LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Tuesday, 28 FEB 2023]  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, 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 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.)

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 OBSERVATIONS:

• “Are Chemtrails Real? with Dane Wigington” by RFK Jr The Defender Podcast [via Spotify], 28 FEB 2023. [52min 52sec] | “Chemtrails and Contrails are discussed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Dane Wigington of GeoengineeringWatch in this episode.”
• “US military plans for war on China, backing Taiwan separatists” by Geopolitical Economy Report [via YouTube], 28 FEB 2023. [29min 09sec] [transcript-worthy (TW)]
• “Democrats hide from antiwar forces at “town halls”” by The Grayzone [via YouTube], 28 FEB 2023. [13min 48sec] [TW] | Another excellent critique of the gaslighting corporate media/press and the imperialist Democrat Party. The Grayzone co-hosts, Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté, contrast today’s inverted totalitarianism, with its phony town halls gaslighting the people, with the earlier stage of US imperialism, when we still had some semblance of real town halls, back in the days of Madeline Albright, a mentor of Samantha Power and a mentee of Zbigniew Brzezinski, all shills for the US military-industrial-congressional-complex. Madeline Albright was publicly shamed by basic questions from well-informed, principled, people of conscience. | Ralph Nader has long advised us, the people, to set up our own grassroots town halls. We can invite local and state elected officials and members of Congress; and we can take them to task about any issue we like. We can publicly shame them when they’re on the wrong side of any issue, when they’re acting against the interests of the people. And, if they don’t show up to our public grassroots town hall meetings, we can expose them for being in dereliction of duty. And we can shame them for hiding from the people, especially for hiding from their own constituencies, which, ostensibly, they were elected to represent and answer to. The Grayzone also provide us with an example of one thing, among many, which antiwar activists, who want to get offline and into the real world, ought to be doing when one community member from Brooklyn asked hard-hitting questions of Hakeem Jeffreys. It was a thing of beauty, an act of conscience. As Malcolm X said, power comes from conviction.

@LumpenProles, last modified/edited/updated on 20 MAR 2023 at 14:37 PDT.

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MEDIA 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. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊]

Tuesday, 28 February 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 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 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.

04:00 PST / 06:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > Flashpoints

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

04:00 PST / 06:00 CST, KPFT > The Thom Hartmann Program

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Thom Hartmann appears to come out of the 1960s SDS generation of antiwar activists. That fact makes his Democrat Party apologist tendencies all the more disappointing.

04:00 PST / 07:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > What’s Going On? Labor Monday with Bob Hennelly

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

05:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Letters and Politics

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This 05:00 timeslot wastes a one-hour block on repeating the previous day’s show, as if this show was worthy of such repetition. [ 1 ]

05:00 PST / 07:00 CST / 08:00 EST, WBAI & KPFT & WPFW [D.C.] [simulcast] > Democracy Now!

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This show used to be a hard-hitting, adversarial newscast. Now, it’s mostly sellout entertainment with a liberal bias. [ 2 ]

06:00 PST, KPFA > Democracy Now!

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: [also see comments above for earlier broadcast of this same daily episode]

06:00 PST / 09:00 EST, WBAI > Law and Disorder [pre-empted?] > Law of the Land with Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Gloria J. Browne-Marshall seems to have a great deal of integrity and honesty in her broadcasts.

07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WBAI > Project Censored (pre-empted? cancelled?) > Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed)

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This is one of the best (i.e., honest, hard-hitting description and solution/prescription-orientated) programs on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network, or anywhere, for that matter.

07:00 PST, KPFA > UpFront

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: UpFront is among the worst Machiavellian perception management radio one can find, 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. [ 3 ]

08:00 PST, KPFA > Law & Disorder with Cat Brooks

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

08:00 PST / 11:00 EST, WPFW > Community Watch & Comment – Tuesday

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

09:00 PST / 12:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] & PRN.Live [NYC] > The Gary Null Show

NOTES (re: The Gary Null Show for Tuesday, 28 FEB 2023, WBAI livestream): […]  (09:10 PST)  Dr. Gary Null recalling anecdotes of working at a tavern frying fish…  (09:13 PST) [channel/station change (CC)] |  (09:14 PST) Dr. Gary Null’s health commentary is still underway.  |  (09:23 PST) music break  |  (09:23 PST) Dr. Gary Null on-air via phone:  a critique of US society, weird changes, censorship, “utilitarian” education”, etc …  | Neil Oliver clip on worsening global totalitarianism [TW] 

NOTES (re: The Gary Null Show for Tuesday, 28 FEB 2023, PRN.Live livestream): (09:13 PST) [Sounds like the same thing as WBAI, a simulcast; so, your author will, instead, tune into to WBAI to give Pacifica Radio his listening ‘vote’]  (09:14 PST) [channel/station change (CC)] | Additional “Show Notes” link.

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. 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 > Democracy Now!

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: [see comments above for 06:00 broadcast]

10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, PRN.Live > Leid Stories with Utrice Leid

NOTES: […]  (10:11 PST)  broadcast underway, Eutrice Leid’s opening remarks.  [Sounds like the question for today’s discussion is:  ‘What is news? How do we define news?’  My response would be:  new information…  Repetitive news tends to be propagandistic rubbish designed to manufacture consent…  Your author would also say his salience landscape and recursive relevance realization continually adapts to hone in on what’s most relevant, what’s most meaningful… ]  1. ‘Gwen from New York’ [TW]  [Sounds like a rerun from around the time after people were trying to flee from Afghanistan, early in Biden’s presidency…]

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, 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, KPFA > Letters and Politics

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This program suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Lopate at Large, Talkies, et al.

10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Leonard Lopate at Large

NOTES:  establishment politics, an author on book on history of conservation.  He wrote wildlife agenda for President Bush I …  (10:11 PST) [CC]

COMMENTS: This program, Leonard Lopate at Large, suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Rising Up, Talkies, et al.

11:00 PST / 14:00 EST, WPFW > Covid, Race & Democracy

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

11:00 PST, KPFA > Talkies with Kris Welch

NOTES:  News headlines from Kris Welch’s liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) perspective. | (11:16 PST)  Audio of Davey D introducing Rickey Vincent (host of The History of Funk on KPFA) and The Lumpen, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense‘s funk/R&B band. |  (11:17 PST) Rickey Vincent’s remarks [TW]  Rickey Vincent’s mom was a Black Panther…  ‘My mom was a revolutionary…’, said Rickey Vincent. [Wow. That’s awesome! What happened to you, Rickey? Ain’t you a revolutionary, too?]  ‘William Calhoun(sp?), James Mott(sp?), and (?), three original members of The Lumpen| (11:31 PST) Kris Welch in fund drive mode… |  (11:38 PST) ‘We played in San Quentin, The Lumpen, Curtis Mayfield, and Clark (?)’  |  1154 KW pitching  … 1156 Laura Prives(sp?), a liberal ally of KW’s faction, controlled opposition…

COMMENTS: This program, Talkies, suffers from what Dr. Noam Chomsky described circa 1991 as “the liberal bias”. Kris Welch is a stalwart defender of Democrat Party reformism. But, of course, the defense is done with subtlety and nuance. Uncritical listeners might even project their own views on to her liberal rhetoric and see what they want to see. But, make no mistake, Kris Welch is a staunch Democrat, a Wellstone Democrat to be precise. The Democrat Party will always be a corrupt, corporate party. Yet, some Democrat reformists never stop with their false left-right paradigm, operating from an underlying assumption or from the presupposition that the Democrat Party is a sincere opposition party to the racist, anti-working class Republican Party. Over time, a pattern of Democrat Party apologia emerges. This seems implausible as an ideological stance. Such apologia only makes sense coming from shills on some payroll.

12:00 PST, KPFA > Against the Grain with C.S. Soong

QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Fund Drive Special: The Doctrine of Discovery” “A look at the doctrine of discovery, a set of concepts and principles used to justify the domination and dehumanization of indigenous people.”

NOTES:  Download option not provided, only audiostream option. | News Headlines with Aileen Alfandary:  ‘pandemic is scheduled to end today…’  |  ‘Settler colonialism in the Americas‘  …  (12:07 PST) ‘audio excerpts of documentary on the Doctrine of Discovery‘ [TW] 

COMMENTS: Your author heard a good program, an interview with an indigenous legal scholar and/or professor, on the topic of the gaslighting ‘doctrine of discovery’ on WBAI or WPFW a year or two ago… The so-called ‘doctrine of discovery’ was used by European colonizers to appropriate, colonize, and exploit the America’s whilst dispossessing indigenous nations of their lands and natural resources under the false pretense that indigenous people were subhuman ‘savages’ and whatnot. The shameful ‘doctrine of discovery is still with us today, reflected in brainwashing lessons taught to schoolchildren, such as the lies about ‘Christopher Columbus discovered America’. Some educators, such as James W. Loewen, Howard Zinn, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz have tried to educate people about the brainwashing education of the US power elite. They were mostly marginalized and ignored because their scholarship could not be refuted. Later, when a critical mass of educators followed in their footsteps, rejecting the gaslighting narratives of the colonizing past, rightist Don’t-Be-Woke types became apoplectic, frothing at the mouth about “woke” teachers brainwashing their kids with historical facts and whatnot.  Evidently, they were bellyaching about inconvenient truths in the classroom disrupting the false narratives they were indoctrinating their kids at home with.  Oh, the contradictions abound.  Don’t you dare teach my child to think for themselves with facts and critical inquiry!  I must indoctrinate my kid with my political preferences!  Such fear of critical thinking is funny, in one sense.  But, really, it’s quite tragic.

12:00 PST / 15:00 EST, WBAI > Vantage Point

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

13:00 PST / 16:00 EST, WBAI > Covid, Race & Democracy with PNB Covid Taskforce

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Covid, Race & Democracy is a good show. But… [ 4 ]

13:00 PST / 15:00 CST, KPFT > Hard Knock Radio

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

13:00 PST, KPFA > The Herbal Highway

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This program, The Herbal Highway, deserves your attention, dear reader, if you care about health and healing. Your author has learned a lot from this program over the years, even though he hasn’t always acted on those lessons.

14:00 PST / 17:00 EST, KPFA > Sojourner Truth

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This program, Sojourner Truth, is usually revolutionary, but has been known to be soft on the corporate Democrat Party, prone to “liberal bias”, when it comes to the two-party dictatorship, which can clearly see the corruption of the Republican Party, but has a blindspot for the corruption of the Democrat Party.

14:00 PST, KPFA > About Health

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

15:00 PST / 18:00 EST, WBAI > WBAI Evening News

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

15:00 PST / 17:00 CST, KPFT > Code Pink Radio

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

15:00 PST, KPFA > UpFront PM

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This is a rerun of content from the morning broadcast, which automatically makes this broadcast offensive, especially when there are so many censored, dissenting voices out there, which deserve airtime. Instead, we get duplication 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. (See comments above for UpFront.)

15:30 PST / 18:30 EST, WBAI > CounterSpin

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Your author used to dig this show back in the day, when it was on KPFA. In recent years, it seems disappointing. your author is not sure if the program became less hard-hitting, or if his perception is less susceptible than it used to be to “the liberal bias”, deceptions, and wishful thinking. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those elements.

16:00 PST, KPFA > Hard Knock Radio

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

16:00 PST / 19:00 EST, WBAI > We Only Want the World with Sunsara Taylor

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: This program, We Only Want the World, is dedicated to following Bob Avakian, the boss or leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA). Your author doesn’t agree with everything the RCP line espouses. Sometimes, we gotta agree to disagree.

17:00 PST, KPFA > Flashpoints

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

17:00 PST, KPFK [Los Angeles, CA] > The Gray Zone

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Circa mid-January 2023, Max Blumenthal mentioned a new Grayzone radio show on Pacifica Radio out of LA. Then, today, 19 JAN 2023, in a livestream with Revolutionary Blackout Network, Max Blumenthal mentioned the new Grayzone radio program on Pacifica Radio will be on in L.A. and in New York. This is good news. If only KPFK didn’t have to pre-empt Flashpoints. KPFK should’ve cut Rising Up, instead. Pacifica Radio Network listeners do not need the uncritical amplification of establishment narratives of Sonali Kolhatkar and Rising Up, an apologist for the corporate Democrats.

“Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots (1994)

“Knocked Out” by Paula Abdul (1987, 1988)

“Bassline” by Mantronix (1985)

18:00 PST, KPFA & KPFK [simulcast] > The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: 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 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), particularly regarding local news coverage. 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.

19:00 PST, KPFA > La Raza Chronicles

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: Back at San Mateo High School, recognized as one of the more “radical” students by his peers, your author was nominated to lead the school’s “La Raza” club. Your author wasn’t feelin’ it, to be the ringleader of that motley bunch. They had their own liberal ideas, not a revolutionary outlook. Your author left them to their own devices. And he was left to his own devices. Since then, outside of La Onda Bajita, and there are doubts even there, most “La Raza” types appear to be liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists). They have no anti-capitalist analysis, nor outlook. (As far as La Onda, your author feels it was far more subversive when El Gavilan was breathing Aztlan fire over the airwaves and El Tecolote played firme rolita after rolita, rather than having pundits speak in Spanish, yet provide liberal analysis. It’s great that there is Spanish language programming on free speech radio KPFA; but it’s disappointing that programming is liberal programming. This disappointment is akin to the election of people of color or minority groups to office, as if their identity claim as a minority group member guarantees such people will have a perspective, which is different from the status quo. More often than not, when minority group members finally gain entry into positions of power and/or influence within the establishment, minority group members reflect and maintain the status quo)

20:00 PST, KPFA > Bebop, Cubop and the Musical Truth

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

22:00 PST, KPFA > The Reggae Express

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

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[ 1 ] This 05:00 timeslot wastes a one-hour block on repeating the previous day’s broadcast of Letters and Politics, as if this show was worthy of such repetition.  Not even Democracy Now! is worthy of being aired twice per day on the same station.  But this is an example of the way liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) colonize and monopolize the free speech radio airwaves and prevent voices to the left of them from having a fair opportunity to be heard. Instead of deep politics, like Guns and Butter or Flashpoints or Project Censored or The Grayzone, we get shallow politics and mealy-mouthed critique of the status quo, if not uncritical amplification of establishment narratives.

[ 2 ] Democracy Now! used to be a hard-hitting, adversarial newscast. Now, it’s mostly sellout entertainment with a liberal bias. I’ll never forget the day Amy Goodman interviewed former President Bill Clinton. He got his comeuppance. And we got to hear his 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, 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, it also applies to most of the Pacifica Radio newscast bosses, who must make U.S. spooks proud, if they aren’t in fact on some spook payroll.

[ 3 ] UpFront is the worst Machiavellian perception management radio, 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 type of Machiavellian hides their 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.

[ 4 ] Covid, Race & Democracy is a good radio program. I am acquainted with at least two contributors. Yet, regarding the COVID-19 issue, I disagree most with the contributor I know best. I disagree with the so-called Zero Covid approach because human history has proven it’s impossible for humans to ever be free of seasonal respiratory diseases such as coronaviruses or rhinoviruses. Also, the scientific consensus is clear: coronaviruses, when first introduced to a species, are more harmful, but less contagious; then, they become more contagious, but less harmful. Of course, this is what happened with Omicron. Age stratification means the older one is, the more vulnerable one is to any and all respiratory diseases. But this program has aired conflicting perspectives on COVID-19. Debates or panels with opposing perspectives could help resolve, or at least address some of the contradictions of occasionally allowing dissenting views, such as the Great Barrington Declaration, but mostly amplifying establishment assumptions, such as citing “case rates”, rather than truly sick and infected or hospitalized people. Most COVID-19 statistics cite PCR test results, which are prone to error, depending on the cycle threshold used to magnify samples. At any rate, the PCR test’s inventor, Dr. Kary Mullis, has stated categorically that the PCR test is not a diagnostic test. Then, there’s the VAERS data, which is usually occulted, and the official statistical models have been occulted, and the 17,000 doctors speaking out in dissent, and the doctors being persecuted, targeted, smeared, for refusing to be coerced into pushing an absurd agenda. The Gary Null Show addresses most, if not all, common sense concerns and critiques about the police state psyop response to COVID-19, which is threatening to close the open society, to force ‘COVID passports’ on everyone, to mandate jabs for kids without parental consent, to impose unscientific ‘social distancing’, to abolish cash and impose a central bank digital currency (CBDC), to make most people fearful of everyone else, to further alienate people and atomize society, in short, to incrementally impose inverted totalitarianism.

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[28 FEB 2023]

[Last modified/edited/updated on 7 MAR 2023 at 14:12 PST]