Video and Audio

From Allen Ruff's show "A Public Affair" on WORT fm in Madison, Wisc., at http://www.wortfm.org/archives

LISTEN (mp3).

 Dear Michael Moore,In your recently published blog post 90 Million Are Planning Not to Vote - Your Mission: Take Just One of Them to the Polls, you wisely ignore the myth of the undecided voter and aim for a voting block that can truly affect the outcome of this election when you write:

“I want you—yes, YOU, the person reading this right now—to get ONE of your fellow Americans who would not otherwise vote to show up at the polls and support Obama.

Propaganda in the U.S. media is very real. In an attempt to counteract its effects and to offer the Charlottesville public a deeper understanding of the situation in the Middle East, Random Row Books has invited several local experts to give their take on the continuing volatility in that region.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at Random Row Books

Helena Cobban is a British-American writer and researcher on international relations, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice. In March 2010, she founded Just World Publishing.

Roy Hange pastors Charlottesville Mennonite Church and has worked with Mennonite Central Committee in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. He has taught faith-based peacebuilding courses at EMU and UVA.

David Swanson is a local author and activist at the forefront of the peace movement in America. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to New York for the U.N. talks, David was one of several activists who had dinner with the Iranian president. His most recent books are War is a Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He also hosts Talk Nation Radio.

W. Scott Harrop currently teaches in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Culture at UVA, with Iran as his area of expertise.

Videos by Kathryn

This show was pre-taped to play on the day after the 11th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The US recently achieved the milestone of 2,000 military killed in Afghanistan as insider attacks increase. Gareth Porter who has been writing about US policy in Iraq and Iran for InterPress Service News since 2000 talks about what is happening in Afghanistan now (see his article: http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?i...) and the major myths about Afghanistan. He also speaks about US policy towards Iran. Read http://original.antiwar.com/porter/20... to learn more. Then David Swanson, author of "War is a Lie," joins us to talk about his recent meeting with Iranian President Ahmedinejad who was visiting the United Nations. David discusses the way American media portrays Iran, President Obama's war policies, the concept of "humanitarian" war and what it will take to end war. David writes at WarIsACrime.org.

Videos by David Martin.

This was a really great conference, the video of which may mostly die in that enormous place where activists bury their hard work, but here are a few snippets from a question and answer session toward the end:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62846

Not the right questions. No real answers.  Obama claims you can both have "due process" and be murdered.  But the subject raised.

Here's audio of David Swanson and Jason Liosatos: mp3.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62456

INTERVIEW by Eric Draitser at http://stopimperialism.com

I debated a host and another guest on the topic of NBC's forthcoming reality war competition murder-o-tainment show on 89.3 KPCC Southern California Public Radio.  You can listen and add your voice to the online discussion here. Or listen to  the audio here.

In Washington, both chambers of Congress and multiple federal agencies are pushing for sweeping cybersecurity legislation that would allow more information sharing between corporations and the government. But privacy advocates say the country’s intelligence gathering agency, the National Security Administration, already has too much access to US citizens’ private data, and has abused its powers by engaging in widespread warrant-less domestic surveillance. On Capitol Hill, FSRN’s Alice Ollstein has more.

Wikileaks is releasing what it described as a massive trove of documents related to the conflict in Syria. Speaking at London’s Frontline Club, Wikileaks project analyst Sarah Harrison said the documents consist of more than two million emails from political figures, ministries and companies doing business with the Syrian government.

“The Syria files shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and the economy but they also shine a light on how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another. The range of information extends from the intimate correspondence of the Baath party figures to financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations.”

What does Independence Day mean to you? The holiday can be a time to gather with family, friends and community. But it can also be an opportunity to reassess the direction of the country, the past struggles that secured rights and freedom, the challenges to power that rose up in the face of adversity, and the inequalities that still exist.

A coalition of open Internet advocates unveiled a “Declaration of Internet Freedom” this week, seeking to rally activists against censorship and privacy violations from both governments and corporations. The Declaration comes as a Manhattan Judge ordered Twitter to turn over months of personal data from an Occupy Wall Street protester, arrested during last fall's mass demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge. Both Google and Twitter released reports this month showing the US government requested more private user data than any other country in the world, and the companies largely complied.  FSRN’s Alice Ollstein has more.

(Transcript; audio available here)

The Supreme Court ruled today that the President’s Affordable Care Act can go forward almost unchanged, except that state Medicaid expansion is now optional instead of mandatory. Though Democrats, women’s health advocates and progressive groups celebrated the decision, others say defending the Health Care Reform bill isn’t enough, and are calling for a universal, single payer system. FSRN's Alice Ollstein was outside the Supreme Court this morning, and files this report.

Dennis Trainor, Jr., has produced a full-length movie of the Occupy movement, and he's done a hell of a great job.

The Occupy movement was created, as are all movements in the United States, in large part by the corporate media.  They didn't understand it.  They didn't want it.  They didn't originate it or take part in it or develop its brilliants insights, effective techniques, or inspiring courage.  They transmitted what to them was an indecipherable code that reached their viewers and readers with the obvious clarity of a crack on the head.  They got huge assists from brutal cops and incompetent mayors.  But it was the corporate media that took something in one city and made it big and made it national. 

Then, as always, the corporate media turned hostile and lost interest and went away.