LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Friday, 31 MAR 2023] Greetings, fellow readers. Here are some of today’s media/press notes to help us track and make sense of this plandemic dystopia we all find ourselves living through in the 2020s, including inverted totalitarianism, medical authoritarianism, medical apartheid, police state surveillance, repression, and lockdowns, COVID-19 psyop, post-COVID-19 controlled demolition of the global economy, looming food crisis, the rise of neo-feudalism, houseless encampments of the neo-peasantry, nuclear danger, creeping WWIII provoked by US/NATO/AUKUS imperialism against the BRICS nations and the global south, military pollution, petrol pollution, corporate pollution, chemical pollution, geoengineering, chemical cloud seeding, endocrine disrupting chemicals in the food and water, a worsening global fertility crisis, and industry-induced and/or geoengineering-induced climate change leading to a climate crisis of melting ice caps, record heatwaves, tornadoes, floods, drought, drying rivers, and other extreme weather events, which threaten life on Earth.
Let’s learn together and find solutions together. Let’s build working class solidarity. Let’s build human solidarity. Let’s form groups and “act for justice”. “[There’s] power anywhere where there’s people,” as Fred Hampton said. Siempre hay esperanza. (Please see below for samples of today’s news cycle.)
Today, on this week’s edition of On the Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol we hear inspiring audio from a Land Day action for Palestinian rights in Occupied Palestine. (Additional notes on this radio program below.)
I think our priority should not be electoral politics. I think our priority should be building, disciplined, organized, militant popular movements. And electoral politics can be part of that movement, but shouldn’t be the primary focus. We have to rebuild those organizations because the only strength we have is in our numbers. And, if we use those numbers correctly, we can pit power against power. But that requires organization.
Chris Hedges (quoted from a 2021 talk at Brooklyn College)
OTHER SALIENT (i.e., meaningful, truth-seeking, truth-tracking) OBSERVATIONS:
- “After Socrates: Episode 15 – Socrates Meets Kierkegaard: Philosophy’s Greatest Dialogues” by John Vervaeke [via YouTube], 31 MAR 2023. [1hr 21min 37sec] COMMENTS: Wow! What an exhilarating dialogue! Admittedly, your scribe has struggled with his reading of Kierkegaard. So, the first 25 minutes of this dialogue can be frustrating for those of us, who must return to Kierkegaard’s writings until we finally have an adequate grip or comprehension of his concepts. But, even without a strong grasp of Kierkegaard’s writings, after 25 minutes, this dialogue becomes magnificently engaging, especially for students, for readers, for listeners, who have studied, read, or listened to the previous episodes of “After Socrates” and “Awakening From the Meaning Crisis“, Prof. John Vervaeke’s two major video lecture series. Your scribe is dedicated to the liberation of the working class, to the liberation of humanity, but especially dedicated to the liberation of the working class because of the oppressive power imbalance under which the working class must operate. But, if “there is no political solution,” to quote The Police, it is because we, as a working class, are so horribly divided and conquered. And, if so, it’s because we are sinners, i.e., engage in self-deception, engage in foolishness. As Christopher Mastroprieto said, sin is a failure of will, not a matter of ignorance. So, we must cultivate wisdom within, and between, wisdom-cultivating communities, so that together we can awaken from the meaning crisis and, in so doing, transform ourselves, such that we can rise to the challenge before us, to the challenge of the interlocking crises we find ourselves immersed within, the political crises, the socioeconomic crises, the mental health crises, the ecological crises, all overlaid upon the deeper meaning crisis. Since the scientific worldview has laid waste to the psychosocial tools of religion, which used to afford wisdom-cultivation, we seem to find ourselves in dire need of a religion, which is not a religion. To that end, Prof. John Vervaeke and colleagues provide invaluable guidance.
- “Trump is Obscene” by Plastic Pills [via YouTube], 31 MAR 2023. [transcript-worthy (TW)] Another brilliant commentary/analysis by Plastic Pills. This one focuses on the society of the spectacle in the time of Trump, as a popular ‘political’ spectacle.
- “Lawfare Rules: The Grayzone Friday Live 3/31/23” by The Grayzone [via YouTube], 31 MAR 2023. [1hr 45min 13sec] NOTES: [L36] Aaron Maté gets another journalism award. | Trump gets indicted. Trump interview clip with Sean Hannity. Stormy Daniels, pornography actor, plus a circa 2010 interview by Max Blumenthal with Stormy Daniels (back when he worked for the “neocon” Daily Beast.) Max mentioned working for The Daily Beast for about a year, until he tried to report on Occupied Palestine, and they suppressed his investigative journalism. | Ukraine, Zelensky. …
- “🔴 When The IRS MAY SHOW UP At YOUR Doorstep | When The IRS May Contact A Taxpayer” by Lena Petrova, CPA, Tax & Economics, 31 MAR 2023. [8min 01sec] | On avoiding tax scams and/or tax problems. NB: Income tax is wrong, especially taxing the working class. The USA was never meant to tax the working class… In fact, federal income tax didn’t begin until the Revenue Act of 1913 shifted the tax burden onto the backs of workers, amidst the working-class movement for an eight-hour workday. (Additional notes on this topic below.)
- MINING MEMORY HOLES:
- “MSU Denver awarding 5 students with a shot at free tuition if they get COVID-19 vaccine” by Elizabeth Hernandez, The Denver Post, 9 JUN 2021.
- “Five Colorado students are $50,000 richer in college tuition thanks to COVID vaccine scholarship incentive: Money for the cash and scholarship prizes in the Colorado Comeback Cash program comes from CARES Act” by Elizabeth Hernandez, The Denver Post, 10 JUN 2021.
@LumpenProles, last modified/edited/updated on 8 APR 2023 at 14:02 PDT
MEDIA/PRESS NOTES, NEWS, VIEWS, WORKING CLASS BLUES, INFORMATION, INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, AND AGITATION FROM A WORKING CLASS PERSPECTIVE*
[Ideally, your author would have included links to all programs listed below. Programs listed without an embeded link or listener notes are based on past scheduling and have not yet been verified. Please check relevant websites for actual programming. / Notes will be modified/edited/updated as time and labor constraints allow. Working class solidarity. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊]
Friday, 31 March 2023
*The opinions expressed by the hosts, guests, journalists, authors, and other speakers in today’s sampling of news and information are not necessarily the views of Lumpenproletariat.
The free speech Pacifica Radio Network, perhaps the world’s oldest listener-sponsored, definitely the world’s first and only listener-owned radio network, includes KPFA (the first Pacifica Radio station; Berkeley, CA), WBAI (NYC), KPFK (Los Angeles), WPFW (D.C.), and KPFT (Houston), and has many other affiliate stations. The U.S. government, having undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion (if not a military coup on 22 NOV 1963), and being inimical to the Bill of Rights, is opposed to free speech radio. After the 1999 KPFA Lockouts, listeners won democratic governance of the Pacifica Radio Network. Unfortunately, since then, a liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) faction, including KPFA news bosses (Aileen Alfandary, Mark Mericle, et al.), have colluded to undermine democratic governance and to NPR-ize Pacifica Radio. Free speech Pacifica Radio is your radio network, built to broadcast news and information, which the establishment tries to distort or hide from you. We cannot hope for a democratic society without an informed citizenry. Please support free speech Pacifica Radio. Become a member with full voting rights for as little as $25 per year. Then, hold your Pacifica Radio stations accountable and keep Pacifica Radio true to the Pacifica Mission Statement. Then, help expand free speech radio and digital media. Most media/press is state-corporate propaganda. The airwaves belong to the people. Don’t let Democrat partisans colonize free speech radio. Don’t let Democrat partisans keep the working-class imaginary confined within the false left-right paradigm, within the false opposition party that is the Democrat Party, within the corporate two-party dictatorship. The working-class needs institutional power to build political power, not just cultural awareness or cultural celebration, not just “identity politics”, which are mostly cultural, not political, concerns. Political education is as necessary for working-class liberation, as it is central to the Pacifica Mission Statement. Unfortunately, the Democrat Party, the two-party system, the establishment is dumbing down America. And this process of depoliticization and demobilization is being advanced within Pacifica Radio by certain people, apparently connected to the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Democrat Party and/or the U.S. government. Please support free speech Pacifica Radio; then, hold it accountable to its Mission Statement. Oust the sophists. Lift up the truth-seekers. This daily column is dedicated to the Pacifica Mission Statement, dedicated to exposing sophistry and deception, dedicated to the liberation of the working-class through communication, dia logos, encouraging mindful action within and between wisdom-cultivating communities. As Einstein suggested, like Socrates before him, the important thing is to not stop questioning.
21:00 PST / 00:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Jimmy Dore Show
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
“A Clash Of Authority” by Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign [via YouTube], 31 MAR 2023. [1min 22sec]
QUOTATION FROM VIDEO DESCRIPTION: “Artist #DavidBirkin’s piece Variable Messaging juxtaposes two contrasting voices of authority. | Free Entry to all | Open until the 8th April | #StatesOfViolence #FreeAssangeNOW
05:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar
QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “A daily digest of independent news analysis, investigation, education, artistic expression, and activism in the public interest, emphasizing the connection between global issues and those in local communities. Hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar.”
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program, Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar, suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies, Leonard Lopate at Large, et al., which Dr. Noam Chomsky warned about since at least the 1990s. Dr. Chomsky’s critique of establishment media/press now also applies to much of Pacifica Radio. ‘They will only go but so far…’ Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
06:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman & company
QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Democracy Now! is a daily independent award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.”
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Democracy Now! used to be a hard-hitting, adversarial newscast. Now, Amy Goodman is a millionaire and Democracy Now! is no longer willing to be honest about various things, including the two-party dictatorship, 9/11, COVID-19, and US/NATO imperialism. As Danny Haiphong wrote in 2021, “[Democracy Now!] has become a reliable platform for uncritical regime change propaganda, demonizing targets of US empire from Syria to Nicaragua.” [ 1 ]
07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WPFW [D.C.] > On The Ground with Esther Iverem
QUOTATION FROM WPFW ARCHIVE: “On the Ground, which premiered on May Day, May 1, 2014, counters this trend by giving a voice to the voiceless [i.e., amplifying the voices of the silenced]. The weekly hour hosted by Esther Iverem covers social justice activism, with a special emphasis on sustainable living, the environment, economics, labor and the left edge of culture and media.”
NOTES: Headlines & Happenings | Land Day action for Palestinian rights in Occupied Palestine. | If a direct link to a WPFW radio archive is not included here, please access the WPFW archive by scrolling down to find the archives for Friday, 31 MAR 2023 (10:00 EST) and clicking on the audio stream for On The Ground. Also see On the Ground website for broadcast archives. Link for 31 MAR 2023 program.
COMMENTS: On the Ground is one of the best programs on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. On the Ground deserves a timeslot on prime time mass media more than any corporate talking head. What have we allowed our government to do to our media in the USA? It seems very few of us actually read Manufacturing Consent, like very few of us actually read Das Kapital.
07:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > UpFront with Brian Edwards-Tiekert
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: UpFront is some of the worst Machiavellian perception management, which will never inform the working class, which is oppressed by the power elite, nor help them connect the dots between issues to help the public see the larger truths to be able to learn from past experience. This is liberal [i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist] entertainment and Democrat Party apologism masquerading as critical leftist [i.e., anti-capitalist] journalism and analysis. [ 2 ]
07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Heart of Mind with Kathryn Davis
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
08:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > A Rude Awakening with Sabrina Jacobs
NOTES: […] (08:25 PDT) Sabrina Jacobs and guest discuss an article at Media Matters dot org about how establishment/corporate media fail to honestly report on climate change issues, especially how IPCC report was largely ignored. [Host and guest must hammer on proving climate change because too many people easily dismiss climate change as a hoax. If we focus, for example, on ozone layer depletion and the role of burning petroleum products, it’s difficult or impossible to deny or negate. It’s okay to preach to the choir and/or the congregation, so to speak. But we must also communicate and persuade skeptics. Ozone layer depletion can be proven. CLimate models are debatable and easily deniable by opponents, by people, who are insensitive to ecological collapse, such as your scribe’s Trump-supporting neighbor. We must wake the folk up. That means we must be more creative and more perssuasive in how we communicate about issues of public concern.] … media matters dot org
08:00 PST / 11:00 EST, WPFW [D.C.] > Community Watch & Comment – Friday with Ron Pinchback(sp?), Tom Williams(sp?), and Chip Jones
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
09:00 PST / 12:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] & PRN.Live [NYC] > The Gary Null Show
NOTES/COMMENTS (re: Gary Null Show for Friday, 31 MAR 2023, PRN.Live livestream): Health & Healing Information: … (09:06 PDT) ‘black currant seed oil is good for hair health, mitigate hair loss..’ (09:06 PDT) | music break | [transcript-worthy (TW)] Dr. Gary Null commentary on sharing information because many in establishment media don’t speak in good faith, engage in lies and deception esp. from government sources, and especially regarding the COVID-19 psyop. Naming names. (09:18 PDT) … [0920, point of information: Dr. Gary Null said ‘Great Burlington Declaration’, but he meant Great Barrington Declaration.] | (09:21 PDT) audio clip of testimony [TW] … (09:47 PDT) [When Dr. Null speaks against the ‘woke culture,’ surely, he means the way Democrats and liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) have weaponized and perverted the true meaning of woke, which comes from a black subculture, which has long meant being aware of the system of oppression. Examples of culture wars, identity politics, and single-issue politics, many of whom are misguided and poor representations of the broader civil rights movements of the past are easily magnifiedby corporate media ] 0947 …
COMMENTS: This program, The Gary Null Show, is one of the most honest, compassionate, and hard-hitting shows on Pacifica Radio, or anywhere for that matter. Your author doesn’t agree with everything Dr. Null says. But, when it comes to health and healing information, Dr. Null is one of the most important voices around today. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Flashpoints; Project Censored; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Covid, Race & Democracy, Guns and Butter, et al.
09:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman & company
QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Democracy Now! is a daily independent award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.”
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] (See earlier broadcast above for additional notes.)
“🔴 When The IRS MAY SHOW UP At YOUR Doorstep | When The IRS May Contact A Taxpayer” by Lena Petrova, CPA, Tax & Economics, 31 MAR 2023. [8min 01sec]
NOTES: On avoiding tax scams and/or tax problems.
COMMENTS: Income tax is wrong, especially taxing the working class. The USA was never meant to tax the working class, only royal charters, or corporate charters, aka corporations, and the wealthiest people. Unfortunately, the American Revolution was not a proletarian revolution, but a bourgeois revolution. So, the US power elite have always sought to ‘keep the peasants in line’ with class warfare from above.
Eventually, the power elite pushed back against the democratizing tendencies of the socialists and communists, who demanded a fair wage for a fair day’s labor with the movement for an eight-hour workday. The power elite eventually succeeded in shifting the tax burden away from corporations and onto the working class after the 16th Amendment (1909) by implementing the Revenue Act of 1913, which imposed the first permanent federal income tax. Since then, Congress has been passing ever more laws to help the rich and corporations evade taxes and to increasingly tax the poor and working class. We, the people must push back to end income tax for low income earners as a moral imperative. We must enforce a progressive tax rate on high income earners, which means only taxing rich people, like multimillionaires and billionaires. And the wealthier one is, like billionaires and multibillionaires, the higher the tax rate must be, if only as a way to rein in out-of-control concentration of wealth and power, which captures government and bends it to their plutocratic will. After a certain point, there must be up to a 99% income tax or even a 100% tax rate on the wealthiest individuals to prevent the ossification of an oligarch or plutocrat class of people, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Stephen A. Schwarzman, Sergey Brin, the Waltons, the Kochs, the Mars, et al., who engage in leveraged buyouts, collude with the deep state and the global power elite, and/or otherwise cause harm to labor and society. Plutocrats become so wealthy they become out of control, above the law, and impose an inordinate and toxic influence on the economy, which has become deindustrialized and financialized, dominated by the FIRE sector.
Some insist the high marginal tax rates of the mid-20th century were not meant to reduce income inequality nor help the working class, and say rich people still managed to evade taxes. But that’s not an argument against a progressive tax rate. It’s an argument for better tax regulation and enforcement. But we know there’s a class war going on; and it’s mostly class warfare from above. That’s why the IRS spent a ton of money buying ammo recently and appears to be arming themselves to step up their class warfare from above against the working class.
Meanwhile, white-collar criminologists have been eliminated, financial deregulation is worsening, the Federal Reserve is completely corrupt (see Prof. Michael Hudson, Prof. William K. Black, et al.), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are completely corrupt, the wealthy and power elite are allowed to crash banks for profit, push regulatory capture to an all-time high, and expand tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, enable off-shore tax havens, and bailouts for banksters. We must wake the folk up! We can’t help liberate wage slaves, who do not yet realize they are wage slaves, who lack class consciousness. But make no mistake; the people in power have nothing but contempt for the working class, who they seek to subjugate (not liberate) by any means necessary, including technological unemployment and various structural means to drive wages to zero. The true minimum wage has always been zero, for the unemployed. Over time, technological unemployment will only increase the number of unemployed people. And the unnecessary COVID-19 lockdowns drove many small businesses and self-employed people out of work. Central bank digital currency (CBDC) threatens to tighten totalitarian controls to drive small business owners out of work or into corporate wage slavery. With a democratic society, technological unemployment could be a liberating trend. Without a democratic society, with inverted totalitarianism (as articulated by Dr. Sheldon S. Wolin in his book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism), technological unemployment will be a nightmare, as debt levels increase, people struggle to make ends meet, working people are taxed unfairly, the poor are criminalized, and debtors’ prisons are covertly re-established. Notably, a recent Goldman Sachs report is estimating AI chatbots will soon eliminate some 300 million jobs. There aren’t enough gainful employment jobs now. Yet, the power elite want to cut even more jobs without a sensible strategy for responding to the adverse consequences for the working-class people, who will lose their incomes. Classical economists, like David Ricardo, have warned about technological unemployment (i.e., ‘the machine problem’) centuries ago. Again, we must wake the folk up!
09:00 PST, KPFK [Los Angeles, CA] > Thom Hartmann Program
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, PRN.Live [NYC] > Leid Stories with Utrice Leid
NOTES: 1. Jay | 2. Harvey in Berkeley’ seems bad faith… recommends chatbots, insultingly denying real people, community-building.. | 3. caller pushed back against Harvey’s suggestion that loneliness be dealt with by talking to chat bots… | … your author called in, multitasking…had to wing it, but expressed my opinion: capitalism is the source cause of all the other issues/symptoms everyone is fretting about… | Gino .. [TW] | Unfortunately, Leid Stories is not archived consistently at PRN.Live. Perhaps, you can volunteer and help with archiving. In the meantime, please search PRN’s archives for past editions of this excellent and important free speech radio program, Leid Stories.
COMMENTS: This program, Leid Stories, is dedicated to free speech, but free speech with common sense, courtesy, and focus. Listeners are invited to call in to speak freely about a particular question posed by the host, Utrice Leid. Unlike other call-in shows, like Thom Hartmann, Kris Welch, Mitch Jeserich, and many others on free speech Pacifica Radio, on Leid Stories, callers aren’t screened or filtered, dissonant voices aren’t cut short, or otherwise handled to control the narrative. Instead, the host, Utrice Leid, helps callers make their point, as long as it’s a cogent argument. Utrice Leid encourages critical thinking. On Fridays, the discussion theme is “Free Your Mind Fridays”, where listeners are invited to call in to articulate an opinion on any topic they wish. KPFA listeners deserve a radio host, like Utrice Leid, during weekdays, instead of partisan hosts, such as Kris Welch, who perpetuate phony establishment narratives, and stifle call-ins. | Leid Stories is one of the most honest, hard-hitting, yet compassionate, programs on the free speech Progressive Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Project Censored; Flashpoints; The Gary Null Show; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Guns and Butter; Clearing the FOG; Covid, Race & Democracy; et al.
10:00 PST, KPFK [Los Angeles, CA] > Michael Slate Show
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program is dedicated to following Bob Avakian’s Revolutionary Communist Party (USA). Your author does not agree with everything Bob Avakian or the RCP espouses. But the messaging of Mr. Avakian and his RCP is important for all to understand.
10:00 PST, WBAI [NYC] > Leonard Lopate at Large
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program, Leonard Lopate at Large, suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies, et al., which Dr. Noam Chomsky warned about since at least the 1990s. Dr. Chomsky’s critique of establishment media/press now also applies to much of Pacifica Radio. ‘They will only go but so far…’ Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
10:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Economic Update with Prof. Richard Wolff
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Dr. Richard Wolff is co-author of Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (The MIT Press), an important book for economics students to understand some of the main differences between neoclassical (i.e., establishment approach to economics) and heterodox economics (i.e., alternative approaches to economics). But Dr. Richard Wolff, a heterodox economist and an ally and colleague of the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (USA), your author’s alma mater, somehow publicly feigns ignorance of modern monetary theory (MMT) or its policy prescriptions, such as the MMT-based job guarantee program. [ 3 ]
10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, WPFW [D.C.] > Latino Media Collective
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
10:30 PDT, KPFA > Terra Verde
QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Telling the Story of Temperate Rainforest Giants” | “The Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest is the largest swath of temperate rainforest on the planet. Stretching from Alaska to California, this carbon dense forest is an important habitat for the region’s distinctive biodiversity and has long been a source of sustenance and cultural significance for coastal Indigenous communities. In this week’s episode of Terra Verde, host Gary Graham Hughes talks with Cascadia Times investigative journalists Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate about their new book, Canopy of Titans: The Life and Times of the Great North American Temperate Rainforest, which celebrates the beauty and complexity of these ecosystems and uncovers how climate policy mechanisms that favor extractive industry are contributing to the ongoing degradation of this amazing rainforest.”
COMMENTS: This program, Terra Verde, was hosted by Brian Edwards-Tiekert back in the 2000s; so, predictably, it suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as Leonard Lopate at Large, UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies, et al., which Dr. Noam Chomsky warned about since at least the 1990s. Terra Verde can be filed under the corrupt faction’s category of NPR-izing programs. If the random lackeys, apparently selected by the patronage system of which Britain Edwards-Tiekert is a partisan, if they truly cared about the environment, they would connect the issues to the power structures of society, especially both major corporate political parties because electoral p. Dr. Chomsky’s critique of establishment media/press now also applies to much of Pacifica Radio. ‘They will only go but so far…’ Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
11:00 PST, PRN.Live [NYC] > Alternative Visions with Dr. Jack Rasmus
NOTES: Brilliantly exposing many of the false narratives of neoclassical economics and the establishment in the context of the ongoing Banking Crisis of March 2023. … 1130 … [Your scribe must push back against Dr. Rasmus when he said ‘banks must do what they do or else they won’t make any money. Not true but theyd make less money but the economy’d be better off if they not lent to build up nations productive capacity, not just simply lend against assets already in place, which they hope to foreclose on…] …. [TW]
… 1139 … ‘…same problems with Credit Suisse…also Paribas in France…also.. | 1140 ‘my last report…Goldman Sachs…AI…and chatbots will create more technological unemployment…some 300 million jobs will be lost…’ [TW] … 1149 cc tune out to be present for chatty sibling
COMMENTS: Alternative Visions with Dr. Jack Rasmus is the real economic update. We love Economic Update with Dr. Richard Wolff, but he’s more of a performer than an educator, or a reporter, at least with regard to Dr. Wolff’s economic updates. We cannot deny the importance of Dr. Wolff’s popularization of leftist (i.e, anticapitalist/prosocialist) economics. But Dr. Jack Rasmus provides real-world nuts and bolts explanations of economics topics, tracking actual data in accessible language for everyday working-class people, defining terms along the way. Leftist (i.e., anticapitalist) economic perspectives prioritize labor’s interests over the interests of capital. Rightist (i.e., procapitalist) economic perspectives prioritize capital’s interests over the interests of labor. Please keep in mind, capitalism is not necessarily synonymous with liberty/libertarianism; and socialism is not necessarily synonymous with authoritarianism. The left-right spectrum is a range of possibilities of economic systems, not political systems. Political systems have to do with the role of the state, which is a separate dimension; so they must be considered and, therefore, graphed on a separate axis, such as a vertical axis. (To consider graphs and further details on these important political compass explanations, see “America’s Stunted Political Spectrum” by Second Thought [via YouTube], 24 APR 2020.) [ 4 ]
11:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA)
QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “The richly diverse and fascinating world of culture and politics of the Middle East and North Africa, co-hosted by Khalil and Malihe.”
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: VOMENA is an anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-white supremacist, anti-imperialist program. Of all the programmers/radio hosts on KPFA’s Local Station Board (LSB) (c. 2007-2012), Algerian-born VOMENA host Khalil Bendib seemed like one of the honest ones, based on your author’s various personal interactions with Khalil, and being a longtime listener of VOMENA. [ 5 ]
11:00 PST / 14:00 EDT, WPFW [D.C.] > Resistance Radio with John Kane and Regan de Loggans
NOTES: [notes pending; author hasn’t listened yet] No direct link to WPFW radio archive. To access the audio archive, search WPFW by scrolling down to find the archives for Friday, [date], 2pm [14:00 EDT] and clicking on the audio stream for Resistance Radio.
COMMENTS: Resistance Radio is explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and focuses on Native American/indigenous issues, rights, and justice.
12:00 PDT, PRN.live [NYC] > Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
12:00 PDT / 15:00 EDT, WBAI [NYC] > Live On The Fly with Randy Credico
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
12:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > It’s Going Down with anonymous male-sounding host
QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “A Dive Into Police Repression and Infiltration in the Denver, Colorado Area” | “In this episode we interview a member of Colorado Spring Antifascists, who speaks broadly about the new hit podcast show, The Alphabet Boys, which looks at police infiltration and repression in the Denver, Colorado area during the 2020 George Floyd uprising. We discuss how this was part of a much longer trajectory and a much broader campaign of counter-insurgency against grassroots left-wing movements from below.”
NOTES: […] 1212 ‘police city … 1214 [sounds like It’s Going Down… PROS: exposing cop fascism.. CONS: Dem apologism] … 1215. … guest from PSL, “chuds and right-wingers’ … 1217. ‘stupid pol’ ‘use slurs and make gulag jokes and defend Xi Jinping’ … [if no critique of corporate liberals and Dems, then u see Dem apologism, tipping the scales in favor of Dem Party. Also, even if program only focuses on the in-the-weeds minutiae of PSL activists, we end up with the liberal bias, which Dr. Noam Chomsky warns about when he says that the liberal bias will even encourage the radical extremes as long as it doesn’t challenge the bigger picture, such as the Democrat Party or Dem betrayal of labor or actual labor struggles… Grassroots activism is good, if PSL types are operating in good faith… but they must connect with labor and the bigger picture… But every time ur scribe has engsged in dialog with PSL types at protest rallies or whatnot, they refuse to discuss electoral politics or labor… ] … [starting April 5, Wednesday at 11am. So, what’s getting cut? Or rescheduled?] 1254. Host: ‘anti vax conspiracy theory ‘ 1254. .. 1257 guest from PSL: ‘ANTI vax conspiracy theorists [liberal bias, denying reality of gain of function, Real Anthony Fauci book; COVID-19 and the Global Predators book by the Breggins; Wuhan Cover-Up book; etc.] … pizzagate [liberal bias, denial of reality of Epstein, etc., cf. One Nation Under Blackmail by Whitney Webb] ‘… uyghurs’ [liberal bias, denial of reality, cf. The Grayzone, Debunking the Uyghur genocide trope; plus, notice the liberals are moving the goalpost, by now talking about detention camps instead of genocide, as earlier. Also, notice liberals like host and guest make no mention of COVID camps. Guest is a PSL activist, ostensibly leftist (anticapitalist) but subscribes to pro-big pharma myths, like COVID-19 and uyghur genocide, etc.]
COMMENTS: It’s Going Down is usually a disappointing program for leftists, as it functions as a synthetic left shill for the establishment by perpetuating the false left-right paradigm whereby the Republican Party and the ‘far-right’ are usually framed as the bogeymen, of which listeners must be wary. Meanwhile, the Democrat Party is usually let off the hook, usually not critiqued as sharply as the Republican Party. [ 6 ]
10:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT, WPFW [D.C.] > Jazz and Justice – Bobby Rox
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Bobby Rox is one of the honest broadcasters on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network (like Mickey Huff, Dennis Bernstein, Esther Iverem, Gary Null, et al.), as opposed to the intellectually dishonest ones, such as Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Mitch Jeserich, Leonard Lopate, Kris Welch, Aileen Alfandary, Mark Mericle, et al. The intellectually dishonest broadcasters have in common a tendency to prioritize Democrat Party apologism over truth-seeking.
13:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Project Censored with Mickey Huff
NOTES: [notes pending; see notes for this broadcast on Monday via PRN.Live]
13:00 PDT / 16:00 EDT, WBAI [NYC] > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WPFW [D.C.] > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
14:00 PDT, KPFA > Making Contact with random liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) host
NOTES: topic: inequality … book. what’s international capital have to do with rising rents? [Sounds like more Democrat Party apologism…notice the refusal to contextualize issues in the context of US power structures, especially two-party dictatorship… ]
14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WBAI [NYC] > Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley cancelled? > Max Politics with Ben Max
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Black Agenda Report was revolutionary, especially as led by Bruce Dixon, Glen Ford, and Margaret Kimberley. Lately, Margaret Kimberley has been hosting Black Agenda Radio. But, for some unfortunate reason, listeners must now listen to establishment politics and Democrat Party apologism with Ben Max. On Friday, 21 OCT 2022, the WBAI board operator mentioned on-air that Max Politics is the regularly scheduled program at this time-slot. No mention was made about what happened to Black Agenda Radio.
14:30 PDT, KPFA > Pushing Limits
NOTES: paul k. Longmore institute(sp?) … [TW] .. 1450. ‘…not all of the left…the Black Panthers were inclusive of people with disabilities…’ … 1453 … [decent political analysis…good, sounds like this cohost is honest…ur scribe is personally acquainted with Adrienne Lauby, another cohost of this program, from circa 2007-2010, particularly 2010 when ur scribe ran for elected office on the KPFA Local Station Board(LSB), alongside Steve Zeltzer and Sureya Sayadi and another ally/comrade on the Voices For Justice slate/political grouping… So, ur scribe knows Adrienne Lauby as having impeccable character, honest, stand-up gal… But ur scribe is now also becoming impressed with this cohost, too, as far as honesty and journalistic integrity…] … 1456 ‘having a class analysis…’ [Good, class analysis is important, crucial…]
15:00 PDT, KPFA > Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar
NOTES/[COMMENTS]: No description provided in KPFA’s radio archive description. [It’s disappointing that no links are provided to guest info, etc. Your scribe has noticed KPFA programs have been slacking off on their radio archive descriptions. Is this obfuscation or what?] | 1505 ‘LGBT issues’ … ‘Yes! Magazine’ [a solutions-orientated magazine, but, perhaps, mired in liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) perspectives.. ‘also today… ttansgebder communities…’ [sounds like more identity politics and avoidance of class analysis…] ‘lastly today…an openlu trans nonbinary politician…the first drag queen to be elected… [yeah, sounds like more identity politics…] ‘So, welcome to our round table…’ SK introduces ’roundtable’ guests…and opens by addressing ‘attacks on transgender communities…’ [No shade on trans folks…or the guests…ur scribe doesn’t know much about these guests yet… But ur scribe does know this host and her underhanded behavior behind the scenes as part of the liberal faction at KPFA, which is undermining KPFA and Pacifica (for more info on the struggle to defend KPFA and Pacifica from the liberal bias, which Dr. Chomsky has long warned about, see Crisis at KPFA / Pacifica Radio Facebook page ) So, ur scribe does know after years or decades of listening to SK, about the intellectual dishonesty of SK…and this smacks of using minority groups, like transgender people and the other minority groups invoked or being used by SK to deflect away from class analysis and away from the source of these issues, which plague these minority groups, which is capitalism… Also, the hyperfocus on the single-issue politics, to the extent they are actually engaging in politics and not merely culture war gripes, the hyperfocus on single-issue politics also deflects away from the two-party dictatorship or the false left-right paradigm. It goes without saying that the Republican Party is assumed by the majority of this program’s audience is inimical to the interests of these minority groups. And it’s safe to say that the default position of this audience is to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’, ie, the Democrat Party. So, if the program is neutral towards the Democrat Party whilst overtly opposed to the Republican Party, then the overall effect is to help the Democrat Party through lying by omission… ] … 1516 ‘…the right wing…’ [SK is already engaging in her thinly-veiled Democrat Party apologism by bashing the right wing, which is such an obvious target that it’s almost a straw man argument or a red herring or a canard… meanwhile, there will be little to no criticism of the Democrat Party, which colludes with the Republican Party to block third party politics, to block meaningful political parties, which will not be beholden to corporate interests but beholden to the people, to we the people, to working-class people…] | 1525, NEXT segment…’first non-binary…running for Congress…’ [what political party? Probably a Democrat, which is a corporate party, a corrupt party, which ur author has been saying for decades…is unreformable….And, more recently, even Chris Hedges admitted publicly that the Democrat Party is unreformable, at a book event for KPFA about his book, War Is the Greatest Evil, i think the title is…] 1540 ‘JK Rowling’ [SK asked about ‘people on the left’, who … 1544 ‘Alice Walker’ ‘TERF…trans-exclusionary-radical feminists…’ 1545 [signal loss, KPFA livestream keeps glitching out…] … 1546 ‘my platform..includes housing for all…healthcare for all..
those are intersectional issues…’ [Okay, but what party, friend? It’s unrealistic to expect a lone candidate to expect to get anywhere in electoral politics without institutional power, without a political party, without challenging the collusion between the Democrat Party and the Republican Party to exclude third-party politics. Even Ralph Nader wasn’t able to make it as an independent, nor Bernie Sanders, nor anybody… Most likely this candidate will ally with Democrat Party… Or if with no party, then will simply divide the vote and dilute the people’s power in the same way identity politics and single-issue politics divides well-meaning people, progressives, left-leaning types and well-meaning liberals… So far this hour of radio is another wasted hour of radio, like almost every other Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar program… Either SK is a myopic ideologue or she’s on some corrupt payroll, deliberately gaslighting her audience and engaging in unscrupulous or evil Machiavellianism… How else do we explain this? And, the lack of interest in listener feedback, in publicizing listener feedback, reveals the lack of concern for the actual effect of these synthetic left programs… Again, no shade on the guests necessarily…they’re pawns in the agenda of SK and the liberal faction at KPFA and Pacifica…] … 1555. … www dot transcends dot org … ‘Carl Charles… Ebony…California Transcends(sp?)…’
COMMENTS: This program, Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar, suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies, Leonard Lopate at Large, et al., which Dr. Noam Chomsky warned about since at least the 1990s. Dr. Chomsky’s critique of establishment media/press now also applies to much of Pacifica Radio. ‘They will only go but so far…’ Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
15:00 PDT / 18:00 EDT, WPFW [D.C.] > News Views with Garland Nixon
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
16:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Hard Knock Radio with Davey D
NOTES: Mark Mericle [missed it, due to…] | 1606 Davey D … ‘Victor Vasquez…There’s a lot we could say about Cesar Chavez…’ [Damn… If we have to celebrate a hispanic role model, why not celebrate Che Guevara… Cesar Chavez was cool and all, but as a Chicano, ur scribe can tell u he doesn’t mean as much to ur scribe as does Che Guevara… … the Brown Berets were obviously inspired by the Black Panthers, who wore black berets. The Young Lords, Puerto Ricans were also inspired by the Black Panthers… Ur scribe don’t know…brown folks, Chicanos, Latinos ain’t really got no role models… But, right on, Davey D for raising up brown voices and causes…] … 1611… guest: ‘I wanna be clear, Cesar, was not a socialist…’ [exactly, that’s the most disappointing aspect of Cesar Chavez…MLK said in a letter to Coretta that his thinking was ‘more socialistic than capitalistic…’ But Cesar was amazing for standing up for labor, can’t deny that…and for many other reasons, too…] … 1613 … 1631 closing remarks myfar(?) Facebook ‘social media’ … | 1632 music break, Hard Knock Radio theme by Brown Buffalo | 1633 Poor News Radio bilingual partly en español also with Tiny [ Tiny always seemed like a stand-up gal, whenever ur scribe met her once or twice in Oakland at the East Side Arts Alliance and elsewhere… ] … 1644 signal loss, driving through rural area…
17:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [simulcast] [Los Angeles, CA] > Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein
QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Poet Martin Espada on The Crimes Against Humanity at US/Mexico Border”
“Today on the Show: National Book Award-winning poet Martin Espada, Author of The Floaters, speaks out against the latest crime against humanity on the Mexican side of the US Mexico Border. Also, our special correspondent for border and human rights violations, Camilo Perez, remembers the names of those who died in the flames as guards watched: And Flashpoints senior producer, Kevin Pina offers a retrospective on People’s Park in Berkeley.”
NOTES: [scribe hasn’t listened yet]
18:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [simulcast] [Los Angeles, CA] > The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays is usually, honest on basic social justice issues, but KPFA newscast bosses tend to gaslight listeners on COVID-19 (never mention VAERS data, VAERS deaths, assaults on informed consent, assaults on parental consent, no mention of dissenting doctors, no mention of any relevant pending litigation, no mention of litigation in India against the World Health Organization, etc.) and also gaslight listeners regarding establishment Democrat Party politics (i.e., usually engaging in Democrat Party apologia and perception management to keep people within the Democrat Party imaginary and away from the third-party politics imaginary, in the sociology sense of the term, ‘imaginary’). I.e., in other words, ‘it’s all good, just don’t question 9/11, COVID-19, nor establishment electoral politics.’ Having said all that, this is still a better nightly newscast than most. I’m hard-pressed to think of a better one, especially since the demise of Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), especially not locally. But that doesn’t excuse the KPFA news bosses’ intellectual dishonesty, lying by omission, and other deficiencies of journalistic integrity. WION is pretty good on global news; but there, too, one can detect the liberal bias, which Dr. Noam Chomsky has warned about since at least the 1990s.
20:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > La Onda Bajita
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
22:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > The History of Funk
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
[ 1 ] Your author will never forget the day Amy Goodman interviewed former President Bill Clinton. He got his comeuppance. And we got to hear Mr. Clinton’s true personality, his bullying nature. I never understood people, who interview people in positions of power, but then ask softball questions. People called it an ambush interview. Pfft. After 9/11, many of us were disappointed by the dishonesty of Democracy Now!, the lying by omission, the gaslighting. After COVID-19, it was clearer than ever that Democracy Now! (DN!) has been compromised, or has sold out. As Lewis Lapham said about reading The New York Times, ‘I still read it,’ he said, ‘But, when I do, I know they’re lying to me.’ The same thing goes for DN! Like the KPFA news bosses and most of the Pacifica Radio news bosses, DN! suffers from what Dr. Noam Chomsky called the “liberal bias” back in the day, when he was critiquing corporate media. Now, Dr. Chomsky’s critique also applies to most of the Pacifica Radio Network newscast bosses, who must make U.S. spooks proud for providing synthetic left programming, if the news bosses aren’t in fact on some spook payroll.
[ 2 ] UpFront is some of the worst kind of Machiavellian gaslighting in radio. This type of Machiavellian talk radio hides its lack of concern for the suffering of others behind a veneer of journalistic objectivity or journalistic professionalism—professionalism, the journalistic refuge of scoundrels. Liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), like this host, appear to be professional amnesiacs, conveniently forgetting lessons from their own past interviews, if such lessons threaten the status quo, not to mention other common sense lessons from the broader society. There are so many examples of when listeners can remember a key piece of information, which can help an interview reach deeper conclusions or attain new insights, but the liberal host feigns ignorance or simply failed to make the connection. And listeners are given the mushroom treatment, as Nicole Sawaya used to say (former KPFA manager, described the long-standing culture behind the scenes at Pacifica Radio): ‘keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.’ At any rate, the listeners, who listen because they care about social justice, are the losers because these liberal hosts force each conversation to start at square one. Important insights culled from interview A will never show up on interview B or C. Sure, such liberals will go into meticulous and sophisticated detail. But only when it doesn’t impact the status quo. Of course, there are exceptions at Pacifica Radio, such as Flashpoints and Guns and Butter (which was forced off the air at KPFA), but they are viewed as the black sheep by the bosses, not supported or embraced as allies. Oddly, during the first quarter of 2022, Mickey Huff was on Letters and Politics. I’ll have to relisten, if possible. It’s plausible Mickey Huff is open to collaboration and cooperation. But it’s not plausible entertainers, like Mitch Jeserich, would ever do anything with sincere educators and truth-seekers, like Mickey Huff, without an ulterior motive, such as reputational rehabilitation. Examples of established ideas and conclusions, which can help liberate the working class, but which are marginalized or ignored by such liberals, as the hosts of UpFront, Letters and Politics, Talkies, etc., include modern monetary theory, the job guarantee program, the two-party dictatorship, the fact that two-party systems are polarizing, benefits of ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, the incompatibility between democracy and capitalism, and so on. And these are not partisan issues. They’re only partisan issues, if you’re an antidemocratic partisan, a fascist, or an authoritarian. Otherwise, we all have the common sense to identify basic democratizing features of a healthy democracy. These are undisputable conclusions about a healthy democracy versus a diseased democracy, which have been accumulated after listening to voices advocating for social justice for decades. When you listen to voices for peace and justice for years and decades, it’s hard not to learn basic truths over time. Yet, somehow, some people never learn anything. They still haven’t grasped the fundamental contradictions within capitalism, for example. Only willful ignorance seems adequate to explain this. The underlying presuppositions of such liberals deny all of these realities and begin with the false left-right paradigm, in which the Democrat Party is assumed to be a sincere opposition party, when, in fact, as Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, et al, have long admitted, we have a two-party dictatorship because America has undergone a corporate coup d’etat decades ago. But you’d never know any of this from listening to liberals, such as this particular host.
[ 3 ] Economic Update with Richard Wolff… Your author left Kansas City in mid-2015 before one of Dr. Wolff’s then-recurring visits to UMKC (then a hotbed of MMT); so he was unable to ask Dr. Wolff why he does that. Presumably, Dr. Wolff avoids informing his audience of MMT because he sees it as liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist), reformist bullshit (i.e., communication intended to persuade without regard for truth, as philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt defined “bullshit”).
[ 4 ] Alternative Visions with Dr. Jack Rasmus is the real economic update. We love Economic Update with Dr. Richard Wolff, but he’s more of a performer than an educator, or a reporter, at least with regard to Dr. Wolff’s economic updates. We cannot deny the importance of Dr. Wolff’s popularization of leftist (i.e, anticapitalist/prosocialist) economics. But Dr. Jack Rasmus provides real-world nuts and bolts explanations of economics topics, tracking actual data in accessible language for everyday working-class people, defining terms along the way. Leftist (i.e., anticapitalist) economic perspectives prioritize labor’s interests over the interests of capital. Rightist (i.e., procapitalist) economic perspectives prioritize capital’s interests over the interests of labor. Please keep in mind, capitalism is not necessarily synonymous with liberty/libertarianism; and socialism is not necessarily synonymous with authoritarianism. The left-right spectrum is a range of possibilities of economic systems, not political systems. Political systems have to do with the role of the state, which is a separate dimension; so they must be considered and, therefore, graphed on a separate axis, such as a vertical axis. (To consider graphs and further details on these important political compass explanations, see “America’s Stunted Political Spectrum” by Second Thought [via YouTube], 24 APR 2020.) Post-WWII conflating of the role of the state (i.e., authoritarian political systems vs. libertarian political systems) with the range of economic systems (i.e., rightist/capitalist economic systems vs leftist/socialist economic systems) has mired working-class people within rightist economics ideologies, which prioritize capital over labor and, thus, mired working-class people in political ideologies inimical to the interests of working-class people. Paying attention to the economic updates, reporting, and commentaries of experts, like Dr. Richard Wolff, alongside experts, like Dr. Jack Rasmus, makes all of this crystal clear. Your author often hears well-meaning people suggest it’s divisive to choose between the economic left or right of the spectrum. But the true left-right distinction is a matter of fact based in reality, unlike the false left-right paradigm of corporate media, which conflates the economic dimension with the political dimension. The fact is there will always be a point at which the interests of capital will be at odds with the interests of labor when it comes to deciding how to divide profit. It is not divisive to point out this reality. The division in human societies between the educated, wealthy, powerful few and the uneducated, impoverished, disempowered many preceded the recognition of the class dynamics of left and right. Class analysis only makes plain and clear the fact that we, the people, always choose, wittingly or unwittingly, between prioritizing labor or capital. No well-meaning, decent, or humanitarian person wants to be divisive. Unfortunately, some divisions precede our recognition of them. We cannot wish away the fundamental division between capital and labor anymore than we can wish away the division between predators and prey. It is impossible to deny capital is predatory; and disorganized labor are prey. The capitalist never hires a worker, unless the capitalist can make more money off of the worker’s labor than the capitalist will pay the worker in wages. Capital is a social relation, in which capitalists are wolves and workers are sheep, unable to thoughtfully respond, only react helplessly and be herded by the wolves for feeding the wolves. A capitalist economic system will always tend toward authoritarianism because authoritarianism is built into the mode of production. There is no democracy on the job; so, there is no true democracy in society. The concentration of wealth and power in few hands at the workplace is multiplied across society, inevitably, into concentration of wealth and power in few hands in the political system. Libertarian capitalism is a contradiction in terms because capitalism is not compatible with democracy. Any economic system, whether socialist or capitalist, is susceptible to authoritarian leadership in the absence of an informed, active populace. But only a socialist economic system is compatible with a libertarian political system because only a socialist economic system prioritizes labor over capital and, therefore, can be stabilized into a democratic society. But this requires the organization of labor. And capital never rests to disorganize and divide labor, in order to keep workers from seeing the bigger picture, to keep workers reactive instead of proactive, like mindless sheep whenever the wolves snarl and gnash their teeth. As Jim Morrison sang in The Doors’ classic song, “Five To One”, “they got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers…” Imagine, if we, the people, recognized there are more of us than there are of them. Then, we, the people, could have waves of general strikes and, as Malcolm X hoped, a bloodless revolution. Working-Class Solidarity. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊🏻
[ 5 ] VOMENA… Thankfully, based on personal interactions and being a longtime VOMENA listener, VOMENA staff didn’t seem to be politically allied with the liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist, i.e., non-pacifist/war apologists) faction at KPFA and its LSB, the faction known as KPFA Forward, which then changed its name to Concerned Listeners, then to SaveKPFA (co-opting the original Save KPFA moniker coined by the grassroots, listener activists, who defended the station in 1999 from a liberal coup d’état of sorts led by Mary Frances Berry and Lynn Chadwick, with apparent support from Janet Reno and the Clinton administration. From speaking to one of the liberal faction’s followers after a Chris Hedges event in Berkeley on 26 SEP 2022, the liberal KPFA faction has changed its name again. The name changes are done, evidently, to try and shed their negative reputation, as listeners see their true imperialist colors. The liberal news bosses (e.g., Aileen Alfandary, Mark Mericle, et al) and program hosts (e.g., Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Mitch Jeserich, et al) at KPFA cannot serve two masters; they cannot uncritically amplify establishment narratives, including the presuppositions that US-funding of war in Ukraine or Yemen, for example, are reasonable foreign policies, which warrant no critique, whilst claiming to be pacifists, faithful to the pacifist Pacifica Radio Network Mission Statement.
[ 6 ] It’s Going Down is usually a disappointing program for leftists, as it functions as a synthetic left shill for the establishment by perpetuating the false left-right paradigm whereby the Republican Party and the ‘far-right’ are usually framed as the bogeymen, of which listeners must be wary. Meanwhile, the Democrat Party is usually let off the hook, usually not critiqued as sharply as the Republican Party. It’s usually (and insidiously) implied that the Democrat Party is some sort of opposition party to the Republican Party. Of course, this implicit framing is absurd. So, occasionally, a word or two of critique of the Democrat Party is allowed to allow for plausible deniability, if publicly challenged on this point. But the critique of the Democrat Party is usually lopsided enough to frame rightists as the only political villains, when most Democrats, if not all, are also rightists, if not centrists. Democrat Party operatives are not leftists (i.e, anti-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists). Two-party systems are polarizing and anti-democratic. (Cf. “America’s Stunted Political Spectrum” by Second Thought [via YouTube], 24 APR 2020; “America’s Corporate Two-Party Duopoly [Two-Party Dictatorship]” by Second Thought [via YouTube], 25 SEP 2020.) This subtle and insidious style of Democrat Party apologism, exemplified by It’s Going Down, which perpetuates a false left-right paradigm, is aided by the anonymous host and recurring interview guests (presumably the host’s friends or political allies, usually the same few people) posturing as “anarchists”, which ostensibly means electoral politics are a low priority in an anarchist discourse, which shuns the state. (Notably, guests are often also anonymous or merely identified by a first name or a nickname. Hiding behind anonymity is bullshit, as sharp observers, such as Chris Hedges have acknowledged.) Anarchist posturing is convenient for Democrat Party shills because it allows them to focus their discourse on anything but challenging the two-party dictatorship in the USA, prevents working class listeners from thinking about and contributing to meaningful third-party politics, ranked-choice voting, a national popular vote interstate compact, or viable electoral reforms. Anarchist posturing redirects social justice critique and political critique away from the Democrat Party, away from the two-party dictatorship (as Ralph Nader described it), and narrowly towards the Republican Party. If listeners listen to It’s Going Down regularly, they will be led to believe that ignoring the federal government, ignoring electoral politics, refusing to build a viable opposition party for the working class, picking fights with rightist protesters on the streets, and simply squatting in abandoned buildings to engage in mutual aid and cultural activities will lead social justice warriors to some panacea or utopia. This is naïve, as the Occupy Wall Street movement learned during President Obama’s nationwide crackdown on Occupy movement encampments, in a coordinated operation involving many of the nation’s big city mayors. Unless ostensible anarchists buy property and buy into the capitalist system, the Feds will come sooner or later to infiltrate and/or clean house, until NATSEC goons are put out of business by an enlightened populace. But don’t expect It’s Going Down to challenge NATSEC, the CIA, the Democrat Party, the two-party dictatorship, or the status quo any time soon, as the program appears to be part of the Democrat Party apologist faction at KPFA, which includes the KPFA news bosses, Aileen Alfandary and Mark Mericle, as well as most of the public affairs programmers, including Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Mitch Jeserich, Kris Welch, Sasha Lilley, C.S. Soong, and their ideological allies across the Pacifica Radio Network, such as Leonard Lopate (WBAI), Sonali Kolhatkar (KPFK), Stephanie Miller (KPFK), Amy Goodman (ex-WBAI), et al. Amy Goodman is like the patron saint of such liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) and wannabe sellouts. Democracy Now! used to be a hard-hitting, adversarial newscast. Now, Amy Goodman is a millionaire and Democracy Now! is no longer willing to be honest about various things, including the two-party dictatorship, 9/11, COVID-19, and US/NATO imperialism. As Danny Haiphong wrote in 2021, “[Democracy Now!] has become a reliable platform for uncritical regime change propaganda, demonizing targets of US empire from Syria to Nicaragua.” Amy Goodman, now a millionaire associated with the Ford Foundation and the establishment, is clearly compromised, a class traitor, who has betrayed the original mission of Democracy Now!, betrayed the Pacifica Mission Statement, and betrayed the working class, yet represents the aspirations of the cynical liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), who are transforming the Pacifica Radio Network into a propaganda vehicle for the Democrat Party. Shame on all of them. And shame on us listeners, who have abandoned the Pacifica Radio Local Station Boards (LSB) and allowed democratic governance of KPFA and all Pacifica Radio stations to be dominated by liberals, like Brian Edwards-Tiekert abusing Robert’s Rules of Order and parliamentary procedures at the Local Station Board meetings and the Pacifica National Board meetings. Your author sat through many LSB meetings and even ran for the KPFA LSB in 2010, so this perspective comes from direct experience, observation, and research. If you care about free speech radio, please form groups or join others in the struggle to take back KPFA and the Pacifica Radio Network from establishment shills, who only perpetuate or amplify establishment narratives. These partisans, as Bob Marley sang in “Babylon System”, are “deceiving the people continually…” Once free speech advocates expose and shun establishment shills from free speech radio, who undermine free speech and stifle dissent, the task will be to expand free speech radio across the nation and the world, terrestrial radio and digital radio. Pacifica Radio programs, like Project Censored, Guns and Butter (censored by Pacifica), Flashpoints, On the Ground, The Gary Null Show, Covid, Race & Democracy, Sojourner Truth, and What’s The Verdict with Wendell Harper (retired, ex-KPFA) are examples of the best of honest, hard-hitting, yet compassionate free speech radio, truly honoring the Pacifica Radio Mission Statement.
[31 MAR 2023]
[Last modified/edited/updated on 6 APR 2023 at 04:45 PDT]
Lumpenproletariat 