LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Friday, 16 DEC 2022]  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, the post-COVID-19 controlled demolition of the global economy, 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, and human-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.”  Siempre hay esperanza. (Please see below for samples of today’s news cycle.)

On this week’s edition of free speech Pacifica Radio‘s On the Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capitol (WPFW, WBAI), host Esther Iverem featured on-the-ground coverage of the Rail Solidarity Rally (13 DEC 2022) on Capitol Hill.  ‘… And no worker should have to choose between their health and a paycheck!‘ (Please see additional notes on this topic below.)

OTHER SALIENT OBSERVATIONS:

• “UC system reaches tentative deal with academic workers” by CBS Los Angeles [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [video: 0min 24sec]  [23:50 PST]
• “COVID Vaccine and Increased Incidence of POTS – Study” by Drbeen Medical Lectures [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [video: 41min 02sec]   (Additional notes   on this video presentation below.)
• “Behind the Twitter Files Hype with James Corbett” by Unlimited Hangout [with Whitney Webb] [via Rokfin], 16 DEC 2022. [video: 1hr 14min 35sec] (Additional notes on this discussion below.)
• “Jay Battacharya: What I discovered at Twitter HQ” by UnHerd [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [video: 40min 06sec] (Additional notes on this discussion below.)
• “How the war machine took over the Democrats w/Dennis Kucinich | The Chris Hedges Report” by The Real News Network [video: via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [video: 33min 57sec]

@LumpenProles, last modified/edited/updated on 15 JAN 2023 at 15:02 PST.

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MEDIA/PRESS NOTES, NEWS, VIEWS, WORKING CLASS BLUES, INFORMATION, INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, AND AGITATION FROM A WORKING CLASS PERSPECTIVE

[Notes will be modified/edited/updated as time and labor constraints allow.  Working class solidarity. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊]

Friday, 16 December 2022

“Dictatorships are based on a primitive psychological mechanism, namely on the creation of a climate of fear amongst the population, based on the brutal potential of the dictatorial regime.  Totalitarianism, on the other hand, has its roots in the insidious psychological process of mass formation.  Only a thorough analysis of this process enables us to understand the shocking behaviors of a “totalitarized” population, including an exaggerated willingness of individuals to sacrifice their own personal interests out of solidarity with the collective (i.e., the masses), a profound intolerance of dissidents, and pronounced susceptibility to pseudoscientific indoctrination and propaganda.

“Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. This process is insidious in nature; populations fall prey to it unsuspectingly. To put it in the words of Yuval Noah Harari: Most people wouldn’t even notice the shift toward a totalitarian regime. We associate totalitarianism mainly with labor, concentration, and extermination camps, but those are merely the final, bewildering stages of a long process.”  —Prof. Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

21:00 PST / 00:00 EST, WBAI > The Jimmy Dore Show

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

COMMENTS:  Jimmy Dore is honest about many issues, which most free speech Pacifica Radio Network news bosses are dishonest and gaslight listeners about, such as the COVID-19 medical fraud, medical authoritarianism, and psyop.  Another example is US/NATO imperialism in Ukraine…

02:00 PST / 05:00 EST, WPFW > Morning Brew Jazz Notes Edition feat. Union City Radio. (3hrs) 

NOTES:  [Listened to first nine minutes (L9)]  music > classic jazz singers > sounds like Ella Fitzgerald…and other female vocalists…   [jumping ahead, to c. 1hr 00min 00sec (06:00 PST)  a female-sounding host is recalling the playlist…  [jumping ahead…]  (c. 2hr 1min 00sec)  ‘we’ll get back to the music…’… Skipping around, it sounds like three hours  of  music.  |  No direct link is available for this WPFW radio archive. To access the audio archive, search WPFW by scrolling down to find the archives for 16 DEC 2022 (05:00 EST) and clicking on the audio stream for Morning Brew Jazz Notes Edition feat. Union City Radio.

“Jay Battacharya: What I discovered at Twitter HQ” by UnHerd [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [40min 06sec]

QUOTATIONS FROM VIDEO DESCRIPTION:  “UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers catches up with Dr. Jay Battacharya about his recent meeting with Elon Musk at Twitter HQ [in San Francsico, California], and what he discovered about the Twitter Files.  |  Read the full article here:  [UnHerd dot com link]  |  […]  |  //TIMECODES //

• 0:00 – 2:16 – Introduction
• 2:16 – 9:40 – Why was Dr. Jay Battacharya blacklisted on Twitter?
• 9:40 – 13:33 – What happens when Elon Musk gets in touch with you by email?
• 13:33 – 17:49 – What was Elon Musk’s stance on covid and lockdowns over the pandemic?
• 17:49 – 22:00 – What was Jay’s impression of the other Twitter employees he met?
• 22:00 – 26:05 – What’s going on with social media?
• 26:05 – 30:58 – Censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration
• 30:58 – 35:16 – The legal case against Anthony Fauci and federal government
• 35:16 – 38:37 – Public health has become political over the pandemic
• 38:37 – 40:06 – Concluding thoughts

NOTES:  #UnHerd #JayBattacharya #TwitterFiles

COMMENTS: This is an important interview because Dr. Jay Battacharya, along with Dr. Martin Kulldorff and colleagues wrote and signed the Great Barrington Declaration. | As discussed previously, UnHerd, or at least Freddie Sayers, tends to reflect a rightist perspective. So, predictably, Elon Musk is practically elevated beyond reproach, as a sincere free speech absolutist. When he soon contradicted himself by capriciously censoring people, including one account, by college sophomore Jack Sweeney, which tracked public information of Elon Musk’s jet flight records. Evidently, Elon Musk felt this was a form of doxxing and censored the Twitter account. This interview made no mention of Elon Musk’s relationships with U.S military and intelligence agencies, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), or how Musk’s “Starlink terminals from SpaceX provide a “battlefield advantage”” in Ukraine, or how Musk seeks to secure DoD contracts for providing ongoing internet service to Ukraine. | Dr. Jay Battacharya, by and large, seems naive about Elon Musk’s role in this Twitter Files scandal, seeing Musk as more of a free speech champion than he actually is. Elon Musk may be charismatic at times, whether smoking weed with Joe Rogan, and appealing to the working class that way, or whether it’s positioning himself, as a champion of the people against the ‘coastal elites’ or the ‘shit libs’, who censored left and right, especially around topics related to COVID-19, problems with the PCR testing data, problems with the so-called vaccines, that are actually not sterilizing vaccines, but instead patented as gene therapy drugs, problems with the synthetic spike protein being produced for weeks and months, causing inflammation and injuries throughout the body, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, all these things were censored.  This is the issue of our times.  There are so many red flags with the official COVID-19 narrative, it is absurd.  Only mass formation can explain why so many people buy into or go along with clearly absurd narratives, as Prof. Mattias Desmet articulated in his must-read book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Clearly, as a rightist, Elon Musk supports, to a certain extent, the COVID-19 truth-seeking types because they are often rightists, and often Donald Trump/MAGA types. But Elon Musk will only give COVID-19 truth-seekers just enough crumbs of information to buy some street credibility as a sincere free speech advocate.  But this is just like the old CIA, intelligence agency, method of dropping tidbits of truth to string people along, but later drop in key pieces of false information to deceive a public lulled into an overly trusting stance toward a given journalist. Elon Musk is part of the global power elite. Just ask Tesla workers how they like the long, grueling hours and working conditions. The Real News Network published an excellent video via YouTube a few months back, around the time that news began breaking about Elon Musk purchasing Twitter, which went into detail about Elon Musk’s connections to the U.S. government and intelligence agencies…

RELATED RESOURCES/READINGS:

• ““The hell with it”: Elon Musk drops request for Starlink funding” by Herb Scribner, Axios, 15 OCT 2022.
• “‘FREE SPEECH’ IS WHATEVER THE RICH SAY IT IS: As Elon Musk’s tragicomic Twitter takeover makes clear, ‘free speech’ and other rights become hollow slogans when power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a few.” by Adam Johnson, The Real News Network, 22 DEC 2022. [R0]

05:00 PST, KPFA > Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar | “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:  [L8] … (c. 0min 50sec) SK: ‘This week, we’ll speak to an Iranian woman of the Feminists For Gina(?) Network and a professor in social sciences. [cf. Mahsa “Jina” Amini] We’ll discuss the ongoing protests inside Iran, that have the power to upend the theocratic government under the slogan of Woman, Life, Freedom. Then, Nathan Robinson(sp?), editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine, joins me for a lively discussion about artificial intelligence and the AI software, that’s taking social media by storm. We’ll talk about its implications for abuse and its potential for learning and reducing work, coming up in just a moment.’ (c. 1min 24sec) […]

COMMENTS: Judging from the introduction and years of listening to Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar, it sounds like this will be more 21st century yellow journalism, more thought control, or what Dr. Noam Chomsky called the “liberal bias“. Dr. Chomsky critiqued the “liberal bias”, since at least the 1990s, when he gave at least one speech talking about “the liberal bias”. (Your author previously linked to a YouTube clip of Dr. Chomsky on the liberal bias, until that YouTube video was taken down… With any luck, a replacement clip will be included soon… Broken links are the worst, right?) In Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (1999), Dr. Chomsky wrote (Ch. 1, “Democracy and the Media”, 30): “The spectrum of discussion reflects what a propaganda model would predict: condemnation of “liberal bias” and defense against this charge, but no recognition of the possibility that “liberal bias” might simply be an expression of one variant of the narrow state-corporate ideology—as, demonstrably, it is—and a particularly useful variant, bearing the implicit message: thus far, and no further.” Indeed, for a synthetic left perspective the “liberal bias” is not only “a particularly useful variant”, it is an indispensable variant. Sonali Kolhatkar and company will only go but so far, and no further, in their critique. The sins (i.e., foolishness, corruption) of the Republican Party are amplified, whilst the sins of the Democrat Party are absolved and obfuscated. This is what it means for the “liberal bias” to colonize free speech Pacifica Radio. And this harms everything, from labor activism to environmental activism because authentic, sincere grassroots activist energy and critical analysis is redirected away from building a multiparty system with real people’s parties and labor parties, with real grassroots institutions of political power. All of that energy is corralled into the corporate Democrat Party, or a spineless Green Party, which defers to the Democrat Party at the national level, where the only expectation is to be herded out like sheep for a single vote every few years from a pre-determined corporate menu of candidates. […] [ 1 ]

06:00 PST, KPFA > Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman & company | “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.” [ 2 ]

“WHO: “Explosion” of COVID cases in China not due to relaxed rules” by CBS Mornings [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [2min 27sec]

NOTES/COMMENTS: [06:16 PST] | This is another example of yellow journalism. It is likely this so-called ‘explosion of COVID’ is a manufactured crisis to manufacture consent, as Chomsky and Herman phrased it in their important book, Manufacturing Consent, about the establishment’s propaganda model. We have known, since at least Operation Mockingbird that the CIA has been infiltrating and influencing corporate media since the early days of the Cold War in the 1950s. Also, CIA whistleblowers, such as Ralph McGehee and John Stockwell, have exposed how the CIA infiltrates and influences prominent media/press reporting. This CBS Mornings reporting is uncritical amplification of global power elite narratives. The World Health Organization (WHO) is an unreliable witness. The WHO has been corrupted by the influence of the profit motives of the power elite, particularly Bill Gates, who has bragged about the profitability of pushing experimental gene therapy drugs masquerading as vaccines. No mention is made of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, which shows at least tens of thousands of deaths from the cytoxic, experimental gene therapy COVID-19 injectable drug products masquerading as sterilizing vaccines. The important peer-reviewed study by Dr. Jessica Rose and Dr. Peter McCullough on VAERS data, which raised alarm bells about myocarditis risks and other problems of “vaccine” injuries and deaths, is still being censored without explanation after passing peer-review, after being published in a credible medical journal, and after being canonized in PubMed. Thousands of doctors are being persecuted for thinking independently of establishment pieties and prerogatives. Tens of thousands of doctors are dissenting against medical authoritarianism and defending their right to medical freedom and First Amendment rights. The censorship of the study by Rose & McCullough on VAERS data is an example of medical authoritarianism and suppression of scientific research in order to conceal evidence, which conflicts with the profiteering agenda of big pharma and the burgeoning “de facto social credit system“, as Dr. Jay Battacharya called the censorship collusion between the U.S. government and big tech, after an hour-long meeting with new Twitter owner/boss Elon Musk, to review information related to Dr. Battacharya’s censorship and persecution. Dr. Battacharya also looked into the censorship of his colleague, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, with his permission. Dr. Jay Battacharya, along with Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and others were the targets of what people called shadow-banning, what Twitter calls a “trend blacklist”, after gaining some media/press traction for their signing of the Great Barrington Declaration, which is a petition with over 934,000 signatures speaking out against the big pharma-led COVID-19 policies and lockdowns and in favor of a “Focused Protection” approach. This is all very serious. Thus, this CBS Mornings reporting is part of the USA’s slide deeper into what the great political scientist Dr. Sheldon S. Wolin called inverted totalitarianism. Instead of being obedient masses marching and chanting in unison, like ‘the good Germans’ of the Third Reich did to advance Germany’s totalitarian movement, all Americans have to do is be passive, complacent, and politically immobilized until herded out on election day to vote for corporate Democrats or corporate Republicans. The same applies to most of the so-called west, which is under the influence of the global power elite, or global predators, as Dr. Peter Breggin calls them. Political immobilization, except when mobilized to vote in sham elections, is a condition for inverted totalitarianism. Free speech and publicly speaking out is an antidote to the mass formation, the mass psychology, behind this new formation of totalitarianism, according to Prof. Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism. | At this point, as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Peter Breggin, and others have explained, it is clear the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the product of gain of function research. Unfortunately, top big pharma salesperson Anthony Fauci lied about gain of function when questioned in Congress. And, as Dr. McCullough stated recently (AM Wake Up, 13 DEC 2022), Ralph Baric and his team “are culpable” for the lab engineering of the cytotoxic spike protein. And, yet, no mention is made of the dangers of gain of function ‘dual use’ research, by which the same experimentation, which ostensibly yields biosecurity injectable drug products, also yields bioweapons. For all we know, and this appears to be the case, gain of function research creates the viruses, which global power elite profiteers, such as Bill Gates, later use to justify their cytotoxic drugs posing as vaccines. At any rate, these red flags must be the focus of honest journalism, not to mention honest investigative journalism. Yet, no mention is made of the conflicts of interest involving the WHO’s funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a profiteering organization posing as a philanthropic foundation, which only gets a pass from corporate media because of the enormous influence and funding streams, some of which fund corporate media/press. It is well-known big pharma is a major funder of corporate media/press. “Brought to you by Pfizer,” for example, is a common refrain on corporate media/press. All of this critique of the corporate media, sadly, also applies to most of the free speech Pacifica Radio news bosses around the nation, which tend to follow the news bosses at the flagship station, KPFA, in Berkeley, Aileen Alfandary and Mark Mericle, and their uncritical amplification of big pharma narratives. If Pacifica Radio news bosses are getting bribes and/or kickbacks, somehow, it’s well hidden. What is not well-hidden, however, is the Democrat partisanship of KPFA news bosses, which helps explain their willingness to gaslight listeners about all of these red flags, to obfuscate and conceal all of these conflicts of interest and instances of corruption| Another red flag is the focus on “cases”, rather than hospitalizations, which suggests an uncritical acceptance of the PCR test as a diagnostic test, when its inventor Dr. Kary Mullis categorically stated it is not a diagnostic test, as evidenced by a long interview by Dr. Gary Null back in the 1990s. The fraudulent use of the PCR test can easily be manipulated by manipulating the cycle threshold, or magnification level, of the testing. The higher the cycle threshold, the more likely a false positive result is likely to occur because DNA fragments of dead viruses can be detected and mistaken for evidence of live viruses. The best indicators of a real public health crisis are many people overwhelmimg hospitals with symptoms and people requiring hospitalization, which aren’t happening. In the USA, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak circa 2020, if hospitals were overwhelmed anywhere, which now seems to have been less common than originally depicted by corporate media/press, the hospital crowding was due more to a lack of hospital beds than to an actual epidemic of COVID-19. And, then, there were conflicts of interest because government cash incentives led many hospitals to uncritically label deaths as COVID-related, often without reason or evidence in order to get COVID cash. And there was a lack of autopsies, or a lack of interest in determining the actual causes of death. And the red flags appear to be endless. Also endless is the lack of curiosity amongst the corporate media/press talking heads as well as the Pacifica Radio Network news bosses, establishment shills.

RELATED RESOURCES/READINGS:

• “Pandemic simulation exercise spotlights massive preparedness gap: Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact” by Katie Pierce, Johns Hopkins University, 6 NOV 2019. NB: This article is another example of yellow journalism and uncritical big pharma propaganda. Conflicts of interest, such as Bill Gates’ profit motive, are occulted. No mention is made of CIA involvement, e.g., Michael Callahan, in biosecurity/biowarfare dual use research and development agendas. Other red flags are also occulted. But it’s important to read all perspectives, including state-corporate propaganda, such as this. For example, this propagandistic article informs readers of prior pandemic simulations.
• “Why is Gates denying Event 201?: In October, 2019 Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who, together with his wife, runs the richest, most powerful foundation in the world, co-organised a simulation exercise on a worldwide corona epidemic” by Norbert Härig, National Herald [India], 2 MAY 2020.
• “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health” by Brannon Howse, WVW Broadcast Network, 18 NOV 2021. NB: Brannon Howse and WVW Broadcast Network reflect rightist perspectives and opinions, most of which your author disagrees with. The value of this article is the audio recording of investigative journalist and author, among his many skills, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. [L0]
• “RFK Jr.: CIA-led ‘military response’ to pandemic was meant to drive democracy from the world and usher in global totalitarianism” by anonymous/staff, Planet Today, 6 DEC 2021. [R0]
• “Bill Gates, Johns Hopkins & WHO Conduct Another Pandemic Simulation With Deadlier Virus That Targets Children” by Jamie White, Your News, 12 DEC 2022. NB: This article is based on an InfoWars article dated 11 DEC 2022. Your author disagrees with the rightist politics of Mr. Alex Jones and InfoWars. But we must accept facts, no matter, who is presenting them. With critical thinking skills and critical media literacy, we can separate facts from opinions.
• “Catastrophic Contagion: A Global Challenge Exercise” by anonymous/staff, Center for Health Security (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), accessed 17 DEC 2022. NB: Like Event 201 three years ago, the pre-COVID-19 simulation, this “pandemic tabletop exercise at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022” appears to be preparation for the next forthcoming manufactured crisis to be ginned up by the global power elite for corporate profiteering and for ratcheting up police state control over societies around the world under the manufactured pretext of a public health crisis, all of which smacks of a corrupt deep state biosecurity/biowarfare/false flag agenda. Notably, apart from Bill Gates, ten ‘officials’ from eight locations are reported as participants in the Catastrophic Contagion simulation. Unless one or more locations represented had more than one representative in the simulation, we can be quite confident the extra two participants were representatives from intelligence agencies, most likely CIA assets. From Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s research for his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, we know CIA assets participated in Bill Gates’ Event 201 hosted in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and the World Economic Forum. “The two hosts were Bill Gates and Avril Haines, former deputy director of CIA and who is now Biden’s director of national intelligence. She is the nation’s top spy,” Kennedy said. “Which is bizarre. And it’s bizarre that the CIA was at this conference.” Watching the short “Global Contagion” simulation video, it’s so obvious this is a psyop, fearmongering propaganda designed to scare people into compliance. No mention is made about strengthening people’s innate immune systems, which is the foundation for good health. Obviously, this type of propaganda is engineered to condition people to feel dependent upon big pharma drugs for public health. Lifestyle, stress reduction, exercise and nutrition habits, are suspiciously ignored in favor of one-size-fits-all for-profit drug dealing and drug using. Also, the community standard of care is ignored. Frontline doctors are marginalized, subordinated to big pharma profiteers, or eliminated for insisting on medical freedom, freedom of speech, and other human rights. This is medical totalitarianism posing as public health policy, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. For more evidence, read COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey by Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin. Also read The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And, to help us understand the psychology behind why so many people have bought into the absurd big pharma/public health narratives, read The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Prof. Mattias Desmet.

07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WPFW > On The Ground with Esther Iverem

NOTES (transcription by Lumpen Proles for Lumpenproletariat): (c. 0min 01sec) “Freedom! My name is M1. I’m half of the legendary, tell-it-like-it-is, everything-is-political rap duo Dead Prez. And this is WPFW, Washington, your station for jazz and justice.’ | Esther Iverem (host): ‘From Washington, D.C., this is On the Ground. Two weeks after the U.S. Congress disgraced itself by denying freight railroad workers seven days of sick leave, railworkers and their supporters rallied on Capitol Hill and across the country for what they said is a basic human right. (c. 0min 55sec) AUDIO CLIP (of street protest): ‘… And no worker should have to choose between their health and a paycheck!‘ Esther Iverem (host): ‘And the denial of workers of these rights was made by rich corporate…who have…paid for by the tax dollars of American people.’ AUDIO CLIP (rally, sounds like Bernie Sanders): ‘The billionaires…have never had it so good. […]’ | 1. Sound from the D.C. rally… [TW] EI: ‘That was Representative Jamal Bowman(sp?). And before that…On the Ground contributor Thomas O’Rourke(sp?) talking to a worker at the Rail Solidarity Rally, December 13th on Capitol Hill.’ | music break … | (c. 20min 20sec) Rashida Talib(sp?) at the rally…… | music break | (c. 37min 45sec) Discussion with Mr. O’Rourke. | (c. 44min 00sec) music break, Spanish language, ‘el pueblo unido jamáz será vencido!’ [i.e., the people united will never surrender; of course, in the Spanish, the phrase rhymes] | (c. 47min 20sec) More sound from the rally, the first voice sounds like a union boss. … ‘My members work long hours…’ [The first-person singular possessive determiner “My” sounded kind of bossy, didn’t it, reader?] > Next speaker… ‘I come from a railroad family. My Hungarian family…’ (c. 50min 00sec) ‘I flew in the Air Force for 30 years…’ > (c. 51min 00sec) Next speaker: ‘we will always keep it bipartisan…’ [This type of rhetoric sounds extreme naive. What your author hears is: We will always remain trapped within the two-party dictatorship, which always betrays us and disappoints us and abuses us. Don’t you, dear reader?] (52min 45sec) … | (53min 45sec) Bernie Sanders … | (c. 54min 00sec) Concluding remarks by Esther Iverem. | No direct link is available for this WPFW radio archive. To access this audio archive, search WPFW by scrolling down to find the archives for Friday, 16 DEC 2022 (10:00 EDT) and clicking on the audio stream for On The Ground. Or check the WBAI archives, which may also archive On the Ground, depending on WBAI/Pacifica Radio Network programming bosses’ whims (without listener-sponsor/listener-owner input into programming decisions). Also see the On the Ground website for broadcast archives.

COMMENTS: Representative Rashida Tlaib [tuh-leeb] makes one wonder. If the Democrats are such traitors to the working class, why is she a Democrat? Also, Mr. O’Rourke mentioned the workers didn’t really delve ‘into the intricacies of the Democrat Party’, or how the Democrats betrayed them by allowing the union bargaining agreement to be split into two, separating the sick leave clause, which was scrapped. Mr. O’Rourke seemed to indicate the workers had moved on past that particular betrayal and looking forward to hope they don’t get betrayed again by Congress, instead of moving to strike. Mr. O’Rourke mentioned the union leadership doesn’t seem to be encouraging the rank-and-file workers to strike. Without the right to strike, without the willingness to strike, workers are becoming indentured servants, basically, slaves. Workers must realize they are being disrespected because they are in an abusive relationship with capitalist bosses. At this point, the capitalist bosses are adding insult to longstanding injury. | 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 heads. What have we allowed our government to do to our media/press in the USA? It seems very few of us have actually read Manufacturing Consent, like very few of us have actually read Das Kapital. On the Ground is the reality check, which is sorely needed, not just by the left, but the whole working class, including the rightist working class.

07:00 PST, KPFA > UpFront with Brian Edwards-Tiekert

QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Fund drive special with Kristin Ohlson and Gabor Maté” | 0:08 – Dr. Gabor Maté (@DrGaborMate), physician best known for his work on addiction, attention deficit
disorder, and the psycho-social dimensions of disease. | 1:08 – Kristin Ohlson (@kristinohlson), an author and freelance journalist in Portland, Oregon discusses mutualism and the powerful interspecies relationships tying ecosystems together.

NOTES:  [scribe hasn’t listened yet] 

COMMENTS: UpFront is some of the worst Machiavellian perception management and thought control, 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. [ 3 ]

07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WBAI > Heart of Mind with Kathryn Davis (pre-empted? cancelled?) > On the Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capitol

NOTES: See notes above regarding WPFW’s broadcast of On the Ground.

08:00 PST, KPFA > A Rude Awakening with Sabrina Jacobs

RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “An in-depth look at community affairs on a local, national and international level, with interviews and commentary. Hosted by Sabrina Jacobs.”

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

08:00 PST / 11:00 EST, WPFW > Community Watch & Comment – Friday with Ron Pinchback(sp?), Tom Williams(sp?), and Chip Jones

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

08:30 PST, PRN.Live > Energy Stew – A 2nd & Deeper Discussion About Middle Earth with Lowell Johnson

QUOTATION FROM ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “I’ve been hearing about Telos, in Middle Earth, for decades and have been fascinated about its likely existence. A number of people have channeled info from there but no one has claimed a visitation until now. | Why is that? My guest, Lowell Johnson, apparently had a past life there and his soul frequency was known by the inhabitants. They knew he could handle the very high vibes of their environment. | He was unexpectedly invited for a tour into our planet which he couldn’t have even imagined. His conscious mind had no familiarity with any of it. | Tune in to hear more about his amazing experience and what it means for all of us. This 2nd interview with him dives deeper into his experience and what he learned.”

NOTES: […]  (08:49 PST) Tuned in to PRN.Live livestream.  |  On the new sci-fi film, Avatar. ‘loving vibe’  ‘we’re in a toxic time’  (08:53 PST)  … (c. 26min 05sec) Lowell Johnson: “Are there gonna be catastrophic things on the surface of the planet? Without question. They’re happening now, though. We’ve been watching and listening to earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes, and all those weather phenomena are caused by this electromagnetic charge, that we keep getting from the sun. And the sun is at a higher-than-normal peak year. So, one of these days, it’s no coincidence to me that, physically, our magnetosphere is breaking down. And one of these jolts, that’s coming from the sun is gonna be the next one, and all it’s gonna take for these things to manifest and the poles to flip. |  ‘Rock and Roll heaven song, musical intro.  (09:02 PST)  Dr. Gary Null: … ‘olive leaf extract’  …  (09:03 PST) [Tuned out, channel change (CC)] 

COMMENTS (opinions, reflections, remarks): Tuned in to PRN.Live livestream at 08:49 PST, in anticipation of The Gary Null Show. No idea what was airing at the time. But some of the talk about the Earth’s magnetic field was interesting, if the fact-claims are scientifically sound. | After listening to the archive of this program, Energy Stew, it turns out we can file this under ‘New Age/Spiritual’. Many fact-claims were made without evidence, which most people would say are outlandish, such as the interview guest’s claim of ‘interdimensional travel to Telos’ and seeing ‘the beauty and splendor of Middle Earth’ and whatnot. Recently, your author jotted down some notes about scientific research into plants wilting under verbal abuse and vibrations and string theory. But your author tries to avoid supernatural explanations for natural phenomena… | As Malcolm X said about his spiritual views (“The Ballot or the Bullet“): “It’s true, we’re Muslims; and our religion is Islam. But we don’t mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities—not any more. After our religious services are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action, and social and civic action. We become involved with anybody, anywhere, anytime, and in any manner, that’s designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic, and social evils, that are afflicting the people of our community.”

RELATED READINGS/RESOURCES:

• “(1964) MALCOLM X, “THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET”” shared by BLACKPAST, 26 JUL 2010.
• “2012: Magnetic Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time” by anonymous/staff and edited by “NASA Content Administrator”, NASA, 30 NOV 2011. [R0]
• “Earth’s Poles Will Eventually Flip, So What Then?: From animal migrations to human communications, a reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles could seriously mess with life as we know it.” by Simon Worrall, National Geographic, 1 FEB 2018. [R0]
• “QotW: What happens if Earth’s polarity flips?: What happens if the Earth’s magnetic field ever reverses its polarity? Geologist John Underhill explains…..” by anonymous/staff and Megan McGregor, The Naked Scientists, 24 JAN 2020.

09:00 PST / 12:00 EST, WBAI > The Gary Null Show

NOTES/COMMENTS (re: WBAI livestream of The Gary Null Show (a rerun):  […] (09:03 PST) WBAI rerun. Kathy Davis and Dr. Gary Null. Topic: healing cancer. WBAI fundraiser. THIS IS A FUNDRAISING BROADCAST. PLEASE SUPPORT LISTENER-SPONSORED, LISTENER-OWNED FREE SPEECH WBAI RADIO AND FREE SPEECH PACIFICA RADIO. And let them know what censored topics you want to hear, which are suppressed by the establishment media/press. Controversial topics can only be presented honestly on listener-sponsored, listener-owned free speech radio. We, the free speech radio listeners, must hold the free speech radio bosses accountable with respect to the free speech Pacifica Radio Mission, which must work for common sense, for the working class, for peace, for justice, and for the environment. (09:05 PST) [channel change (CC)] | (09:56 PST) Tuned back in to WBAI. [transcript worthy (TW)]

NOTES (re; : ‘Rock and Roll heaven song, musical intro.  (09:02 PST)  Dr. Gary Null: … ‘olive leaf extract’  …  (09:03 PST) [Tuned out, channel change (CC)]  |  (09:05 PST)  [Tuned back in to WBAI livestream, again.]

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! 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.) [cf. Democracy Now! dot org]

09:00 PST, KPFK [Los Angeles] > Thom Hartmann Program

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

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

NOTES: (10:00 PST) …  |  Marcus disagrees with Henry, who thinks this generation will grow up to be the next revolutionary generation, after they realize they’ve been neglexted and left a collapsing climate. ‘Rapturist’ bogus calle4,  then another bigys call sbout evil see voicenotes  (11:01 PST) End [Eutrice should’ve cited malcolm x lets leave  religion at home…]

10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, WBAI > Leonard Lopate at Large (pre-empted) | On The Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capital

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

COMMENTS: The regularly-scheduled 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… | Fortunately, WBAI appears to have pre-empted Leonard Lopate at Large and instead aired the far more intellectually honest program, On the Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capitol. Your author is looking forward to listening to another edition of On the Ground.

10:00 PST, KPFA > Economic Update with Prof. Richard Wolff

QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Economics Professor Richard D. Wolff and guests discuss the current state of the economy, locally and globally. The program explores alternative ways to organize, markets, and government policies. Click Here to listen to the current episode of Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff.”

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]  As of 18 DEC 2022, the free speech radio archive has been occulted, undermining the free flow of information…

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. [ 4 ]

10:00 PST / 13:00 EST, WPFW [D.C.] > Latino Media Collective

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

10:30 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Terra Verde

QUOTATION FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally.”

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

COMMENTS: Every time your author listens to this program, Terra Verde, he is disappointed. This program, Terra Verde, is ideologically-aligned with the “liberal bias” faction at KPFA… For decades, your author has listened to Terra Verde, since Brian Edwards-Tiekert used to host the radio program in the mid-2000s, before Pratap Chatterjee was installed as host, and before the program was eventually colonized by a random assortments of litmus-test-passing liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), all loyal to the Brian Edwards-Tiekert, et al. “liberal bias” faction and patronage system, or spoils system…

11:00 PST, PRN.Live > Alternative Visions with Dr. Jack Rasmus

QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “Alternative Visions – Fed Turns More Hawkish & Warns Higher Rates & Recession Coming” | “This past week’s Federal Reserve latest rate hike forewarns financial market investors in no uncertain terms the Fed is prepared to raise rates further, longer and higher in order to reduce inflation in 2023, even if it means more likely and deeper recession. Dr. Rasmus reviews the statements of Fed chair Powell and debunks the Fed’s forecast for inflation and (GDP) in 2023. Fed plans to raise base interest rates to 5.1% in 2023, reducing CPI prices to around 4% (vs. 7-8% so far) while slowing the real economy to only 0.5% and unemployment of 4.6%for 2023. Rasmus explains why 2023 will witness more than 5.1% rate hikes, a deeper recession than 0.5%, and more unemployment than 4.6%. Fed chair Powell’s latest press conference focus was twofold: 1. Telling investors get ready for rates to go higher and longer, 2) show Fed’s plan to attack wages & reduce spending on core services by generating more layoffs. Rasmus reviews follow on central bank rate hikes in Europe, Japan and explains how rising US dollar and geopolitical policies are responsible for Europe’s even greater inflation and deeper recession.”

COMMENTS: This is the real economic update. Dr. Jack Rasmus provides honest and compelling critical economic analysis in accessibly language for the laity. | We love Dr. Richard Wolff, but he’s more of a performer than an educator, or a reporter. It’s disappointing how Dr. Wolff refuses to acknowledge modern monetary theory (MMT), and how modern money works, for example. Yet, your author knows from his training at the heterodox economics department at UMKC that Dr. Wolff is well aware of Dr. L. Randall Wray and Dr. Stephanie Kelton and the early proponents of MMT. The fact that Dr. Wolff refuses to mention the job guarantee program and other salient policy implications from MMT suggests Dr. Wolff cares more about his ideological agenda than establishing economic truth and facts. Nobody is perfect. Glenn Greenwald is good on a lot of issues, including domestic surveillance issues, but dismissive of independent 9/11 researchers. And Matt Taibbi is good on a lot of corporate crime issues, but outright hostile to 9/11 skeptics. And Abby Martin is good on many topics, particularly imperialism, but has uncritically parroted the establishment deception that the experimental, cytotoxic COVID-19 injectable drug products are “safe and effective” on her podcast. And Dr. Richard Wolff is honest about the pathologies of capitalist modes of production; but he is unwilling to acknowledge certain contending theories, despite co-writing an important tome called Contending Economic Theories. As Whitney Webb and James Corbett emphasized in a recent Unlimited Hangout podcast, nobody is perfect. So, we must resist the temptation to put any ‘celebrity journalist’ beyond reproach. The information is what matters, not the personalities.

11:00 PST, KPFA > Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA) | “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 EST, WPFW > 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, 16 DEC 2022, 2pm [14:00 EST] 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 > Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner

NOTES: F William Engdahl [sounds like a rerun, an oldie, but goodie… ]  Today, Manifest Destiny: Democracy As Cognitive Dissonance…’At end of Cold War…quote think hard about it. I’m running out of demons…I’m down to Fidel Castro….’  [ie, need a new bogeyman?]  ‘1983…Reagans CIA boss…create a shadow CIA…that NGO was the National Endowment for Democracy….’  [TW]   …  1213 BF: ‘
..George Soros hired Jeffrey Sachs when he founded the Soros Foundation…Jeffrey Sachs called it shock therapy as the only way to stop communism…(?) [Wait, WTF?…  I think JS admitted some of this on a panel about the origins of COVID-19…]  … On how the Soros-Sachs-NED(?)-CIA(?) economic shock therapy destroyed the Polish economy, a former Soviet nation, and the Russian economy. …  1228 PST  …  …  1256 [Signal loss

| As of 23 DEC 2022, there is no radio archive for this program in the PRN.Live program archives, between 13 DEC and 17 DEC 2022. (Some of the program archives are not in precise chronological order.) It is likely PRN.Live will not archive this program as it was a rerun of Guns and Butter. Your author will search for a link to the audio of this episode of Guns and Butter, as time constraints allow. cf. ‘Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance.’ This rerun absolutely bears repeating because most people are still in the dark about this U.S. history.

12:00 PDT / 15:00 EDT, WBAI > Live On The Fly with Randy Credico

12:00 PDT, KPFA > It’s Going Down with anonymous male-sounding host

NOTES:  [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]  | As of 23 DEC 2022, KPFA bosses have removed, or never posted, the program, which was broadcast at noon (12:00 PST). The archives show a one-hour broadcast of VOMENA at 11:00 PST, then a mislabeled one-hour program at 1pm (13:00 PST). The noon broadcast was occulted by KPFA bosses. It is likely the KPFA bosses are ‘covering their tracks’ by deleting lousy programming, which they insist is important, such as It’s Going Down. Meanwhile, other shows, which are excellent and deserving of support, such as Guns and Butter, are axed, or pressured to ‘pull their own weight’, as far as fundraising…

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 > Jazz and Justice – Bobby Rox

NOTES: This program does not provide a direct link. To listen to this program, one must search the archives manually…

13:00 PDT, KPFA > Project Censored with Mickey Huff (pre-empted) > UpFront [ReRun] with Brian Edwards-Tiekert

NOTES:  Program is mislabeled as Project Censored on KPFA website… | up front rerun? [WTF?]  ‘Evolution’  ‘survival of the fittest’, Brian Edwards-Tiekert misquoted Darwin, as many armchair experts are wont to do…  [No, Brian, Darwin said, ‘survival of the most adaptable…’] …  1308…  author talks about her book on plants and the forest  [Meanwhile, totalitarianism is engulfing the nation… If BET has his way, you’d never know until the boot is upon your neck…  This is how to water down free speech radio and turn it into everything else…  This is heartbreaking, the end of honest radio…]  1314 CC [Sounds like more NPR…

13:00 PDT / 16:00 EDT, WBAI > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod

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

14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WPFW > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod

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

14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WBAI > 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.

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 > Hard Knock Radio

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

17:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [Los Angeles] [simulcast] > Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein

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

18:00 PDT, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [Los Angeles] [simulcast] > The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays

QUOTATIONS FROM RADIO ARCHIVE DESCRIPTION: “January 6 Committee may refer Donald Trump to Justice Department for insurrection; Russia launches punishing barrage against Kyev; Attorneys for Mumia Abu Jamal ask judge for new trial following discovery of suppressed evidence: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 16, 2022” |

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• The January 6th committee reportedly plans three criminal referrals against former President Trump, including insurrection
• Russia launches one of the most intense barrages of the war on Ukraine’s capital
• A court hearing in Pennsylvania may be the last chance for a new trial for imprisoned former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu Jamal
• Congress votes to remove bust of Supreme Court Justice who authored infamous Dred Scott decision
• Starbucks workers hold the first day of a three day strike against what they say is union busting by the coffee giant

Image of Mumia Abu Jamal rally by  KPFA Reporter Avery Luke

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.

“COVID Vaccine and Increased Incidence of POTS – Study” by Drbeen Medical Lectures [via YouTube], 16 DEC 2022. [41min 02sec]

NOTES: As of 20 DEC 2022, unable to embed this video. Notably, Dr. Mobeen Syed mentioned that people were not seeing his livestream videos in Drbeen Medical Lectures YouTube archives. It turns out YouTube had created a separate silo for livestream videos. This appeared to be an unnecessary classification. And, now, it appears another adverse effect of YouTube separating livestream videos is that the URL looks different, a longer URL with the word “Share” in it. And this URL is not allowing permission to embed the video on external sites. So, click on the screenshot above for a link to the video. | [L6] … (c. 6min 14sec) ‘A community, imagine, let’s say, Cupertino, where I live…’ [Whoa, Dr. Syed is in the Bay Area. Wouldn’t it be something if he’d agree to an interview?]

COMMENTS: Dr. Mobeen Syed is back with another excellent presentation. We may need to brush up on our knowledge of Statistics 101. But we must all step up our critical thinking skills, if we ever expect to defend ourselves against things, like gain-of-function bioweapons, like the SARS-CoV-2 virus with cytotoxic spike protein engineered in a lab by Ralph Baric, pushed by the global predators, as Dr. Peter Breggin describes the people behind the global science experiment of injecting the world with gene therapy drugs masquerading as sterilizing vaccines.

20:00 PDT,  KPFA > La Onda Bajita “Lowrider soul, with a mix of barrio oldies and raza knowledge.”

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

22:00 PDT, KPFA > The History of Funk “Two hours of the strongest, stankiest, uncut fonk anywhere on the airwaves, hosted by Rickey Vincent.”

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

“Behind the Twitter Files Hype with James Corbett” by Unlimited Hangout [with Whitney Webb] [via Rokfin], 16 DEC 2022.

NOTES: … (c. 38min 00sec) [TW] dirt on the Intercept and Pierre Omidavar(sp?)  3 leakers imprisoned due to sloppy reporting or intentional exposure… … JC:  ‘predictions for future trends for 2023…the digital ID…’ | (c. 65min 00sec) WW and JC made some important points about ‘celebrity journalists’, and the tendency among some people to emotionally bond with ‘celebrity journalists’ during major media events, such as Glenn Greenwald during the Snowden leaks, but which were ‘curated’, unlike the early WikiLeaks ‘dumps’. | (c. 66min 30sec) JC’s ‘big prediction for 2023’ is the forthcoming rise of the digital ID, which is already trending in other nations… [Indeed. We recall Bill Gates’s Digital ID 2020 campaign. This is a huge red flag of looming totalitarianism, a health pass/thought control social credit system with CBDCs and programmable money a the digital twins

COMMENTS: Whitney Webb and James Corbett are easily two of the best investigative journalists around today. It’s a shame they are not well-known by free speech Pacifica Radio Network listeners, or that they are not frequently interviewed or featured on free speech radio. The working class deserves to hear from honest, courageous journalists, like Webb and Corbett. | (c. 65min 00sec) WW and JC made some important points about ‘celebrity journalists’, and the tendency among some people to emotionally bond with ‘celebrity journalists’ during major media events, such as Glenn Greenwald during the Snowden leaks, but which were ‘curated’, unlike the early WikiLeaks ‘dumps’. But Glenn Greenwald is not beyond reproach because he is dismissive, for example, about 9/11, WW and JC said. But Matt Taibbi is even worse, actually bashing and denigrating people, who question 9/11 as crazies…. That’s true. This past year or two, we saw Abby Martin hold back on COVID-19 truth-seeking. And Abby Martin and her brother Robbie Martin also removed their classic 9/11 podcast ‘The Coincidence Theory’, where they summarized a lot of 9/11 evidence up until that point in time. It seems, after Abby Martin went on TV, she sought to distance herself from her 9/11 Truth movement roots. It seems all of our favorite journalists have certain topics they will not touch. That’s the same strategic type of self-censorship Taibbi and Greenwald make, just the taboos may vary. Some people are good on truth-seeking and very curious about certain topics, but shun other topics. Dr. Gary Null, for example, is honest and fair on the topic of COVID-19 truth-seeking, but refuses to delve into political topics, apparently self-censoring to avoid offending too explicitly Republican and Democrat partisans. Although, in Dr. Null’s defense, he does admit both corporate political parties, Democrats and Republicans, are irredeemable. But, when it comes to the issues around COVID-19, almost no other media/press voice with a significant audience is as courageous as Dr. Gary Null. Admittedly, our beloved Project Censored has largely avoided the censored stories related to COVID-19, at least on the radio show. Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022 was edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff. Chapter 1 is a summary, “The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2020-21 […]”. From consulting the index, the coverage of COVID-19 censorship seems to be lacking important details, names of dissenting doctors, no mention of COVID-19 Truth movement, and so on. Surprisingly, important truth-seekers on the issue of COVID-19 are not listed in the index, such as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and Dr. Peter Breggin. Clearly, one of the most important books of 2021 for truth-seekers was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. The Real Anthony Fauci was a New York Times bestseller, yet it was basically censored. It was like the book didn’t exist. Instead of its opponents, speaking against it, they simply ignored it. On free speech Pacifica Radio, the only coverage dedicated listeners, such as your author, might recall is one interview with RFK, Jr about The Real Anthony Fauci, which was conducted by Dr. Gary Null for The Gary Null Show on WBAI and the Progressive Radio Network [PRN.Live]. It has been disappointing that Pacifica Radio programs, such Project Censored and Covid, Race & Democracy did not inform their listeners about this important book, this story, this news. It’s unlikely Flashpoints did, but this needs further scrutiny. It seems even our most beloved media/press programs, even on Pacifica Radio, went along with the censorship, if it’s implausible to think it was an innocent oversight. To be fair, State of the Free Press 2022, which covers 2020-21, did have one salient COVID-19 truth-seeking story in Chapter 1: “#13. Corporate Media Sideline Health Experts During Pandemic.” But it is, unfortunately, only a couple of pages mostly citing (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) FAIR’s liberal website circa May 2020 critiquing the corporate media, which is good. But it doesn’t go far enough to name the names of the censored doctors, such as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Peter Breggin, or Dr. Robert Malone, so readers can learn more about the evidence and the issues dissenting doctors and others tried to get out, but which were censored. Your author hasn’t read Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2023 yet. But, from the sound of the Project Censored radio show on Pacifica’s KPFA on Friday, 23 DEC 2022, which didn’t mention any of the censored COVID-19 stories or issues, it seems COVID-19 truth-seekers will also be disappointed by the 2023 book. | So, long story short, as Whitney Webb and James Corbett said, we cannot put any journalists beyond reproach. Even Whitney Webb and James Corbett, and even Ryan Cristian (The Last American Vagabond) are criticized for avoiding certain topics, as Brendan O’Connell argued in 2021: “For many people, as long as someone says…”Israel bad,” this appears to be enough for them. What was the Whitney WEBB, James CORBETT and Ryan CRISTIAN modus operandi? Simple, avoid linking Israel, Russia, China and Iran and The Belt and Road with unfolding events. Defend Russia as a great savior of The Middle East. Break off US public opinion from Israel and leave them to control”. But who is Brendan O’Connell? And does he have evidence to back up his fact-claims. In any case, we take the facts from wherever we find them. Let’s read on to find out…

RELATED RESOURCES/READINGS:

• “NOW YOU KNOW WHY WHITNEY WEBB NEVER MENTIONED RUSSIA: I’m enjoying this self evident unfolding and the centrality of The Belt & Road. As the weeks pass by and I finish the Whitney WEBB expose, you will see why her and The Last American Vagabond (Ryan CRISTIAN) AND James CORBETT have kept so silent on Russia and China.” by Brendan O’Connell, Patreon, 23 AUG 2021. [R0]

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[ 1 ] Judging from the introduction and years of listening to Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar, it sounds like this will be more 21st century yellow journalism, more thought control, or what Dr. Noam Chomsky called the “liberal bias“. Dr. Chomsky critiqued the “liberal bias”, since at least the 1990s, when he gave at least one speech talking about “the liberal bias”. (Your author previously linked to a YouTube clip of Dr. Chomsky on the liberal bias, until that YouTube video was taken down… With any luck, a replacement clip will be included soon… Broken links are the worst, right?) In Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (1999), Dr. Chomsky writes (Ch. 1, “Democracy and the Media”, 30): “The spectrum of discussion reflects what a propaganda model would predict: condemnation of “liberal bias” and defense against this charge, but no recognition of the possibility that “liberal bias” might simply be an expression of one variant of the narrow state-corporate ideology—as, demonstrably, it is—and a particularly useful variant, bearing the implicit message: thus far, and no further.” Indeed, for a synthetic left perspective the “liberal bias” is not only “a particularly useful variant”, it is an indispensable variant. Sonali Kolhatkar and company will only go but so far, and no further, in their critique. The sins (i.e., foolishness, corruption) of the Republican Party are amplified, whilst the sins of the Democrat Party are absolved and obfuscated. This is what it means for the “liberal bias” to colonize free speech Pacifica Radio. And this harms everything, from labor activism to environmental activism because authentic, sincere grassroots activist energy and critical analysis is redirected away from building a multiparty system with real people’s parties and labor parties, with real grassroots institutions of political power. All of that energy is corralled into the corporate Democrat Party, or a spineless Green Party, which defers to the Democrat Party at the national level.

Frantz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth (Ch. 1, “On Violence”, 159): “In the colonial context the colonist only quits undermining the colonized once the latter have proclaimed loud and clear that white values reign supreme.” This is akin to the continual watering down of critical analysis on liberal programs, like Rising Up. The liberal faction at Pacifica Radio isn’t upholding white supremacy values; it is upholding Democrat Party supremacy values. Even free speech radio listeners, who are opposed to the status quo, are ideologically corralled right back into the colonized state of mind, which is the false left-right paradigm, the polarizing two-party system narrative, where listeners are invited to see the political bankruptcy of the far-right Republican Party, but not that of the centrist/center-right Democrat Party. Such is the power of liberal nuance, over-complexifying everything to lose listeners in endless nuance, which obfuscates the simple truth that the working class actually does not have a political party, nor any significant institutional power. Yet, it is obvious the working class needs a political party or some form of institutional power.

So, the working class recognizes the power of institutions, such as free speech Pacifica Radio, whose values are theoretically aligned with working class values, and begins to demand Pacifica Radio be democratized, decolonized. As grassroots activist types had been gaining momentum at KPFA through the 1990s, building a huge audience, a faction of liberals, including Mary Frances Berry, Lynn Chadwick, Janet Reno, and Bill Clinton, would fight tooth and nail to control and suppress the grassroots spirit. Thankfully, the nation rallied around free speech KPFA back then. After the 1999 KPFA Lockout, listeners won a democratic governance system. But soon a liberal faction of Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club types, Democrat Party reformists, including the millionaire Hallinan brothers on the KPFA LSB would prove themselves more adept at abusing Robert’s Rules of Order, dominating the Local Station Boards (LSBs), the Pacifica National Board, and the programming bosses’ offices. The liberal bosses changed KPFA’s motto from “Free Speech Radio” to “Community Powered Radio”. Nowadays, the new liberal manager of KPFA pushes a new slogan, “Vigilant As Always”. So, now, all people have to do is observe. Direct action is marginalized. The liberal faction, which includes millionaires and likely receives money from Democrat partisan sources, has had more money and a more tightly regimented agenda and hierarchy, whilst the honest, grassroots listeners and activist types were not moneyed and fragmented. And, now, we have uncritical liberal entertainment, controlled opposition, which is big on identity politics, but avoidant of actual politics and critical analysis of collusion between the two corporate political parties. Listeners minds are massaged into identifying with one of the two corrupt corporate political parties, the lesser of two evils, as the expression went. Now, that expression goes unstated, but it is more internalized than ever amongst the liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists). But we continue trying to decolonize free speech Pacifica Radio. Frantz Fanon continues (Ch. 1): “In the period of decolonization the colonized masses thumb their noses at these very values, shower them with insults and vomit them up. Such an occurrence normally goes unnoticed because, during decolonization, certain colonized intellectuals have established a dialogue with the bourgeoisie of the colonizing country.” In our case, “certain colonized intellectuals have established a dialogue with the bourgeoisie of the colonizing” political party, the Democrat Party.

In order to completely transform Pacifica Radio into controlled opposition, like the Democrat Party is a political party of controlled opposition to the Republican Party, liberals, like Sonali Kolhatkar and Brian Edwards-Tiekert, playing the long game, must ‘multiply the nuances‘, as Frantz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth (Ch. 3, “The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness”). Fanon was writing about racism (125): “Although fundamentally racist, the Western bourgeoisie generally masks this racism by multiplying the nuances, thereby enabling it to maintain intact its discourse on human dignity in all its magnanimity.” Again, for Fanon, racism was a defining feature of the colonizer. For oppressed working class people listening to free speech Pacifica Radio, hoping to find their voices reflected and amplified on the airwaves, the liberal colonizer opposes racism, but uses a form of political elitism to marginalize anyone to the left of the Democrat Party. And the Democrat Party leadership positions range from centrist to far-right. Even Bernie Sanders and the so-called Squad are all centrists, at best. Here, we are discussing America’s stunted political spectrum, which Pacifica Radio, mostly captured by Democrat partisans, helps to further narrow. There are exceptions, such as individual programs, but the news department bosses function as stenographers for state power.

To provide left-leaning Pacifica Radio listeners with ‘a fix’ of some ‘hard-hitting activist journalism’, whilst shielding the Democrat Party from criticism, liberals like Sonali Kolhatkar, will focus attention upon activist struggles abroad, in foreign nations. Fellow liberal and Pacifica Radio programmer, Doug Henwood (Behind the News host), who postures as a leftist on occasion, does this as well, giving preferential attention to European politics. In both cases, the goal is to avoid any meaningful, critical analysis of domestic (i.e., US) politics because any serious, critical analysis of US politics will quickly expose the corruption of the Democrat Party and the two-party dictatorship. Whenever these liberals do cover domestic politics, as Doug Henwood did yesterday with establishment shill Ryan Grim, it’s always in a phony insincere way. As Compton Jay aka CJ and Rome pointed out after they and their comrades of the Revolutionary Blackout network recorded a livestream discussion with Mr. Grim. Rome was the most exasperated with Mr. Grim’s sophistry. ‘You just don’t have a sense of urgency,’ he said to Mr. Grim, who simply retorted with more Machiavellianism and duplicitousness. This is exemplary of what investigative journalist Max Blumenthal described as the ‘synthetic left’, when he described the BreadTube ‘synthetic left’ in the UK.

Your author paused this edition of Rising Up after only eight minutes to try and make some sense of the prospect of another disappointing liberal radio program. Your author paused it because this program already felt like a waste of time for working class people concerned with human liberation. And, so, these rough draft thoughts had to be documented, toward a deeper understanding, as time constraints allow. We can keep listening to this hour of synthetic left Democrat Party apologia, but there is no doubt we will be disappointed, if we are serious about the issues under discussion. For American listeners, we must connect foreign issues to US foreign policy and domestic policy. If not, what are we doing? Aren’t we then, nothing more than mere voyeurs, if we only listen with some vague notions of philanthropy or hollow solidarity, but never mobilize for justice? But, inevitably, if US government is critiqued by these liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), the bogeymen are the Republicans in their analysis, in their framing of the issues, and the Democrats are let off the hook. With all due respect for the anonymous Iranian activist being interviewed, if she is sincere and an authentic grassroots activist and not a stooge for some US-backed ‘color revolution’ agenda with short-sighted regime change desires, we empathize with her plight, and that of all Iranian women. The point here is not to denigrate Iranian human rights activists. The point is to show how liberals, like Sonali Kolhatkar, use foreign activists as pawns in their schemes to immobilize the American left. If foreign activists are looking to Democrat partisans, like Ms. Kolhatkar, for help, they’re wasting their time because the Democrat Party, like the Republican Party, will betray the working class every time. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. | To this day, this program, Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar, suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies with Kris Welch, 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, sadly.  ‘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…

[ 2 ] 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.

[ 3 ] 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.

[ 4 ] 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”).

[ 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.

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[16 DEC 2022]

[Last modified/edited/updated on 25 DEC 2022 at 13:00 PST]