was obtained. McGovern also says that someone on the inside could have had "some inside help of quite professional people" due to the obfuscation involved in trying to make this look like a foreign attack ('Russian hack') which is consistent with the CIA work WikiLeaks told us about as part of their "Vault 7" series of leaks.

Why were no forensics done until recently, previously done only by private industry, and why were the servers involved not immediately seized for review? We were told this alleged foreign attack constitutes 'an act of war'. Is this behavior really consistent with something important enough to be called 'an act of war'?

It's looking more likely that this:

- was an inside job,
- by Seth Rich (possibly working with someone else) who was later killed for his part in this,
- the Russian govt. and Russian so-called "hackers" are a distraction,
- and this could go quite high up: James Comey not getting the servers involved (even by force) suggests something else is going on.

Do you honestly believe that if you or I had anything to do with this, we'd be free and have our computers intact now?

Russian, Iran, and North Korean sanctions
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMoawJ3xAAc -- Republicans are complicit with Dems on blocking Russia. The 2015 documentary "The Propaganda Game" shows how ineffective the past NK sanctions were: NK computer lab had all-new Hewlett-Packard computers snuck into NK.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHGUsD42190 -- If Trump doesn't veto sanctions bill, "he's given up on his presidency" says Ron Paul Institute Exec. Dir. Daniel McAdams.

Media
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT0hL92xlrs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czrvklLsW0Y -- Joy Reid tweets xenophobic false line, somehow keeps her job at MSNBC (nicknamed "MSDNC" due to its one-sided reportage favoring the Dems). Also, in light of how the Dems reacted to Trump's xenophobic and false remarks, MSNBC ends up vindicating Trump's horrible language. Now others can complain about Trump's xenophobic wrong language but not Joy Reid and MSNBC would be wise to make some distance from her.

I'm listening to Nick Brana (draftbernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> representative) interview http://traffic.libsyn.com/ral…/NADER_174_podcast_version.mp3 (Ralph Nader Radio Hour with a DraftBernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> representative) and Nader is nailing it on 3rd parties ("they can't win, the system is not responsive" and people "don't want to waste their vote").

https://draftbernie.org is the site intending to "Draft Bernie for a People's Party Seeks to Recruit Sanders to Start a New Political Party, Not to Run for President in 2020" (https://draftbernie.org/…/press-release-draft-bernie-peopl…/). They want this because "[d]espite Bernie Sanders’ monumental efforts to reform the Democratic Party, it remains firmly in neoliberal control".

I have no problems with a new party starting, or with independent candidates running. But I don't see how running with a former candidate who is worse on major issues than Nader was is any start for a new party.

Parties are known for candidates, not celebrities who aren't running.

I'm not convinced Sanders is 'progressive' on major issues of the day, and that this isn't just another effort to drum up support for the Democratic Party (an issue the interview reveals is still being considered!).

Sanders was (as BlackAgendaReport.com<http://blackagendareport.com> rightly put it) a shepherd for Hillary Clinton and lost all legitimacy in critiquing the Dems when he did that (and he did that without reservation, by the way).

Today Sen. Sanders puts forth no Senate version of HR676 (Medicare for All) and mainly seems to give speeches instead of having his staff write bills for the Senate to implement his majoritarian values which make him seem like a good idea for being a POTUS candidate again.

Sanders won't point out the Dems' weaknesses because he's working for them.

Sanders is unwilling to object to war (his ought-to-be-seen-as-shameful 2016 "Meet the Press" interview is most revealing how go-along he is on this preeminent issue). Therefore I see no reason to take his endorsement as a pointer of someone I should vote for or give money to. I'd take such an endorsement as a warning.

"War" seems absent from the draftbernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> website in my searches so far (one mention is of a rally against war sponsored by an organization that is not draftbernie.org<http://draftbernie.org> -- https://draftbernie.org/event/pittsburgh-march-war/ -- sponsored by Pittsburghers in Solidarity Against War).

Branah says in the interview:

- 3rd parties are not attacked "largely and most viciously at the takeoff stage to prevent them from taking off into something major in the first place". They're attacked throughout their existence. "Debate" denials by the CPD, ballot access restrictions are ongoing. And debatebernie.org<http://debatebernie.org> has no real answer to do this. Ralph Nader's name was very well known when he ran in 2000 and the CPD kept him out.

- people "feeling trapped" by the Democrats; yes, but that was also true in 2000 when Nader ran. It's not clear what changed that results in candidates in this new party to win elections.

-J

Hi Carl (or should I say Hey-Hey Ralphie boy!)

I'm young enough to have seen all of those episodes in repeats, back when it was still beyond mainstream criticism to air a show that featured a running joke about a husband threatening to beat his wife ("To the Moon, Alice!"). By the way, the fellow who played Ed Norton in the Honeymooners was also in the "Star Wars Holiday Special" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3a5j8PgQxg which aired exactly once and was disowned by George Lucas afterwards. It was horrible from start to finish. The guys at RedLetterMedia.com<http://redlettermedia.com> reviewed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW4m0oYK0WQ (and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtUd0yuYN4 ). There are no legally available copies of the SW Holiday Special. The same recording (including ads that aired at the time) have been passed around for years, and copies distributed at fan conventions. Nobody even sues to claim the rights to this thing, as far as I know.

TheRealNews.com<http://therealnews.com>: I do like Aaron Mate's interviews; he seems to be the one who will ask about the changes in things I won't find many other places (including DN and sometimes RT's Ed show and certainly Larry King show which I find largely useless but I understand to be reliably popular ratings-wise).

Media recommendation: In addition to anti-war.com<http://anti-war.com>, I do suggest RT for anti-war news in that they do a good job of showing the photos of decimated homes, interviewing victims, and laying out the financial costs which we could put elsewhere. They've also brought up the contradictions in what (I believe) will be a leading lie for an upcoming war with Russia: look at how those awful Russians "hacked our election" with that RT spreading their propaganda! I've seen some perfectly bad documentaries from RT (the "Wi-Fi refugees" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWMNTuIZqKo is a recent example; this takes only one side of the issue and conducts no double-blind tests to see if the claim of human sensitivity to Wi-Fi signals is at all valid, and fails to acknowledge the contradictions in some of the shots the doc shows like a "refugee" claiming to be feeling fine despite sitting in a modern vehicle with a sizable electronic camera sitting next to her shooting her) but I've also seen plenty of good coverage from them on important issues of the day (including some of the only DLC lawsuit coverage you'll find anywhere).

Single-payer healthcare: my impression is that the only people opposed to Medicare for All (HR676 as a bill or the concept) are HMOs and people paid to take their side (shills on chat websites, lawyers, lobbyists). The public overwhelmingly supports this and it stands as more popular than the ACA/ObamaCare (neé RomneyCare). Business-wise, the only opposition I am aware of from big businesses is theoretical and described by Doug Henwood -- business owners see Medicare for All as taking away HMO's business and fear that their business can be taken away too if the state so desires. Therefore business owners side with the HMOs even if Medicare for All would save the business money and hassle of dealing with healthcare-related paperwork. I read this somewhere online, and I think I'm getting the jist of Henwood's argument here.

Apologies: If the NYT can go back on the '17 intelligence agencies' lie they were pushing is indeed not true (as it was immediately known to be untrue by RT, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, and plenty of others) then shouldn't HRC admit she was lying to us all during her most recent failed POTUS campaign?

More on Israeli involvement with Syrian war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzg99i-mhAA -- Israel "colludes with groups that are part of chaos in Syria", activist says.

-J

Media: War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIeP4YDq1KY -- Corporate media silence helps Syrian war persist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i8i9Ra1NyE -- Boycott Israel, go to jail for 20 years and face a heavy fine. This sounds unconstitutional to me, more likely congress members who want to look good for AIPAC support.

Media: Russiagate...the endless march toward "a nothing burger" (to quote a CNN host)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3XHKyTr4o
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTTo20JsVEY
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ktz6miC9c
Russiagate plods on and as RT's "Resident" (third link above) points out: if you believe ABC polls (despite having missed the POTUS prediction), then you should know the same poll that says Trump is looking at the lowest approval rate in 70 years also says only 37% of those polled (which they claim is a national poll) think the Democratic Party stands for anything. Instead they believe the Democratic Party only stands against the Republicans. While the fruitless Russiagate stories keep coming and the Dems are throwing away their chance to take up better legislation (like a Senate version of HR676, as the feckless Bernie Sanders said he'd do and hasn't done), they come off as standing for nothing. Meanwhile domestic problems worsen: many American cities have unpotable water (not just Flint, MI), healthcare delivery is going to go up in cost (regardless of which HMO-centric plan wins out), and worst of all: the Bush-Obama-Trump wars continue apace. No help for those suffering and dying from the equally craven Democrats.

The first link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3XHKyTr4o) also has a very good point Aaron Maté makes (around 16m50s) regarding Clintonian hypocrisy where WJC made a $500k speaking gig in Russia while Sec. State HRC objected to Magnitsky restrictions which would have created a problem for WJC to make that speech for money. Wikileaks' leaked emails coming in handy again here too ("With the help of the research team, we killed a Bloomberg story trying to link HRC's opposition to the Magnitsky bill to a $500,000 speech that WJC gave in Moscow." from Jesse Lehrich jlehrich at hillaryclinton.com<mailto:jlehrich at hillaryclinton.com> sent on 2015-05-21 at 20:49 -- https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/303 ). And in so doing taking down another less reliable source: Bloomberg News. Add it to the pile: NYT (war lies), WaPo (CIA outlet), MSNBC (DNC outlet, particularly Rachel Maddow show), CNN ("Russiagate" sans proof), and so much of the corporate mainstream for silence on closely examining HRC's campaign while endlessly critiquing ("Russiagate") without proof and being so far wrong without apology or explanation/reflection on predicting POTUS. It's no wonder the public distrusts MSM.

Healthcare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2G8CWDMSG8 -- 'Trump can't vote down Obamacare so he "strangling" it instead' according to TheRealNews.com<http://therealnews.com>. But if Trump merely lets Obamacare continue as-is it will become increasingly unaffordable and useless to the public (this interview says this is happening now in Republican governor states because there are over 1300 counties with only 1 insurer on the plan and there are some counties with 0 insurers on the plan). But the interviewee still supports the idea that Democrats are more likely to get the US to a single-payer system. There's no evidence offered for this bold assertion given that both Republicans and Democrats get HMO campaign money which I believe is why HR676 makes no real progress year after year. A small portion of the war budget would let us buy out the only organized opposition to universalizing Medicare.

WikiLeaks Vault 7
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_hMxBFnuO0
- https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#UCL%20/%20Raytheon
The WikiLeaks "Vault 7" releases continue and show more ties between private industry and government: Raytheon analyzed malware and gave information to the CIA, "by analyzing malware attacks in the wild and giving recommendations to the CIA development teams for further investigation and PoC [point of contact] development for their own malware projects.".

War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-twd05sLtBw -- new Iranian sanctions mean carrying out more Obama-era war-fomenting policy against Iran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unvOoE_I8bM -- 9-11 victims families push for British report to be released because they believe the report will name Saudi Arabia as source for 'terrorism funding' and 'complicity in terrorism'. Not much of a revelation but this would put Brits in a tough spot to object to being friendly with SA.

Healthcare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Z4iMulrYc -- John McCain's healthcare exposes sham of national debate on healthcare: we need the plan we pay for him to have. McCain's brain tumor (cancerous) is going to require even more care. The one big dodge of this interview: no mention that HR676 (Medicare for all) is more popular than ObamaCare and (as Trump said) ObamaCare will become unaffordable as it goes along. All HMO-based plans are designed to be more expensive over time. So there will come a time when even those who support ObamaCare now wouldn't be able to afford it if they had to rely on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vot4VgROlJ4 -- USPS labor union under fire as pressure to privatize USPS mounts; better discussion of healthcare debate nationally here than in previous piece ostensibly centered on healthcare(!), and wise warning about USPS going private: privatization means not every house will get postal service and that helps kill e-commerce. I bet he's right in this.

https://www.democracynow.org/…/trump_to_let_obamacare_fail_…
I'm guessing DN intended this as some kind of dig at Trump but the story tacitly reveals what a ridiculous choice pro-ObamaCare protesters are making when they should be pushing for Medicare for All (HR676) and highlighting what a fraud Sanders is for not bringing a Senate version of that bill to the Senate.

Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXJIhmB6YwU -- Donna Brazile, 2-time DNC higher-up, Democratic Party Superdelegate, "debate" cheater is writing a book. I might read this at the Library just for laughs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrPG1fXhG3s -- one of the few places you'll hear even a mention of the ongoing DNC lawsuit (around 6m) in which the DNC has already admitted voting in its elections are a sham. MSM isn't covering it but neither is DN. If the Democrats really are a powerful group in the US, and American politics are worth following, this lawsuit has to be worth some ink/time as it has the power to enlighten people about how much the DNC doesn't care about its supporters' votes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhExLtRbAw -- RT is in the cross-hairs in "Russiagate", repeatedly mentioned as Russian propaganda source. I guess we're supposed to not see MSM as pro-war/pro-bank/Democratic Party propaganda.

C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote:

Why did Obama suffer far less backlash than George W. Bush? Salon
columnist David Sirota summarized an academic study released in 2013:
“Evaluating surveys of more than 5,300 anti-war protestors from 2007 to
2009, the researchers discovered that the many protestors who
self-identified as Democrats ‘withdrew from anti-war protests when the
Democratic Party achieved electoral success’ in the 2008 presidential
election.”

I've long noticed this and pointed out how this is what separates AWARE from other so-called anti-war groups: AWARE protestors (certainly including you) rightly kept protesting during Obama's administration.

The groups that organized the marches against the 2003 invasion of Iraq largely fell silent during the Obama administration in terms of street presence. I'm sure those groups' reps would tell us they're anti-war and they don't care who is in charge. But that is indefensible. Their choices to be silent against the drone war, for example, makes their choices indistinguishable from how you'd expect them to react out of partisanship.

Now, should one see a huge ostensibly anti-war crowd, it will be right and proper to ask "How many of them are just anti-Republican versus being anti-war?". Being anti-Republican means the bodies aren't there in the streets during the next Democratic Party administration (if they haven't sunk themselves too far) and it means the next war is just 1 or 2 terms away: if the Republicans can't get away with executing the war, they'll leave it to the Democrats to initiate and then inherit on the next cycle.

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