LUMPENPROLETARIAT Today on free speech radio, we heard coverage of the People’s Climate March 2017 in Washington, D.C. as well as the conference at Howard University. During the extended broadcast coverage Naomi Klein, was one of the conference speakers. She’s the Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker, known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalisation and of capitalism (or capitalist modes of production); and she’s perhaps the world’s most famous, or influential, intellectual without a degree. (She was followed by Professor Bob Bullard, who obviously does have a degree; but that’s neither here nor there.) Naomi Klein is always a captivating speaker, very charismatic. Even when one doesn’t agree with her completely, one still pays attention. In speaking about government spending to address human-induced climate change, Klein invoked raising taxes, which means she’s unaware of modern monetary theory (MMT). We must spread the word, and expand our understanding of government spending and how our money system actually works. As one heterodox economist, named by Politico one of the most influential people, Dr. Stephanie Kelton reminds us that taxes don’t pay for anything. So, it’s a actually a myth that taxes pay for federal spending.
Large political actions, such as the People’s Climate Movement 2017 in Washington, D.C. as well as other locations across the nation (or last week’s March for Science), help us take the pulse of the nation and find where we can make connections and gain new insights from one another to overcome the power of the capitalist ruling classes, which are bent on putting profits over people, even putting profits over the planet. As Naomi Klein noted in here speech, we can’t meaningfully confront the challenge of human-induced climate change without fundamentally challenging the logic of neoliberal capitalism. In Washington, D.C., tens of thousands of Americans will encircle the White House and engage in a mass sit-in to protest the climate change denialism of the Trump administration. Listen (and/or download) here. [1]
[pre-recorded interview from the field by Amy Goodman, interview with Senator Sheldon(sp?) from Rhode Island]
[Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh speak with participants of the march, who will encircle the White House and engage in a mass sit-in to protest the climate change denialism of the Trump adminstration]
[Chris Woolery, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, kftc.org][09:42 PST]
[Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez, a self-described “water protector” from San Antonio, on indigenous rights and climate justice][09:46 PST]
[Jazzlyn Lindsey from Washington, D.C., representing Black Lives Matter D.C.][09:49 PST]
[Claude Copeland, representing Iraq Veterans Against the War]
[Monique Harden, an attorney and the Co-Director of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, on fighting environmental racism in the south][09:59 PST]
[KPFA station identification by Pedro Reyes]
[back to AG and NS]
[Berta Caseres’ sister]
[snip][10:25 PST]
[Medea Benjamin, representing Code Pink, CodePink.org, on President Trump’s sabre-rattling against North Korea][10:34 PST]
[on “animal equality” and the major impact of meat consumption on climate change]
[Carla Wills reporting from the march, and speaking with Laura Jurewicz, Rockaway Youth Task Force][10:41 PST]
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—As a first, apparently in US history, a major national news network has hosted a televised town hall during a U.S. presidential election featuring a political party other than the Democrats or Republicans.
CNN‘s “Town Hall with Dr. Jill Stein & Ajamu Baraka” is a very significant broadcast, given the virtual censorship of alternative political parties by the corporate press. And the Democrats and Republicans have successfully, and anti-democratically, colluded to exclude and silence all other parties from their two-headed political cartel, keep other parties out of presidential debates, and otherwise undermine a more democratic presentation of the full range of political choices available to the American people. (See below.) [1]
Free speech radio has also offered some postmortem analysis of the CNNGreen Party Town Hall, including interviews with Dr. Jill Stein. (See below.) [2]
Messina
2016 Green Party Presidential Town Hall (17 AUG 2016) by CNN
CNN—[15 AUG 2016] CNN announced Wednesday it will host one of its town hall events with the Green Party’s presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka.
The hour-long event will be held on Wednesday, August 17 at 9:00 p.m. ET. The event will broadcast live on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Espanol and online via CNNgo.
Stein has consistently polled as the fourth-most popular option in the presidential race, after Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson. In the most recent CNN/ORC poll, Stein received 5% support nationwide, four points behind Johnson, her nearest competitor.
Ajamu Baraka, 2016 Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate
Stein has consistently polled as the fourth-most popular option in the presidential race, after Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson. In the most recent CNN/ORC poll, Stein received 5% support nationwide, four points behind Johnson, her nearest competitor.
Like Johnson, who has now been featured in two CNN town hall events, Stein also ran in 2012, but failed to gain traction. When the race was over, the FEC says she earned 470,000 votes or .36% of the popular vote. The Green Party’s high-water mark was Ralph Nader’s 2000 run, where he got nearly 3% of the vote nationwide.
This time around, Stein has hoped to capitalize on Clinton’s low favorability ratings and the breakout performance of the self-declared Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
While Sanders endorsed Clinton and has pledged to ensure she becomes the next president, Stein has spent much of her efforts appealing to Sanders’ most diehard supporters. She has claimed the support of some of them, including the scholar Cornel West.
She spent much of the Democratic National Convention directly participating in protests against Clinton’s candidacy and has often been equated with Trump.
[1] One salient question, which one free speech radio listener asked of Dr. Jill Stein during one broadcast was about Bernie Sanders: If his campaign was sabotaged by the Democrats, why would Bernie Sanders still remain loyal to the Democrat Party.
UPDATE: As of 23 AUG 2016, various articles have (re)surfaced, stripping away the socialist, or progressive, veneer from Bernie Sanders’ politics to reveal an acquiescent political figure, who is beholden to the establishment Democrat Party and unwilling to meaningfully challenge them electorally. For example, see:
“The Myth of Bernie Sanders” by Thomas H. Naylor, CounterPunch, 30 SEP 2011.
[2] As far as free speech radio KPFA (Berkeley, CA) is concerned, the broadcasters associated with the SaveKPFA faction within KPFA have avoided truly critical analysis of Dr. Jill Stein’s 2016 presidential campaign. Mitch Jeserich is one unfortunate example. Mitch Jeserich, like many SaveKPFA broadcasters, are fine discussing radical topics, as long as they are safely situated in the distant past. But they are usually less willing to embrace current or contemporary radical politics or ideas.
The SaveKPFA faction, which has deep pockets, unlike its grassroots activist-based opponents, have had no qualms about displaying realistic, or candid, perspectives of Trump and the Republicans, which do not pretend that the Republican Party is anything other than regressive. But they tend to function as apologists for the Democrat Party and, so, often undermine anybody to the left of the Democrat Party. This has been one tragic aspect of much of free speech radio.
The more sincere, and honest, broadcasters within KPFA, are largely opposed to the SaveKPFA faction. Non-SaveKPFA broadcasters provide much more critical analysis because they don’t shy away from the terminal problems with the Democrat Party or the anti-democratic nature of the two-party system, which Ralph Nader has dubbed the two-party dictatorship.
For the uninitiated, we should say that the SaveKPFA faction within KPFA, which is currently running its own candidates for the governing board of KPFA (the KPFA Local Station Board), has long been allied with the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, which seeks to ‘transform’ the Democrat Party from within into a progressive political party. This is why, in 2012 and 2008, their coverage of ‘third-party politics’ (a term I dislike), or alternative political parties, has been weak. Some of us recall in 2008, SaveKPFA broadcasters were literally cheerleading Obama’s campaign. Brian Edwards-Tiekert, who was just awarded a Knight Fellowship for his journalism, is one example. He seemed to suffer from selective amnesia back in 2008, when his enthusiasm for Obama contradicted countless prior journalistic reports of the Democrat Party, their crimes, and Obama.
(This ideologically blinkered political perspective by SaveKPFA partisans is only one of their shortcomings. When we review the historical record of SaveKPFA’s past actions and behaviours on, and around, the KPFA Local Station Board and its meetings, we find antidemocratic and cynical attacks against anyone politically to the left of them.)
Anybody who had been paying even cursory attention to the many news reports and critical analyses broadast on KPFA (and elsewhere) prior to the 2008 Presidential election, would have known what a mistake it was for progressives and radicals to support Obama in 2008. They would have easily understood that a vote for Obama and/or the Democrat Party is a vote against the interests of the working classes and the nation in general. All of the crimes for which Obama is now critiqued by the political left was easy to foresee for those who had been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the news prior to 2008.
***
[CNN Town Hall image taken from KPFA.org and used via Creative Commons licensure.]
[Image of Dr. Jill Stein by Gage Skidmore, used via Creative Commons licensure (CC BY-SA 3.0).]
LUMPENPROLETARIAT Another Honduran citizen and indigenous rights leader has been assassinated, apparently, by USA-backed neoliberal Honduran death squads, including the poison pens of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, determined to proletarianise, to push indigenous Hondurans off their lands, where they’re self-sufficient, and push them onto the mercy of a capitalist mode of production and exploitation, where they face poverty and dependency.
The internationally renowned environmental and indigenous rights leader Berta Cáceres (c. 1973-2016) was not the first and, outrageously, Nelson García will likely not be the last indigenous leader to be assassinated by the forces of transnational capital and neoliberalism. Twelve environmental defenders were killed in Honduras in 2014, according to research by Global Witness, which makes it the most dangerous country in the world, relative to its size, for activists protecting forests and rivers.
And, now, indigenous rights leader Nelson García was assassinated yesterday, 15 MAR 2016, “shot dead in the face by unidentified gunmen as he returned to his family home in Río Lindo, north-west Honduras – about 100 miles south of La Esperanza where Cáceres was murdered at home on 3 March.” Honduras is a very different place since President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped overthrow the Central American nation’s democratically-elected center-left president Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Listen to (or download) breaking coverage here. [1]
Messina
***
[Partial transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Flashpoints]
FLASHPOINTS—[16 MAR 2016] “Today, on Flashpoints, the brutal assassination of Nelson García, an indigenous rights leader in Honduras and a member of the same rights group as slain activist Berta Cáceres. Also, an in-depth follow-up report on the continuing dangers the world faces at Fukushima, Japan. And we’ll feature our regular on-air presentation of Electronic Intifada with Nora Barrows-Friedman. I’m Dennis Bernstein. All this, straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.” (c. 0:50)
[brief intro theme music break]
DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “And you’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. I just want to urge you to stay tuned. Later on in the broadcast, we will be joined by Beverly Bell for the latest in the tragedies of Honduras and the killing of indigenous leaders there. A second murder and many lives are now hanging in the balance. That’s coming up later on in the broadcast.
“But first I wanted to continue our dialogue on Fukushima, remind people exactly how dangerous it is, see if we can get some more information about what’s going on with the people closest have faced. (c. 1:45) [SNIP]
DENNIS BERNSTEIN: [SNIP] (c. 42:05)
“You are listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. And, uh, I don’t know how to say this. We now turn our attention to another terrible assassination, the assassination of Nelson García.
“Now, this is a member of the same indigenous rights group, as murdered activist Berta Cáceres. This is in Honduras. This is a very lethal situation. And the danger is only getting worse and more widespread.
“Joining us to talk about it is Beverly Bell. Beverly welcome back to Flashpoints. And tell us what happened here. This is, this is just two weeks after the late night [i.e., early morning] murder of Berta.” (c. 43:01)
[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]
***
THE GUARDIAN—[16 MAR 2016] Another indigenous activist has been murdered in Honduras amid an escalating wave of repression against the relatives and colleagues of renowned campaigner Berta Cáceres, who was murdered less than two weeks ago.
Nelson García, 38, an active member of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (Copinh) was killed on Tuesday after a violent eviction carried out by Honduran security forces in a nearby Lenca indigenous community.
García was shot dead in the face by unidentified gunmen as he returned to his family home in Río Lindo, north-west Honduras – about 100 miles south of La Esperanza where Cáceres was murdered at home on 3 March.
García spent the morning with the Río Chiquito community where more than one hundred police and military officers helped evict dozens of families from land which local politicians claim doesn’t belong to them. Their simple timber houses and crops were destroyed using heavy machinery yesterday morning, according to Copinh.
Cáceres co-founded Copinh 22 years ago amid growing threats to Lenca territory from loggers, farmers and state-sponsored projects.
Last year, the activist won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her opposition to one of the region’s biggest hydroelectric projects, a cascade of four dams in the Gualcarque river basin, including the Agua Zarca dam. The river is sacred to the Lenca people and the proposed dam would cut-off food and medicine supplies to nearby communities.
Cáceres was shot dead at her home after suffering years of intimidation and threats against her life linked to her activism.
Since then, there has been growing fears for the safety of her colleagues and family members who have been subject to harassment and intimidation by the authorities.
[1] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Flashpoints, hosted by Dennis Bernstein, for Wednesday, 16 MAR 2016, 17:00 PDT.
LUMPENPROLETARIAT Today on free speech radio, we heard coverage of the People’s Climate March 2017 in Washington, D.C. as well as the conference at Howard University. During the extended broadcast coverage Naomi Klein, was one of the conference speakers. She’s the Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker, known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalisation and of capitalism (or capitalist modes of production); and she’s perhaps the world’s most famous, or influential, intellectual without a degree. (She was followed by Professor Bob Bullard, who obviously does have a degree; but that’s neither here nor there.) Naomi Klein is always a captivating speaker, very charismatic. Even when one doesn’t agree with her completely, one still pays attention. In speaking about government spending to address human-induced climate change, Klein invoked raising taxes, which means she’s unaware of modern monetary theory (MMT). We must spread the word, and expand our understanding of government spending and how our money system actually works. As one heterodox economist, named by Politico one of the most influential people, Dr. Stephanie Kelton reminds us that taxes don’t pay for anything. So, it’s a actually a myth that taxes pay for federal spending.
FLASHPOINTS
