Tag Archives: Democracy Now

Manitou Springs tribute to my mother

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Lifetime achievement awardMANITOU SPRINGS- (Last night my mother Kathy Verlo was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Open Space activists at the Manitou City Council. I was overcome by their gracious tribute. Here are the notes I prepared in thanks.)
 
I’d like to thank you so much for this recognition of my mother, and assure you that my father very much wanted to be here today. He intended to be here, but inadvertently scheduled a trip, and as an afterthought realized the conflict. He asked me to relay his gratitude and apology.

It is actually fitting that my father is missing this meeting by being away on a trip, because travel was always a bone of contention he shared with my mother. They both liked to maintain their connections around the world, but my mother’s sense of obligation to the local community was very strong, and when she served on the city council, her responsibilities became more regimented. When my father would propose an idea for a trip, my mother would agree, so long as she could be back to Manitou by the next Tuesday City Council meeting. This posed an interesting challenge for their travels. Sometimes Mom would have to return early, often she would not go along at all. So it is hardly a coincidence that after her death, my father has been away with more frequency.

I relate this detail about my mother, not to reflect on her dedication to this city, but to illustrate the determination she showed to make a difference, and the effort she knew it required. I can imagine that all of you serving on the council right now know full well this task. I’m sure a number of you are very reluctant to miss a single meeting, less the interests of opposing parties take advantage of your absence. This was how my mother was able to hold steadfast to the ideals she believed in. This was the strategy required to stand firm against the development of areas now celebrated as open space. She lost plenty of battles, but with a great deal of help from you, won some important ones, and that’s why we are here today.

Now… in Kathy’s spirit, I would like to divert my remarks for a moment. I’ll confess straight off I’m barely brave enough to do it without this preamble, but I’d like to take advantage of this podium to address an important issue, and I hope some of you recognize this as vintage Kathy. No matter the occasion, it was never about my mother, but about what could be accomplished with each given opportunity. You could be discussing last week’s flier, but at the same time, she would be handing you another flier.

I have to rush from this meeting, to another scheduled at the same time, the annual meeting of the ACLU, where we are discussing free speech and the limitations being considered at the State Democratic Convention to be held in Colorado Springs in May. There are plenty of issues to protest, relative to what neither major party is doing, and I hope any or all of you seize this chance to advocate for your particular concerns when the state delegates arrive to put together their party platform.

As well, I’ve passed out fliers to many of you already about an event happening this Sunday at Colorado College, related to KRCC 91.5 on the radio. Amy Goodman, of the news show Democracy Now, is paying a visit, and will speak about the current state of the nation at 3 o’clock on Sunday. Please come. We worked very hard to bring Democracy Now to KRCC, my mother included, but they’ve put the show in a terribly unpopular time-slot, 7pm weekdays. Are you able to listen to Amy Goodman at that time? Undoubtedly not. In fact, she’s on right now, and we are attending a meeting. One of many.

Democracy Now is a wildly popular news program, wherever it’s carried. Many people stream it off the internet, and it keeps everyone so much better informed than the usual corporate media sources, including NPR. Public radio listeners think they are well served by NPR until they hear Amy Goodman, and then they become just sick about how they are being betrayed by corporate spin.

We have to spread that sickness to as many people as possible. If we can convince KRCC to reschedule Democracy Now to the morning drive hour, many more people will, not by accident, become immediately better acquainted with world events. There will be no more uncritical interviews with only government spokesmen or think-tanks to hear “the surge is working” or to keep placing a question mark after “global warming.”

If more of your friends and neighbors get to hear more than the corporate-interest-only news, you won’t have to do as much proselytizing yourself. You will more readily find agreement on issues that benefit our community. Like the environment, and health care, and social inequity, and peace. Instead of the media diverting us with issues like Free-Tibet, more of us will question “hey, is the CIA behind the unrest in Tibet?” Fewer of us might advocate for militarized intervention to Save-Darfur if we are asking “hey, is this about our oil companies fighting with China over who gets their hands on the Sudan?” The list goes on.

The opportunity Democracy Now presents is an urgent one. All of you, I know, have interests in bettering our community and in particular issues you’d like to become better understood. Your biggest hurdle is an uniformed public, and your biggest adversary by far is the media which keeps them that way. We can seize hold of that media, locally, by making it more responsive to the people. Like any enterprise, there will be so much less to do later, if we do more now. Please come on Sunday and lobby KRCC to do this for the community.

I’m going to make this same appeal tonight to the ACLU folk, and other ensuing gatherings this week, so I hope we can bring some real support this weekend.

I impose on you like this with the full confidence that my mother would support this plea, as she was fully supportive of every of my efforts –like any good mother, and so I should add– in particular those that advocated for the benefit of all.

I thank you for this opportunity. I apologize if I’ve taken undue advantage, but in the spirit of my mother I remind you –and you know this– the struggle lives on. Thank you on behalf of my father, and my sisters. As much as my mother would have quickly turned to re-gift this award to the nearest person in the room who she considered more deserving or perhaps someone who she suspected would grow by the encouragement, I accept it on behalf of her family. Your recognition of my mother really does mean a great deal to us.

KRCC promoting Amy Goodman and DN!

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Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now!I stand corrected. In case you missed it in the comments, Delaney Utterback of KRCC wrote: “Amy Goodman will be at KRCC at about 3pm on Sunday, April 20th. She’ll speak out back–mid-music fest–pitch on air a bit and sign books . . . We’re planning our open house blitz next week, where, naturally, we will announce Amy’s appearance.”

In the meantime, let’s make sure the word does get out across all channels. There will be plenty of room for an audience at the KRCC event, and the pledge drive kick-off will be a great chance for YOU to ask KRCC for a drive-time slot for Democracy Now. HD2 won’t reach the masses. Most people listen to the radio in their car, and for KRCC listeners that is the FM signal. And most people do not change the station. Far too much corporate disinformation is reaching Colorado ears via NPR. It’s not enough to know where you can go for an alternative. Our average Colorado Springs friends and neighbors need to OVERHEAR real news reporting. Then they can figure out for themselves that NPR is only a hoity-toity version of FOX, disguised in familiar voices speaking in lower tones, lacking all but pretend critical analysis.

KRCC is mum about Amy Goodman visit

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Democracy Now! heroine Amy Goodman will be visiting the Springs on Sunday April 20th, but you wouldn’t know from listening to DN!’s own local radio affiliate KRCC. Today, in the segue for the 7pm slot, “Coming up next, Democracy Now,” instead of mentioning Goodman’s upcoming appearance, the DJ added “if Amy Goodman is not your bag, check out KRCC’s HD2 on which you can hear The Thomas Jefferson Hour.”
Can you imagine KRCC introducing Fresh Air with Terri Gross like that?

On her last appearances, Amy Goodman filled the 900-seat Shove Chapel. Where do you suppose KRCC gets off thinking they can ignore her local following? It’s insulting enough that they gave DN! a mediocre time-slot, they’re trying to sabotage Goodman’s opportunity to speak to their listeners in person? No mention either on their calendar. Search their website for “Amy Goodman” and you get nothing!

Over the last few months, KRCC has promoted appearances by all sorts of Neocon conservative global-warming deniers and war profiteers. As recently as yesterday KRCC had uncritical promotion of ex-Interior Secretary and crook Gale Norton. What’s happening to Colorado College? What’s happened to KRCC?

Barack Obama on Blackwater, the Democrats on Iraq

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It is an insidious ruse to think that either of the 2 Democratic Party candidates are pledging to get the US out of Iraq. At least that is the conclusion reached by Jeremy Scahill, as he discusses why no presidential candidate plans on fully leaving Iraq Jeremy Scahill is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

But even beyond Iraq, none of the 3 candidates plan to end the so-called ‘War on Global Terrorism’ or the ‘War on Drugs’. We have 3 war candidates to choose from if we decide to vote. Sure you can vote for Nader and/ or a Green Party candidate. But due to their late announcements, these are truly token candidacies and are not viable challenges to the Democratic and Republican parties. No democracy here, except for maybe Democracy Now being what we are kind of left with, along with a few non-Establishment blogs. etc. We are left with a voice on the margins but no vote.

The Woolsey’s track record

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James Woolsey and wife, Sue, are big players in the Colorado Springs area. Susan Woolsey makes policies over at Colorado College, where she sits on the Board of Regents and James is a bigwig neocon player nationally, where his position as ex CIA head gives him some big name power and recognition.

So what exactly is the Woolsey track record like? See James Woolsey: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind for some idea of what the patriarch is really like. Our last encounter with him was where he was trying to spread the idea in the local area that bio-fuels was an ecological dream that our government should be pushing night and day, (he has companies pushing just that, too.) He was given a forum at the campus chapel by his wife over at Colorado College to spout what the Woolsey’s would like to see become a big family money maker…. biofuels… and specifically government promotion of them.

The Woolseys are a local group of aristocracy that operates with the complicity of the local press in keeping their activities and backgrounds well hidden from the general public. You won’t see either The Independent or The Gazette giving out much info about this family, but rather they will print pieces of parallel propaganda in support of their neocon agendas. Example in point was how The Indy only printed a puffy happy piece about Bio Fuels Evolving priorities Ex-CIA head James Woolsey feels conservation helps battle terror as well as climate change when they interviewed James Woolsey for his bio fuels promotion tour.

Is The Independent scared of the guy and intimidated by him? Well, they have reason to feel that way since he is a thug who wields quite a lot of power nationally and locally. It is much easier to play along with the Woolsey family than to cross them.

Similarly, with wife Susan running the show over at Colorado College, it is much easier to play along with the idea that the local privileged college for elites is a bastion of liberalism, though it is not even close to being that. KRCC, the local radio station run by Colorado College, also helps promote that desired liberal image though its programming in actuality is quite conservative, the program ‘Democracy Now’ being the exception that proves the rule. The rest of the programming is quite white bread though.

Yes, we have close encounters of ‘the Fourth Kind’ in Colorado Springs with the Woolsey family. This is another group of bigwig aristocracy that pushes the Christian Right Wing agenda here combined with constantly pushing ‘defense contract’ militarism. They help set some of the political agendas at Colorado College, The city hall, The Independent, and The Gazette in a way that goes quite under noticed and never commented on.

We’ll try to keep an eye on them in the days ahead, since Colorado no longer needs agendas being set by the likes of the Woolseys and Coors families.

Dead Archbishop Juan Gerardi- Catholic saint from Guatemala

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Archbishop Juan Gerardi is a real Catholic saint. …unlike the Spanish fascist clergy that Pope Ratzinger has recently been beatifying. See Democracy Now’s report about who killed this archbishop? Was it really the US government behind this killing, too?

Gomez Molina, who is a School of Americas’ graduate COL Otto Perez Molina 1985, Command and General Staff College (Commandant’s List) Assassination, 1994: Chief of the G-2 (military intelligence) and on the payroll of the CIA, Perez Molina was in charge in 1994, when the General Staff was implicated in the assassination of Judge Edgar Ramiro Elías Ogaldez. (Allan Nairn, The Nation, 4/17/95) He also had assassinated, Archibishop Juan Gerardi.

Of course it was the US government who assassinated this decent Catholic, Archbishop Gerardi. Guatemalan General Perez Molina was a SOA graduate who assasinated the Guatemalan Catholic saint, Archibishop Juan Gerardi . Molina was a US employee. Now he runs for the presidency of Guatemala, and is a made in the US of America thug.

Archbishop Juan Gerardi will get no beatification from the current Pope, Ratzinger, who is a Nazi sympathizer of long standing. ‘ Pope Rat’ is now a cheerleader for the US government as once he was a cheerleader for Adolph Hitler.

Here, this made in US thug, Guatemalan General Molina,, talks about how he will kill the people who opppose him. Guatemalan General Molina, made in the USA.

The US runs Guatemala with a ‘duro mano’ or ‘a hard hand’ who kills all opposition. He will rule with US government approval and support. He is the US man in control.

US suppliers of prewar Iraqi WMDs

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Iraq was forced in 2002 to supply documentation of their weapons programs. They delivered a 12,000 page report to the UN Security Council, from which the US censored 8,000 pages. A Swiss reporter with Die Tageszeitung was able to obtain the missing pages which revealed who among US and European companies were responsible for building Saddam Hussein’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons programs. Parts of the UK press carried the story. Except for Democracy Now and an abridged mention in the AP, the story was buried in the US. Here is the list of 24 US companies (includes locals Hewlett-Packard).

Honeywell (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Spectra Physics (conventional weapons)
Semetex (rocket program)
TI Coating (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Unisys (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Sperry Corp. (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Tektronix (rocket program, nuclear weapon program)
Rockwell (conventional weapons)
Leybold Vacuum Systems (nuclear weapon program)
Finnigan-MAT-US (nuclear weapon program)
Hewlett-Packard (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Dupont (nuclear weapon program)
Eastman Kodak (rocket program)
American Type Culture Collection (biological weapon program)
Alcolac International (chemical weapon program)
Consarc (nuclear weapon program)
Carl Zeiss – U.S (conventional weapons)
Cerberus (LTD) (nuclear weapon program)
Electronic Associates (rocket program)
International Computer Systems (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Bechtel (conventional weapons)
EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (rocket program)
Canberra Industries Inc. (nuclear weapon program)
Axel Electronics Inc. (nuclear weapon program)

“In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq’s arms programs are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.”

High Schoolers confront Bush about his advocacy and use of torture

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Democracy Now had a great report yesterday of how some scholarly high school students handed Bush a letter condemning US government use of torture on Prisoners of War. All he did was repeat dumbly with the usual line that the US does not use torture on prisoners. He said it twice, too. What a clown. Until Bush and Cheney are in jail where they belong, this country is going nowhere quite fast.

Trying to keep ‘Democracy Now’ from sounding too much like PBS news

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William Blum is a noted radical commentator, author, and historian. Here is a recent commentary of his about Amy Goodman’s reporting on Cuban ‘dissidents’ just freed by the government there.

……..
Democracy Now!
I’m a fan of Amy Goodman and her morning radio program “Democracy Now”. It consistently covers a wide range of issues of interest to the progressive community and undoubtedly recruits many new members to the cause. But perhaps their range is too wide to expect the Democracy Now! staff to have done all of their homework on all of the issues. Cuba is one such issue where the program tends to stumble. The latest example was on April 26. In the opening news report, Amy informed us: “In Cuba, six dissidents have been released from prison nearly two years after they were jailed. The Cuban government had drawn international condemnation after the jailings in the summer of 2005.”

That was it. CBS or NPR couldn’t have followed the State Department script any better. There must be many thousands in American prisons who could be called “dissidents” for having at one time or another expressed serious disgust with what the US was doing in some part of the world and who had taken part in a protest; or done the same in regard to some vital economic, civil rights, or civil liberties issue at home. “Oh,” you declare, “but they were not imprisoned because of their dissidence.” Yes, that’s true about almost all of them. But it’s also true about almost all Cuban prisoners.

To grasp this, one must first understand the following: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government officials, particularly in Havana through the American Embassy (the United States Interests Section). Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization inside the United States? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence gathered by Cuban double agents.

From the Bill Blum Report
……….

Last week I spent some of my time listening to ‘dissidents’ from Sudan and Yugoslavia who had come to America who had also allied with the US government’s plans for their regions. We can expect more ‘dissidents’ to come forth from places like Iran and Somalia in the months ahead, too. They will be paraded before the world press and American public, most especially, as they us tell their varying tales of villainy, that somehow must be alleviated principally through our Emperor’s help, and with the help of the Emperor’s troops, too, as enforcers.

While we should not be unsympathetic to their appeals, we should understand that little liberation for the people of the world can be achieved by us in the US allowing our government to act as world ‘policeman’. US ‘policemen’ work for the US super rich ultimately, and not for the oppressed anywhere.

There are much better ways for Americans to support peoples’ rights in other countries than supporting manipulation by the US gangsters now in power in D.C., as they use one group or another against each other in foreign countries. We should reject appeals for foreign interventions with US controlled troops PERIOD, and get our own house in order.

If people only knew how bad the breakdown of corporate medicine is getting

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Most Americans don’t fully realize how bad the corporate model world medical system is actually doing. Here is Democracy Now in reportage about a man held in Arizona in solitary confinement within a hospital for almost a year, appropriately titled ‘Is Sickness a Crime?‘

The victim of a new strain of TB resistant to treatment is being held without any rights in a jail inside a hospital in Phoenix. As these new antibiotic resistant infectious diseases begin to spread, we can expect to see the public panic to spread like wildfire. And rightly so.

If we don’t stop the corporate world from further destroying the environment and putting much of the world in unhygienic living conditions full of disease and poverty, then all of us are in immediate danger ourselves. There is no gated community that will protect you no matter how many Border Walls get built.

Responding to these diseases must be done in a much more thoughtful way than in mere use of a nutty police mindset ‘Homeland Security’ model. Just yesterday, I was in a Colorado Springs community center where the ‘alert warning’ for terrorism was YELLOW. The public is being treated as if they were residents of a state institution for the mentally retarded, which is where they the Bush Klan seems to have gotten their 3 color scheme from!

We live in a world that needs much more effort than this US corproate governmental nonsense to address the real problems we all face. And yet I have not heard of one elected politician that has had the courage to call for the abolition of this nut case branch of the US government called the Department of Homeland Security.

Yes, we need ‘homeland security’, but with the corporate misleadership now running the country we’re not going to get it. Your average businessman at the upper levels is basically a corrupt buffoon. Most of them themselves need to be in jail unlike this young man now being held in a hospital in Atrizona. Speak out against this sort of abuse all you can. Before too long, you just might find yourself in the same sort of predicament.

Bush’s Funniest vs Hugo Chavez

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Now that Bush is back from Latin America, it’s time to post Bush’s Funniest Moments. And on to Argentina to see the rally where Hugo Chavez tore apart Dubya. This is a long video in Spanish, but watch the first 5 minutes at least to see the Argentinian Mothers of the Disappeared introduce Chavez. An education in itself.

And then we also learn that Bush took his charade to Guatemala talking up the supposed benefits of CAFTA and ‘free trade’, just several miles down the road from where a factory was full of Guatemalan children working in terrible conditions producing frozen broccoli for American school cafeterias and the US military. See Tuesday night’s Democracy Now on that one.

Our Prez is truly a winner! American Empire built on child labor and death squads certainly must have impressed Latin America. Another one of Bush’s funniest moments. ‘El perro que es’, in the words of the spokewoman of the Madres de los Desaparecidos.

Democracy Now’s adulatory interview with Gen. Wesley Clark, war criminal

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America’s ruling elite have split about whether Bush’s decision to expand the War to Steal Iraq’s Oil into the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran is likely to succeed or not. Wesley Clark, Clinton’s mad war criminal bomber of Yugoslavia, certainly is on the side that fears future failure by the Bush Administration.

He even has his own website dedicated to trying to stop the expansion of US government started warfare into Iran. But in the Amy Goodman interview, it appears that he actually wanted to attack Iran, and not Iraq, first. Now he feels that it is a mistaken strategy to do this attack he previously supported, after 6 years of Bush’s bungling, incompetence, and failure.

Amy Goodman all but begged Wesley Clark to run for president, echoing the incomprehensible stupidity of Michael Moore in the previous election. These liberals seem to be looking for some Dwight Eisenhower type to latch on to? How pathetic, since Wesley Clark is absolutely nothing more than a war criminal who started a war with a sovereign country illegally, and sat quiet as Clinton/ Gore killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents through economic sanctions and continual bombings of Iraq during the 8 years of that Administration. These are the type of imperialist liberals who now talk of helping citizens of Sudan out, when during their time in office they were bombing illegally targets in that country, specifically one of Africa’s largest pharmaceutical factories. Clark, and his Slick Commander Clinton, sat and twiddled their thumbs, while hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were cut down. The US and French could easily have stopped that slaughte, but they were occupied with ‘stopping the Serbs’.

After much of the interview with Clark by Goodman conducted on a chit-chat friendly level, Goodman eventually felt the need to let Clark pretend to respond somewhat adequately to his record of continually bombing Yugoslav civilian infrastructure when he was top general in command of the Clinton war of Aggression Against Yugoslavia. This record includes the deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, also bombing the Serbian television station in that city killing journalists and and other civilians at work there, and bombing various factories along the Danube River, thereby contaminating that important waterway for years afterwards with toxic chemicals, as well as killing workers and neighborhood residents. The few parts of his miserable terrorist record Clark was asked to account for by Goodman, was predictably blamed on Milosevic and the Serbs themselves. Goodman made no effort to illustrate the dishonesty of his responses.

Further, Clark went on to support the continued US use of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs in US war making. Amy Goodwin let him walk on all of this, absolutely free as a breeze. How very sad to see this desperate desire for allies against the neocons turned into Goodman’s covert prompting of Clark towards a run for US presidency by this war criminal. Shame on you, Amy. I respect your show immensely but felt ashamed for you Friday night. Don’t let these rats off the hook when they try to desert the ship that Bush is trying to run aground. These imperialist just want a better vessel at hand to continue their imperialist aggressions against other countries. Certainly everything about Wesley Clark points towards continued disaster if he were actually to gain the presidency in 2008. Why prompt for more capable imperialists to regain command? Wesley Clark couldn’t even muster up a call for the impeachment of Bush or a description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being illegal. I guess not, since that would have been to illustrate how he himself had carried out and commanded an illegal war against Yugoslavia.

New Iraqi oil laws made in USA

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There is since the days of legal slavery, probably no worse example of theft written into law than the proposed new Iraqi oil laws will be when passed. Written first in English by the US oil companies and their US government co-conspirators, they were recently re-translated back into our home tongue from Arabic by an Iraqi blogger, Raed Jarrar. Key word here is PRIVATIZATION, and it won’t be for the benefit of any minuscule Iraqi companies still in existence.

To the hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars already robbed from the US treasury for the benefit of the US armament crowd, like CS homey company Lockheed et al, now will be added hundreds of billions of dollars to be robbed by corporations like Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil from the decimated people of Iraq. A perfect picture of modern predatory capitalism in action. Sick. See Democracy Now- New Iraqi Oil Law to Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companies

Democracy Now on KRCC

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Mini fliers to urge KRCC listeners to actionThis week the Pacifica news program Democracy Now was added to the KRCC lineup on weekdays at 7pm. After listening this week when I could, I came away thinking: for the Colorado Springs community, the sudden juxtaposition of Democracy Now to the regular NPR and BBC-lite news programming has got to be turning some heads. Local critics had anticipated that Democracy Now would perseverate on only the bad and the ugly, but this inaugural week proved very much the opposite.

What happened this week? The Democrats ran roughshod over Congress. They introduced some key legislation ahead of their 100 hour pledge, leaving time even for a non-binding resolution on Iraq. In brief, they behaved quite the opposite of how the mainstream media would like to portray Democrats. On NPR, just as on the networks, we were given only brief summaries of what the Dems did. The little interest the reporters paid to the stories played into the inferrence that accomplishments in Congress this week were of little consequence. And the Senate’s non-binding resolution damns itself with its ineffectual appellation, if that’s all you say about it.

Contrast that with Democracy Now’s coverage. DN aired Representative Lynn Woolsey’s full address on behalf the corresponding bill in the House, the Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act. To hear her rational and sober words left you wondering how anyone could still think otherwise about what to do in Iraq. American listeners are not accustomed to hearing politicians unspun. These days when a speech such as Rep. Woolsey’s reaches the public unfiltered, we think that person should run for president. The media doesn’t want to empower politicians like Woolsey if they can help it. Better for Americans to be impressed with TV celebrities than real public servants.

And so Democracy Now’s reports this week were affirming. They offered the ray of hope that the new House and Senate will move forward in spite of whether the mainstram media, including NPR, make light of their work.

The liberal media unmaskedI saw NPR’s Political Correspondent Mara Liasson speak at Colorado College back in 2004. She spoke about the likely contenders for the Democratic nomination. Asked afterwards why, incredibly, she never once mentioned Dennis Kucinich, she told us it was because she assumed we were interested in the candidates of consequence.

Now in Colorado Springs, like over 500 other communities in America in which Democracy Now is airing side by side with NPR, reporters like Mara Liasson are going to know they can’t play gatekeeper with the news. Although Fox and the MSM will be there to corroborate the mainstream NPR line, public radio listeners will be hearing other voices, such as Amy Goodman’s, pulling the cat from the bag. Increasingly, Mara and company will no longer get to decide for their listeners what persons or which issues are of consequence.

Colorado Springs’ first week of Democracy Now began with a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The DN special was broadcast live from the media conference in Memphis and The Indy’s publisher John Weiss was there. Amy Goodman congratulated him on DN’s having broken into the Colorado Springs market. It was news to John, but it’s true he played a key role. At the end of the day though the credit goes to KRCC’s new station manager Delaney Utterback for all the right reasons.

Battle of Oaxaca

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There has been a virtual English language news blackout, except for Democracy Now’s Monday edition, of what has been happening in Oaxaca the last 3 days. A huge and peaceful demonstration against the occupation by federal police forces of Oaxaca City was attacked Saturday afternoon by the very same police. Hundreds have been rounded up, and many have been tortured even while being arrested. Many have been either disappeared or taken out of state to prisons where they are being further brutalized. The people of Oaxaca have resisted, and fighting apparently has continued up to now. See section 2 of a 4 part report from La Jornada

Death of Brad Will sparks US protests against Mexican government

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Tourist destinationThe murder of journalist Brad Will by Mexican government death squads in Oaxaca City last Friday, has brought out multiple US protests at Mexican consulates around the US. And once again, the international spotlight is being turned on the Mexican government like it was previously, when the Zapatistas began their uprising in Chiapas. Mexico, prodded by the US Clinton Adminstration to allow the reign of another polticial party other than the PRI, has in actuality changed not in the least. The PRI institutional dictatorship of old has now morphed into a PRI-PAN alliance for the updated dictatorship of today. A PRI-PAN alliance that conspires together to steal elections, murder off opposition, and to rape and pillage the country on behalf of the US multinational corporations.

Brad Will was an inspirational younger US radical like Rachel Corrie, who was in like fashion murdered by the Israeli military 3 1/2 years ago. Both were dedicated to helping out foreign peoples who were being repressed with the complicity and political support of our own US government. The martyrdom of both have helped open the eyes of many an American to world events that they had been ignoring. We learn, from the sacrifice of their lives, about just how evil is Amercian foreign policy. And we have learned that there are some Americans who are not complacent, but rather are involved in trying to make the world a better place.

Mexico is not a safe place, neither for American travelers nor for the Mexican people themselves. And it is kept unsafe and desperate, due to American interference into the politics of that nation. Our elites are integrally linked with the Mexican elites, and both are sorry and corrupt. And both elites are bankrupting the common folk of their respective nations through militarism, cronyism, and impunity for the corporate criminals that reign supreme in both nations. Brad Will hoped to open eyes with his independent journalism, which he did for no salary. Sadly, he became another of the many victims of Mexico’s government death squads.

Israel and Mexico hope that the Americans, Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, will be forgotten. But they won’t be. Instead, they have inspired us to do more. The Palestinians and the Native Mexican-Americans of Chiapas and Oaxaca have inspired us to resist more, also. We live in a sick world society led by our own US government, and we owe people everywhere to resist more from inside this nation itself. Let us remember the examples of Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, and not let the official media bury their stories. Thank you, ‘Democracy Now’ for your special report today on the life of Brad Will. He was an inspiring young man.

The virtual world of the global marketplace

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Wow. We’ve been trying for several years, a group of friends and I, to get our local public radio station KRCC to add Democracy Now to their news lineup. Nope, we’re told. Nope. Too one-sided.
 
And then they add Marketplace, a daily homage to the stockmarket.

We tried call-in campaigns, petition drives, we’ve even had Amy Goodman come speak on the campus twice and she filled the venues with audiences of mostly KRCC listeners.

KRCC was not disposed, no space available on the lineup, nope, sorry, no. And the dealings have not been above board. Listeners calling in were not told that they were among a multitude. Mention of the petition efforts, or the speaking engagements, was not made on the air. It’s been such an uphill battle, in this ultra conservative city, that petitioners meet people who’d signed already in years past, who ask “what, didn’t that happen already?” They’re no longer even tuning in anymore to KRCC to know.

I check in on KRCC every once in a while, and this morning at 91.5 on the FM dial, what do I hear? Smack in the middle of morning drive-time, a new show. Marketplace or something. Business Talk. As if the news is not already dominated by corporate press releases and corporate mouthpieces trying to direct stock market consumer confidence! And it was atrocious!

Regular NPR news itself is comprised of stories underwritten and packaged by corporate interests. Listen to any one of them and ask yourself, who wants me to know this? Chances are it’s a military contractor, or someone bidding on a water project, or an oil company hoping to ease your anxiety about Global Warming, or a chemical conglomerate wanting to impress you with the scope of human progress. A whole host of pharmaceutical underwriters give NPR reason not dwell on the 25 millions, entire generations, of Africans dying of aids.

The regular NPR stories are broadcast to give you a sense of the bloodless global economy. I guess the irregular work is done by shows like Marketplace, to pretend to report to stockholders and investors in direct terms.

You very likely do not have stock, but they’re talking to you. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was not for the rich and famous to watch. You can’t afford what they’re showing you, but you enjoy it vicariously, and most important your confidence is boosted by the belief that it’s there should you ever overcome your bills, or win the lottery.

National Public Media’s MARKETPLACE. Wow! Corporate press releases designed to stimulate stock values, and commentary designed to give the stimulation a simulation of being in the investor’s interest.

In five minutes I heard about a $40 million mansion for sale on Rhode Island, a rare occurrence apparently, with a 100k-bottle wine collection; to an airline that says it can’t make a competitive bid without concessions from its union; to the US car industry being criticized for having a $24 disadvantage versus Japanese cars, based on poor pricing strategy (whatever that is, $24 short maybe?) and labor problems.

Add to that, amiable chit-chat about the Dow in terms of “nearly” and “a little bit” with specialist experts who don’t want to commit to any opinion really of whether up means down or vice is versa or verse visa.

NPR versus Habeas Corpus

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I caught a little of National Public Radio today. Here’s what I heard: A news story about a new program of repatriating illegal immigrants: by flying them back their ancestral homes, away from the Mexico-American border. It’s working rather well administrators say. The program interviewed a freshly apprehended Mexican who has been returned to his $12 a day parking lot attendent job in Mexico City. He said through a translator that he is likely inclined to give up his dream of reaching El Norte.

So let’s see, that’s a story about subsidizing airlines, budgeting Homeland Security funds for the tickets, to be clear. And the one-way-trips seem to be along the logic of driving a live-trapped vermint a minimum of five miles away from your home to keep him from coming back. Works sometimes.

So is it working with the persistent Mexicans? Hard to say as yet. And yet, here’s a report about it on NPR.

Switch over online to Democracy Now and what are they talking about?

Holy Shit, the Senate has passed a torture/anti-human rights bill which repeals the right of Habeas Corpus! The Right of Habeas Corpus has been nearly universal in the western world since the Magna Carta, since 1215 AD. Thirteen Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass the bill, including our man Ken Salazar, and everybody’s slippery rodent Joe Lieberman. Commentators have likened this bill to the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII and similar national disgraces. We’ll be struggling to apologize and pay reparations. Many are sensibly embarrassed already.

Next up, a description of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Halliburton is serving pork there, and alcohol, insensitive to the Iraqis who must work and eat there, unclean. And on and on.

Can you imagine an informed American populace without the media telling them what’s happening? Why are your friends and neighbors not able to hear Democracy Now on their radios? Who’s standing in their way from hearing the truth over the public airwaves?

In Colorado Springs the gatekeeper is KRCC, the public radio station with a dedicated community of listeners, most of whom are kept in the dark about Democracy Now. On a day like today, it would seem the difference of opinion about station programming is less about taste and more unthinkably out of touch.

What did you do against the war Daddy?

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Victims of Marine post-IED massacrePeople on all sides of the anti-war issue ask me what we’re doing with the peace camp. What are you thinking you can accomplish with it anymore?

I have to tell them it’s for conscience. For my part, I can’t let each further day of this country’s immoral actions go by without expressing my explicit repudiation. I’m struggling to know what more I could do, and I’ll participate in this meager gesture of objection until I do.

Will there be any changing of minds among the indifferent masses? I don’t know. Their passivity and pig-headedness has brought on this authoritarian dictatorship, and soon enough with the tightening of economic screws the people will feel the oppression they perhaps have coming.

And those complicit in these schemes today may prosper for a while, until they themselves are sheparded into the have-not classes.

Or, if you believe that truth and justice will ultimately prevail, then those complicit parties will meet their fate. Maybe it will be karma, maybe it will be a citizens tribunal. I’d certainly like to be there with the noose. A blacklist will suffice.

We had scheduled a sidewalk intervention today at a local public radio station. They’re kicking off their fund drive this weekend and we were hoping to lobby potential supporters to put in a word for adding DEMOCRACY NOW to the station’s lineup.

Well, a confrontation with the station manager this morning left us prematurely fatigued. He doesn’t want Democracy Now. Our hurdle is that not enough members know about the show to want it, and the manager won’t let Democracy Now be mentioned on the air lest more listeners hear about the grassroots effort to add the program.

It’s an uphill battle with little reward. There are too many ill-informed listeners who will think we are trying to harm their favorite station, and there are just enough misled radio station workers to stand in the way. In the end we are simply doing the station manager’s job by lobbying for better programming. He’s paid to do that. He’s entrusted to that.

Today is Earth Day and we’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Address to the Democratic Party

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I went to a Democratic party fund-raiser last night, the TRUE BLUE AMERICAN RALLY. I stood by the door most of the night and handed out fliers about tomorrow’s meeting to reclaim the media. I knew all of the politicians who spoke, I knew the evening’s organizers, somehow it didn’t occur to me until that evening to ask to make an announcement for the Monday meeting. Here are my notes:

Hello, my name is Eric Verlo. You may recognize me from my involvement with Camp Casey, the persistent little peace camp on North Nevada Avenue. Hello.

This organisation was gracious enough to let me come up here and talk to you tonight. I’m speaking on behalf of another organization, the Pikes Peak Media Alliance. We’re a little group, started three years ago, which has been trying to raise awareness about media literacy. A number of my fellow members are here tonight. We recognize that the media landscape is, and has been, slanted against the little guy, the average American actually, and we’ve undertaken the challenge to change that imbalance.

I’m here tonight to tell you of our latest effort, I’ll try to be brief. We’ve been fighting to try to bring more of a community voice to the local public radio station, you love it, we love it, our own KRCC. The effort is going to culminate -thus far- into a town-hall public forum which we’ve scheduled for Monday night at All Souls Unitarian Church. We’re hoping to see as big a turn-out as possible of course. This will be a chance for Joe and Jane Public to express something of the direction they hope to see from KRCC, to express it directly to its regents, its owners, Colorado College.

This effort to seek community input into KRCC programming arose from a more specific attempt to lobby KRCC to air the news program Democracy Now. If you haven’t heard of it, ask the person beside you, it’s an award winning news program whose popularity is growing station by station all over this country, it’s on 400 radio stations nation wide, including more than a dozen communities in Colorado, all the big ones, except Colorado Springs and Pueblo, because it’s not on KRCC.

You may have heard of our efforts. For three years we’ve been trying to petition Colorado College to overrule KRCC’s decision not to carry Democracy Now. For years before that, individuals had been calling KRCC to request it, only to be turned down flat. That went on so long, we decided we had to go over the station manager’s head.

You may have signed one of our petitions. Did you hear anything back? No one did. Well a friend of mine submitted his letter directly. He did receive an answer to his request for Democracy Now: a hand written note saying “Thank you for your thoughts on democracy.”

We tried it several times and this year we made a concerted effort and gathered over 250 petition letters, individual letters signed and personalized by members of our community. A number of times people told us, “I signed one of those a couple years ago. What, they still haven’t given us Democracy Now?” That statement reflects not just their incredulousness, but it reflects a disconnect about what’s happening on KRCC. A lot of the community -on our side of the issues- is no longer listening to KRCC.

This year we delivered those 250 petition letters, along with another 200 Colorado College student signatures to Colorado College on our knees. On our knees! Yes it was a dumb idea, we got the idea because we were starting from Camp Casey and it was only a short distance to the college president’s office. Well on your knees that distance becomes quite a bit more than a little! We did it for the publicity of course, but ideologically we did it to represent the desperate urgency we felt for the people of the world who are not represented by or in the media, the suffering majority whose voices go unheard, whose plight goes unabated in large part because the media ignores their fate, a media who is on the side of their oppressors, who is owned after all by their oppressors.

And so we made this impassioned public plea, Dave was there with me on his bare knees, Gary was there, we handed over our petitions, and heard nothing. Not a thing. No one who signed any of those letter received a reply. We heard through the grapevine that Colorado College was basically standing in support of the KRCC station manager’s decision. Only just a week ago or so, we all saw in the Independent, the article about KRCC and some confusion about its funding, where on the issue of Democracy Now, the college declared that it considered the request to have come from only a “small faction.”

So the meeting tomorrow night, excuse me, Monday night is going to be the showdown between the community represented by its small faction, and Colorado College. We’ve dropped the explicit request for Democracy Now in hope that the meeting will represent more voices from the community about what its concerns may be about KRCC. The issue isn’t so much about Democracy Now, it’s about how does a community express itself to one of its representatives, in this case a station manager who insists that Colorado Springs is populated by nothing but conservatives and easily-offended Luddites.

One of the ideas which could come up at Monday’s meeting will be the popular local news show Western Skies. Some thought by the recent funding disinformation circulated by KRCC, that Western Skies is on the chopping block. Nothing could be further from the truth, as attested by Colorado College president Dick Celeste’s letters to both the Gazette and the Independent. Western Skies puts together a half-hour news show twice a week. It’s very popular. Let’s hear how many of you like Western Skies! Well why not have that show on every day? Can you imagine the kind of coverage we could get for local happenings, local non-profit efforts, partisan efforts, even locally owned businesses, if we had local news on a daily basis? Let’s hear how many of you would favor that idea!

Okay, so I’m here tonight to ask you to bring that voice to the meeting on Monday. Colorado College is looking to see how serious we are about speaking as a community. We’ve got to show them on Monday night.

Let me just say that I believe that the political battle begins with the media. We’ve got to reclaim the media if we are to achieve even a portion of our political goals this year, or ever. And by political goals, I’m talking about saving our country of course, about an agenda to tackle social inequality, to provide a safety net, to save our civil rights, to rescue really is what I mean, to rescue our right to elect a government which represents us. All those things. We are not going to win on those issues if we cannot take our case to the American people. It doesn’t matter how much money we raise to pay the media to carry our message, if the media wants to spin our message in the favor of its owners, of the upper business corporate class, there’s nothing of our message that is going to get through to the people.

A friend of mine was telling me tonight, she’s not very political. She doesn’t see much point to political parties. They’re divisive she says. She would prefer that politicians would brush aside political affiliations and sit down together to work out solutions for the American people.

Now you being fairly active, or activated, political Democrats probably see the naivety of her argument. Let me explain why I think she’s being idealistic and I’d like to see if you agree with me.

If politicians were civil servants indeed sitting down to work out solutions, that would be one thing. But we know that’s not the case. With the division of Republicans and Democrats are two groups sitting down, one of whom has their hands at the levers, making the trouble, and the other side, our side, is trying to undo it. Am I right on this point? The Republican, let’s call them the corporate cheap-labor, landowner party is trying to get away with whatever it can, and the Democratic party is left to try to to fight for the diminishing power of the rest of the world’s population. Is that right? Do I have that right?

Now accusations can be made that a number of the Democrats are fighting on the side of the landowners. And frankly I believe it. I know just enough about how politics does not work, to ask the silly question, can’t we get rid of those Democrats? Can’t we just expel them? Let ’em be Republicans if they want to so badly. We don’t need to be putting our grassroots efforts into backing their turncoat behavior. Anyway, that’s my opinion. I feel that way about torture, about the war, about health care, about the environment, about civil rights, about judicial review and the balance of power keeping the executive branch from acting like a dictatorship.

Now I will assert that we need a media which will reflect this battle for what it is. If we want to preserve this democracy, we have to have a democracy. We have to reach the American public, and we need to reach them with a level, balanced message.

I’ve spoken passionately, but you know that I haven’t spoken out of line, I haven’t exaggerated the situation, have I? Have I? I believe I’ve represented an objective concern for where this country is going. We need a media which will do that.

We have to reclaim this media, and we can start with the only place we have even a toehold and that’s public radio. Please come on Monday night to speak out for the reform we need. The airwaves belong to us. They’re like the public libraries, like the public lands set aside to preserve -in England they’re called the Public Trust. The public airwaves belong to us, and they need to speak for us. Please come!

Thank you!

Playing dirty pool

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When Michael de Yoanna from the Independent called me to research his February 1st article about KRCC losing some of its funding from Colorado College, I told him I thought it highly unlikely.

I took the opportunity to explain the battle PPMA was waging trying to get Democracy Now to air on KRCC. Particularly the onslaught of the public forum being arranged with the hope of bringing all the players to the table. On the subject of de Yoanna’s story, I was able to explain why I thought Democracy Now on KRCC would most certainly improve the station’s finances.

But I suggested too that this mysterious financial news may be subterfuge. I was guessing, and it was an awkward thing to suggest, that KRCC may be wanting to elicit sympathy from their listeners right now, in light of the upcoming public forum at which we’ve been hoping to tighten the screws. I was weighing the impact such a story would have on the perception of criticisms of the station.

I laughed as I told Michael that it was hard to believe KRCC could be worried about finances while at the same time bragging about have such short fund-drives. Their fund-drives last only three days. Imagine what they could raise in four.

The Independent story came out featuring an interview of station manager Mario Valdes expressing his station’s uncertain footing due to Colorado College cutting back its funding. He alluded to programs that may have to be cut, etc.

I had a meeting with Mario the same day that the article came out, and lo, he was already explaining that the reporter had gotten the story wrong. It wasn’t the budget that had been cut, rather the college’s contributions to the $300,000 rainy-day fund.

Sure enough, a couple days later the president of Colorado College Richard Celeste wrote a letter to the Gazette explaining as much, reassuring everyone that the college was firmly committed to supporting KRCC.

The next week, the president wrote a letter to the Independent explaining the same thing, this time chastising the Indy for its irresponsible reporting.

Blaming the reporter? Where does President Celeste think that the distortion came from? Why would Mr Valdes have expounded upon the vulnerabilities of his station’s budget if he hadn’t intended to mislead Mr. de Yoanna?

It was subterfuge, and it worked. When I approach people asking if they will support change at the station, one thing I like to describe is the possibility of having the popular local news show Western Skies air five days a week instead of just two.

They answer, “Western Skies? Isn’t that the program that KRCC is going to drop on account of the cutbacks?”