[Peace] News from Neptune for March 1

[C G Estabrook]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qezuDBnm0pY&fbclid=IwAR0B2rR0dF8ogbZ3I-KhJEebpMWcd_0LtJO-Dq2LMEZXrvXJ9n0R03GycQU

Welcome to News from Neptune for March 1, in the ninth week of 2019. I’m Carl Estabrook.

Our program is conceived in the spirit of Rosa Luxemburg - murdered by a social democratic government a century ago - who said, “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

That begins by calling things by the right name, particularly in regard to socialism and capitalism.

Our mentor Noam Chomsky says, “Terms like capitalism & socialism have been so evacuated of meaning that I don't like to use them. There's nothing remotely like capitalism in existence. To the extent there ever was, it disappeared by the 1920’s. Every industrial society is one form or another of state capitalism.” 

That doesn’t deny that state capitalist regimes that called themselves socialist made immense strides in the 20th century - in Russia & China, notably.
 
Since the last decade of that century, our program has been a weekly hour of spontaneous & unrehearsed discussion of the news of the week and its coverage by the media, done in the spirit of Noam Chomsky - first, on a so-called community radio station - and now via Urbana Public TV and YouTube. (Earlier editions of this program are available at <archive.org>. ) 

Chomsky says that in the U.S. 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.”

David Green & I will try to say some true things on today’s  “WAR PARTY WINS” edition of News from Neptune.
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 “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” [Chomsky]