Reports Accuse Bill O’Reilly of False “War Zone” Claims

• Reports Accuse Bill O’Reilly of False “War Zone” Claims

You probably heard the great news – after a few years of progressive activism, FOX finally cancelled Glenn Beck’s show–but the Boycott Must Go On!!

Ten years ago, Media Matters launched with a revolutionary mission: to systematically monitor the U.S. media for conservative misinformation every day, in real time. We’ve been calling out right-wing lies for a decade — and we’re not done yet. Will you contribute now to help us raise $10,000 for our 10th anniversary?

For ten years, we’ve successfully fought back against the bad actors that poison our media with right-wing lies and smears. It’s been an amazing beginning, and we couldn’t have done it without your support.

We’re in this for the long haul. Make an anniversary gift today to kickstart the next ten years of media accountability.

Dear Kevin,
You probably heard the great news – after two years of progressive activism, FOX finally cancelled Glenn Beck’s show.
Beck was targeted after he slandered President Obama by saying, “This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don’t know what it is… This guy, I believe, is a racist.”
Activists at ColorOfChange, Media Matters, StopBeck, FoxNewsBoycott, and of course Democrats.com responded with a boycott of advertisers on Glenn Beck’s show. Ultimately over 300 advertisers pulled their ads from Beck, costing FOX over $40 million.
Advertiser boycotts work! And it’s time to boycott all FOX News advertisers:

http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv

We’re starting our boycott of all FOX News with Proactiv, which sells acne medicine to teenagers and young adults. Why?
First, there are lots of other acne treatments. Second, young adults above all are hurt by FOX News, which promotes right-wing policies on race, education, healthcare, the environment, and war. Let’s get our future leaders to lead the fight against FOX News!
Sign the petition to Proactiv and enter the email address of every young adult over 18 you know:

http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv

Beyond President Obama, FOX regularly slanders nearly everyone: Democrats, unionized workers, the unemployed (including veterans and 99ers), environmentalists, feminists, blacks, Hiics, Jews, Muslims, progressives, scientists, and any other group it disagrees with.
FOX News broadcasts rightwing extremist slander, incitement to violence, political propaganda, and outright lies to promote its rightwing political agenda. This is not “news,” but rather a never-ending “war on news” – and it’s all documented in our petition.
Why would any decent company want to fund it? Tell Proactiv to stop advertising on FOX News:

http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv

Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik

GLEN BECK ADMITTED in 2007, “I Am RACIST and Barack Obama is very White” THIS MAKES Boycotting FOX NEWS needed NOW

By Kevin Stoda

Dear, American supporters of the Fascist Oddball Xenophobic (FOX) news networks.

AMERICANS are getting less tolerant of your racism and stronghold on our major media.

For example, we have noted that in his 2007 TV program from FOX (See on You-Tube), Glen Beck admitted he himself was racist. Further, Beck then, in contrast to 2009, called Barrack Obama much more white than black. (Apparently, Beck now he has other nonsense to mush men’s minds.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0tgvWxC_6A

Using a major news platform to promote racism and to tell people to disrespect a whole presidential administration through mixed truths, outright lies, and xenophobia, is not to be tolerated any more.

On Democracy Now today, Amy Goodman asked Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP what he thought of Wal-Mart’s pull-out from advertising on the Glen Beck program on FOX.

NOTE: Goodman had simply asked , “The whole attack by Glenn Beck that drove this (resignation)? In your response from the NAACP to Van Jones, it says, ´The only thing more outrageous than Mr. Beck’s attack on Van Jones is the fact that there are sponsors that continue to pay him to provide this type of offensive commentary.` Do you support the continued boycott of companies like Wal-Mart of Beck’s show on Fox?”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/8/white_house_environmental_adviser_van_jones

This is a particularly important point because Glen Beck´s HATE CAMPAIGN ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION led recently to a great American policy maker, Van Jones, quitting the government this week.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/06/van-jones-resigns/

Mr. Jealous said, “We certainly support them (Walmart) choosing with their dollars who they’re going to support. I mean, it’s—Glenn Beck is somebody who’s told a seven-year-old girl, a seven-year-old black girl, that he would buy her a ticket back to Africa, that she needed to go back to Africa. And then he comes out, and he says that healthcare is the beginning of reparations. I mean, this guy plays the race card on a weekly basis. He does it very aggressive—you know, in a very hateful way.”

Recall, first, that Van Jones is one of the most important and thoughtful men in America—however, the FOX (Fascist Oddball Xenophobic) news network chose to support a man, like Glen Beck, rather than seeing that tens of millions of Americans need to get health care from promoters like Jones and that our America economy needs to move starting today to the kind of economy that its competitors worldwide are already doing.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/95963/what_will_the_green_economy_look_like/

Let’s quote the wisdom and influential words of Van Jones on the absolute necessity to green the American economy NOW!

“I think it’s really important to point out that we’re sort of at the end of an era of American capitalism, where we thought we could run the economy based on consumption rather than production, credit rather than creativity, borrowing rather than building, and also, most importantly, environmental destruction rather than environmental restoration.”

Jones continued, “We’re trying to make the case in this book that that era is over. We now have to move in a very different direction. And key to that will be basing the US economy not on credit cards, but based on clean energy and the clean energy revolution that would put literally millions of people to work, putting up solar panels all across the United States, weatherizing buildings so they don’t leak so much energy and put up so much carbon, building wind farms and wave farms, manufacturing wind turbines. We argue you could put Detroit back to work not making SUVs to destroy the world, but making wind turbines, 8,000 finely machine parts in each one, twenty tons of steel in each wind tower, making wind turbines to help save the world.”

Finally, Van Jones wisely noted, “So we think that you can fight pollution and poverty at the same time. We think that you can actually power our way through this recession by putting people to work, but we’re going to have to start building things here and re-powering, retrofitting, retooling America, and that that’s the way forward both for the economy, for the earth and for everyday people.”

Note: These statements came from a program on DN from October of last year:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/28/van_jones_on_the_green_collar

Van Beck has written a book of the same title, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems.

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061650758/The_Green_Collar_Economy/index.aspx

America needs such voices as Van Jones in government leadership in America—not Fascist Oddball Xenophobic (FOX) types.

Clean up the American airwaves of all its fascism and racism, today.

http://www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com/a-petition-against-fox-conservative-host-glenn-beck.aspx

NOTE: One way to change the noise of Fascist Oddball Xenophobic (FOX) media moguls is to support alternative media organizations

http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/index

and alternative monitoring websites.

http://americas.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/64380

Another way, is to demand that local radio and TV channels put better programming on, such as Democracy Now or news sources promoted by serious progressive journalists:

http://www.tacomapjh.org/progressive_news.htm

Arctic Nightmares

Tomgram: Subhankar Banerjee, Arctic Nightmares

If Sarah Palin were president, we’d know just what it was: a drill-baby-drill administration. Of course, there’s no mama grizzly in the White House, yet these last years have been a grizzly tale of the expansion of American oil and natural gas exploration and drilling from the fracking fields of Texas and North Dakota to the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico. Most recently, the southern Atlantic seaboard, where there are an estimated untapped four billion barrels of oil and 37 trillion cubic feet of gas, was provisionally opened for future exploration and drilling. So keep in mind that it wasn’t under Palin’s tutelage but Barack Obama’s that the United Statesexperienced its staggering resurgence in the oil and gas sweepstakes, turning itself into “Saudi America.”

The math, which this president undoubtedly knows well, isn’t that complicated. According to climate change scientists, of all the fossil fuel reserves believed to be left on the planet — and the ability of oil companies to successfully tap ever more extreme deposits has been a regular surprise in these years — scientists estimate that80% must remain underground to prevent a planetary disaster. And yet, it seems that ever fewer waters off ever fewer American coasts are now sacrosanct. Back in the presidential campaign of 2008, Obama criticized his opponent, John McCain, for pushing the expansion of offshore drilling. “It would have long-term consequences for our coastlines… When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium.” And he was right that to expand significantly into coastal waters is indeed dangerous. Sooner or later, it ensures more BP-style Gulf of Mexico environmental catastrophes, as well as the everyday cumulative disasters that, as marine biologist Carl Safina has written, simply come with oil company exploration and extraction efforts.

It’s true that a 2011 moratorium on new drilling and lease sales off the West Coast remains in place until 2018, but in addition to the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic, the most forbidding and dangerous waters off any American coast — those in the Arctic — are again in play. You would think that this would be an open-and-shut no-go case for reasons that Subhankar Banerjee, leading Arctic photographer, environmentalist, and author of Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point, lays out vividly today. (Back in 2003, a show of his photos on Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History was scandalously all but cancelled at a moment when the Bush administration was eager to open that pristine wilderness area to exploitation.)

If you’re talking about extracting extreme fossil fuels from an incredibly rich environment that is utterly treacherous and would be the single most obvious reserve on the planet to simply keep in the ground, this has to be the place. And yet the president has long shown a special interest in those Arctic waters and Royal Dutch Shell’s urge to drill in them. Now, at a time that would seem inauspicious as well as unappealing, given the glut of new American oil on the market (and falling oil prices), the Obama administration, despite a recent bow to Arctic preservation, stands at the edge of once again green-lighting a Shell foray into Arctic waters. You explain it. Tom

To Drill or Not to Drill, That Is the Question
The Obama Administration, Shell, and the Fate of the Arctic Ocean
by Subhankar Banerjee

Here’s a Jeopardy!-style question for you: “Eight different species of whales can be seen in these two American seas.” Unless you’re an Iñupiaq, a marine biologist, or an Arctic enthusiast like me, it’s a pretty good guess that you can’t tell me what those seas are or what those whales are either. The answer: the Chukchi Sea and the adjacent Beaufort Sea, off Arctic Alaska, and you can commonly spot bowhead, beluga, and grey whales there, while fin whales, minkes, humpbacks, killer whales, and narwhals are all venturing into these seas ever more often as the Arctic and its waters continue to warm rapidly.

The problem, however, is that the major oil company Royal Dutch Shell wants to drill in the Chukchi Sea this summer and that could, in the long term, spell doom for one of the last great, relatively untouched oceanic environments on the planet. Let me explain why Shell’s drilling ambitions are so dangerous. Just think of the way the blowout of one drilling platform, BP’s Deepwater Horizon, devastated the Gulf of Mexico. Now, imagine the same thing happening without any clean-up help in sight.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Taking Action Against Escalation in Iraq & Iran

Democracy Journal Biweekly commentary shifting from the Long Wars to the Climate Wars, from Wall Street Rule to a Democratic Society for All

Published by Tom Hayden and the Peace & Justice Resource Center, The Democracy Journal is a reader-supported journal of original thoughts on peace, justice and green energy. The Democracy Journal is read by activists, organizers, and advocates in 60 communities across the US and abroad. Taking Action Against Escalation in Iraq & Iran PEACE AND JUSTICE ACTIVISTS SHOULD, AT THE VERY LEAST,  SEND MESSAGES NOW TO CONGRESS AND TO 2016 CANDIDATES THAT THEY WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE IF THE NEW IRAQ WAR TURNS INTO A QUAGMIRE AND THE DIPLOMATIC PROCESS WITH IRAN BREAKS DOWN. First, Iraq. It would be a terrible mistake if any peace activists sit out the fight over whether Congress should authorize the next phase of the Iraq War. Currently many activists are insisting on a diplomatic resolution and are opposed to any Congressional authorization for the use of military force. Continue Reading… The Cancers from Kern  Governor Jerry Brown long has rejected either a ban or a moratorium on fracking in California like those adopted in New York state and France, where citizen outcry has prevailed. Brown’s alternative has been to beef up the state’s regulatory apparatus with serious environmental scientists and additional staff, claiming the permitting and monitoring system will be the toughest in America. That may not turn out be true. The federal Environmental Protection Agency claims that the California has failed to implement monitoring and control over its well injection system – for decades. Continue Reading… A Peace Movement Based on Justice Read this Vietnam comic book by the young civil rights leader Julian Bond, published in 1967, and I believe you will realize that we still are in a fierce battle between memory and forgetting, between twisted history and true history. Then consider participating in the May 2 commemoration of the first days of the anti-war movement in 1965. Julian Bond wrote this early people’s history, with illustrations by T. G. Lewis, in 1967, the year after the Georgia legislature expelled him from elected office because he opposed the draft and the war. Continue Reading… The Crazy “Rationality” of Chris Kyle’s Murder I was gripped emotionally by the Bradley Cooper’s way of inhabiting the character of “American sniper” Chris Kyle. That’s what Hollywood does. Then I remembered a young sniper friend of mine who, when asked what he did, said, “We shoot people and blow shit up.” And when I asked him what he thought about the policies behind all the shooting, he simply answered, “That’s for the big people above us to decide.” Continue Reading… In This Issue Environment: Kern, Mississippi of Fracking Remembering Vietnam The Long War: Will Congress OK War? Alternative is Imperative Coming in March: Listen Yankee! Why Cuba Matters Quick Links About Us Contact Cost of War Fact Sheets & Flyers tomhayden.com Rethink Afghanistan Tom at The Nation Tom at The Huffington Post Join Our Mailing List!

World Wildlife Day 2015

Today let’s show the world that we’re serious about wildlife, and about wildlife crime—the theme of World Wildlife Day 2015.

Featured Content

Wildlife Crime Under the Waves The Real Costs of Illegal Fishing “Serious About Wildlife Crime” is the theme of this year’s World Wildlife Day, and we couldn’t be more serious about one of the biggest, and perhaps least visible, wildlife crimes. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing takes millions of tons of fish from the ocean each year, harming the environment and people’s livelihoods worldwide. Stunning photos, facts, video »

Word Wildlife Day Pictures Have You Met Shark Stanley? The friendly cartoon hammerhead has been an ambassador for shark protections around the world since 2012. And this World Wildlife Day, we present Shark Stanley’s latest adventures, complete with new “friends”—shark species that need our protection. Meet the new characters »

New Wilderness Protections for Bison Wood bison hold bragging rights as North America’s largest terrestrial animal. Once estimated at nearly 170,000 in Canada’s boreal forest, the free-range population now may be as low as 7,000. But there’s hope: These iconic animals are protected in Canada’s newest sanctuary. Photos, facts »

Share Your Support on World Wildlife Day

Featured Video

New Satellite System Fights Wildlife Crime Take a deep dive into our new satellite tool to combat illegal fishing. Project Eyes on the Seas uses the latest technology to track wildlife crime in real time, giving authorities the information they need to fight “pirate” fishing. Watch »

Got submissions? Please email us your content for consideration.

For more on environmental issues at The Pew Charitable Trusts visit pewtrusts.org Take action on environmental issues with Pew-online petitions and more.

Stay Connected RSS Feed YouTube Facebook Twitter Site: www.pewtrusts.org   |  Contact: info@pewtrusts.org

Don’t let Bill O’Reilly get away with years of deceiving viewers

Kevin –

Thanks for telling Fox News to hold Bill O’Reilly accountable for fabrications about his professional background. The suggestion that he reported on the ground in an active war zone in the Falklands when he was actually over 1,000 miles away is troubling enough – but now, Media Matters has found evidence that O’Reilly has been concocting heroic stories like this since the earliest days of his career.

Don’t let Bill O’Reilly get away with years of deceiving viewers. Build pressure for Fox News to take action by sharing the link to the petition: http://mm4a.org/oreilly-action

In his book Killing Kennedy and elsewhere, O’Reilly has said he was standing outside the house when a key figure set to testify about the assassination of John F. Kennedy killed himself with a shotgun. But audio tape released by CNN, as well as sources who spoke with Media Matters, reveal that O’Reilly wasn’t there. [1][2]

Similarly, on both his television and radio shows, O’Reilly has repeatedly told a story about the time that he “saw nuns get shot in the back of head” while reporting on the civil war in El Salvador. But as Media Matters noted, this famous event happened in 1980 — and O’Reilly didn’t arrive in the country until after the killings. [3]

This story was so outlandish that O’Reilly had to acknowledge we were right — he wasn’t there. Incredibly, he now claims that he really meant he only saw “images” of the murders. Fox News later used the same dubious excuse after O’Reilly was busted for saying that he had “seen … Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs.” [4]

There’s no telling how many more of O’Reilly’s stories will be discredited in the coming days. The Guardian just uncovered another major discrepancy: O’Reilly’s claim that he was “attacked by protesters” who bombarded his crew with concrete during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles is being contested by six of his colleagues at the time, who say it never happened. [5]

Publicly, Fox News and O’Reilly are dismissing these revelations of deceit. (No surprise there.) But behind the scenes, the network is scrambling to run damage control.

We have to keep the pressure on. Share the link to the petition now to let Fox know that this story won’t go away until O’Reilly faces consequences: http://mm4a.org/oreilly-action

Thanks for taking action –

Cynthia Padera
Campaigns Manager
Media Matters for America

[1] Groch-Begley, Hannah. “CNN’s Reliable Sources Airs New Audio Disproving O’Reilly’s JFK Story.” 3/1/2015. Media Matters for America.

[2] Dimiero, Ben, Hananoki, Eric, and Strupp, Joe. “O’Reilly Lied About Suicide Of JFK Assassination Figure, Former Colleagues Say.” 2/24/2015. Media Matters for America.

[3] Marshall, Olivia. “Another Fabrication: O’Reilly Never Witnessed The Murder Of Nuns In El Salvador (Updated).” 2/25/2015. Media Matters for America.

[4] Farhi, Paul. “Bill O’Reilly cites conflicts that he witnessed. How much of that is true?” 2/27/2015. The Washington Post.

[5] Swaine, Jon. “Bill O’Reilly’s LA riots ‘bombardment’ stories disputed by former colleagues.” 2/26/2015. The Guardian.

5 Chemicals Banned Overseas but Still in Your Food at Home

ENVIRONMENT This Is What the Creator of Keurig Had to Say About Those Disastrous K-Cups (Hint: It’s Not Pretty) read more SHARE THIS

FOOD 5 Chemicals Banned Overseas but Still in Your Food at Home read more SHARE THIS

WILDLIFE Three-Legged Elephant Gets a Prosthetic Limb read more SHARE THIS

SOCIAL JUSTICE 15 Crucial American Jobs That Still Don’t Pay a Living Wage read more SHARE THIS

ARTS & CULTURE HBO’s Looking Is Breaking Audience Boundaries in More Ways Than One read more SHARE THIS

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PETITION

Tell the Government: Keep Cholesterol Warnings

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Netanyahu Threatens War In Speech to Congress

Featured… Netanyahu Threatens War In Speech to Congress by Phyllis Bennis Realizing he has insufficient clout to stop the negotiations, Netanyahu demanded a back-up position: If not “no” deal, then we can have a better deal. His vision of a “better” deal, however, is grounded in Iranian surrender. News… Bank of England Issues Warning Over Looming ‘Carbon Bubble’ Threat by Deirdre Fulton ‘As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels…may take a huge hit,’ predicts one of Europe’s oldest banks. Nearly 60 Lawmakers Boycott Netanyahu Speech by Lauren McCauley Condemning Netanyahu’s efforts to “sabotage diplomacy,” grassroots groups also rallied around the boycott and called on lawmakers ahead of time to skip the speech. As Bibi Marches on Congress, Obama Says If Iran Talks Fail ‘Military Actions’ Await by Jon Queally “I don’t think it’s permanently destructive,” Obama told Reuters in reference to Netanyahu’s visit, “but I think it’s a distraction from what should be our focus. And our focus should be: how do we stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?” New Study Shows California Droughts Driven by Climate Change and Here to Stay by Sarah Lazare The researchers concluded that human-driven global warming is exacerbating and increasing the confluent warm and dry conditions that have produced the state’s most severe droughts. Body-Cam Company Has Financial Ties to Police Chiefs by Nadia Prupis While the demand for body cameras among law enforcement has risen in the wake of the high-profile police killings of unarmed citizens, critics are noting the potential for biased dealings when police chiefs profit off of private companies. Clinton Skirted Public Disclosure Laws While Heading State Department by Lauren McCauley “It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” Baron said. more news…  Views… For Peace, We Must Defeat Netanyahu on Iran Diplomacy by Robert Naiman If we want to have a serious conversation about how to beat Netanyahu on settlements, the fight over Iran diplomacy should be required reading, because we’re facing the same adversaries, with the key difference right now being that on the second front, we have far fewer friends. Eight Lessons for Progressives Inspired by Syriza by Ted Fertik & Dan Cantor Syriza is standing up to the powers-that-be in European capitalism in a way that seems almost impossible to imagine in places like Canada and the United States. Playing Chicken with Nuclear War by Robert Parry A swaggering goofiness has come to dominate how the United States reacts to Russia, with American politicians and journalists dashing off tweets and op-eds, rushing to judgment about the perfidy of Moscow’s leaders, blaming them for almost anything and everything. David Petraeus Gets Hand-Slap for Leaking, Two Point Enhancement for Obstruction of Justice by Marcy Wheeler The Department of Justice basically completely wiped away the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress. What Climate Crisis? Sales of SUVs Booming in Europe by Andy Rowell The so-called eco-consciousness of the industry – where fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles were pushed – has gone. Arctic Nightmare: Obama, Shell, and the Fate of the Far North by Subhankar Banerjee Think of drilling in the Arctic as a future catastrophe in a single enticing package. more views… Newswire… ACLU: DHS Funding Bill Passes With Harmful Immigration Family Detention Provisions Brennan Center for Justice: BRIEF: Legal Ethicists Urge Wisconsin Justices to Consider Recusal in Gov. Scott Walker Campaign Finance Case Institute for Public Accuracy: Netanyahu Speech: Nuclear Threat CAIR Asks Tennessee Legislature to Drop Anti-Muslim ‘No-Go Zone’ Bill Western Environmental Law Center: Conservationists Challenge Wildlife Services’ Authority to Kill Wolves in Washington Violence Policy Center: ATF Proposal to Restrict Certain Types of AR-15 Ammo Direct Result of Gun Industry’s Design and Marketing of Armor-Piercing Assault Pistols, VPC Report Shows more newswire…

CALL FOR HELP 3,381 families are left homeless from a 12-hour fire on March 2, 2015 in Parola, Tondo, Manila.

Jun G. Velasco 5:18pm Mar 4 CALL FOR HELP 3,381 families are left homeless from a 12-hour fire on March 2, 2015 in Parola, Tondo, Manila. Affected families are cramped in 5 evacuation centers with no place to go. You can help by bringing the following in-kind donations below to our Baseco Center of Hope in brgy. 649, Tondo, Manila or in PIA Building, Kapitolyo, Pasig City. – Food – Clothes – Bedding – Hygiene kit – Kitchen utensils – Tent / Tarp – Housing materials For more information please contact the following HOPE Staff: – Angie Neo – 0922.803.7744 – Jay-Ar Vipinosa – 0932.872.3675 – Aimee Gonzaga – 0949.3597176 ACTIVITIES: – March 7 – Relief, Feeding, Psychological First Aid – March 14 – Relief , Feeding, Psychological First Aid – April 12 &13 – Medical Missions & Relief Operations Willing volunteers can go to Baseco Center of Hope in the morning to help in the relief preparation and cooking of food. Relief operation will be in the afternoon of Saturday Activities. A PARTNERSHIP PROJECT OF HOPE WORLDWIDE PHILIPPINES AND METRO MANILA CHRISTIAN CHURCH

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Connect (1)the anti-austerity movement in Europe, (2) the accountability movement in the United States, & (3) the movement around climate change

Noam Chomsky on Black Lives Matter: Why Won’t U.S. Own Up to History of Slavery & Racism?

GUESTS

Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years.

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. “[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege,” Chomsky says. “Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just being established now with a private donor. This is the core of our history along with the extermination and expulsion of the native population. But it’s not part of our consciousness.”

from:http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/3/noam_chomsky_on_black_lives_matter

AMY GOODMAN: And then you have in the United States a movement around accountability, overall. It’s the 50th anniversary of the Selma Bloody Sunday, March 7th, when John Lewis, now a congressman, and scores of others had their heads beaten in by Alabama state troopers. It’s 50 years later, and you have the Black Lives Matter movement. You have these stories repeatedly around the country of police officers killing young people and not-so-young people of color. What do you make of this movement? And do you see the anti-austerity movement in Europe, the accountability movement in the United States, the movement around climate change—do you see these coalescing in any way?

NOAM CHOMSKY: They should. But in actual fact, the degree of coalescence is not high. We should remember that—take Selma. If you listen to the rhetoric on Martin Luther King Day, it’s instructive. It typically ends with the “I Have a Dream” speech and the voting rights. And Martin Luther King didn’t stop there. He went on to condemning the war in Vietnam and to raising class issues. He began to raise class issues and turn to the North. At that point, he fell out of favor and disappeared. He was trying to—he was assassinated when he was trying to organize a poor people’s movement, and he was supporting a sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis. There was supposed to be a march to Washington to establish a poor people’s movement, appeal to Congress to do something about class issues. Well, the march actually took place after his death, led by his widow, ended up in Washington. They set up a tent city, a resurrection city. This was the most liberal Congress in history probably, tolerated it briefly, then sent in the police in the middle of the night and drove them out of town. And that’s disappeared from the rhetoric on Martin Luther King Day. So it’s OK to condemn a racist sheriff in Alabama, but not us, please. Don’t touch our privilege and power. And that’s a large part of the background.

These issues are very real. There’s more issues here. Racism is a very serious problem in the United States. Take a look at the scholarly work on it, say, George Fredrickson’s study of the white supremacy, comparative study. He concludes, I think plausibly, that the white supremacy in the United States was even more extreme and savage than in South Africa. Just think of our own history. You know, our economy, our wealth, our privilege relies very heavily on a century of horrifying slave labor camps. The cotton—cotton production was not just the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, it was the basis for the financial system, the merchant system, commerce, England, as well. These were bitter, brutal slave labor camps. There’s a recent study by Edward Baptist which comes out with some startling information. It’s called—actually, the title is startling, something likeThe Half was Never Told [The Half Has Never Been Told], which is more or less true, was never told. But, for example, he shows, pretty convincingly, that in the slave labor camps—the “plantations,” we call them, politely—the productivity increased more rapidly than in industry, with no technological advance, just the bullwhip. Just by driving people harder and harder to the point of survival, they were able to increase productivity and profit. And it’s not just the—he also points out that the word “torture” is not used in discussion of this period. He introduces it should be used. I mean, these are camps that could have impressed the Nazis. And it is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege. Is there a slave museum in the United States? Actually, the first one is just being established now by private—some private donor. I mean, this is the core of our history, along with the extermination or expulsion of the native population, but it’s not part of our consciousness.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The U.S. war—so-called war against terror–has been a smashing success!!!!

 ‘The U.S. war—so-called war against terror–has been a smashing success. There was a small group up in the tribal areas of mostly Pakistan and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, and we have succeeded in spreading it over the whole world. Now they’re all everywhere—you know, West Africa, Southeast Asia—simply generating more and more terror. And I think it’s—you know, it’s not that the U.S. is trying to generate terror. It’s simply that it doesn’t care.”–NOAM CHOMSKY

“SNOWDEN should be welcomed as a person who carried out the obligations of a citizen,” SAYS CHOMSKY & Many Americans

• 

  Chomsky on Snowden & Why NSA Surveillance Doesn’t Stop Terror While the U.S. Drone War Creates It

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective in stopping terrorism, programs like the global U.S. drone war have helped spread it to areas all around the world.

FROM: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/3/chomsky_on_snowden_why_nsa_surveillance

AMY GOODMAN: We’re spending the hour with MITprofessor, author and activist Noam Chomsky. We sat down with him Monday. I asked him about the significance of the leaks by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and whether he should be allowed to return to the United States without facing any charges.

NOAM CHOMSKY: He should be welcomed as a person who carried out the obligations of a citizen. He informed American citizens of what their government is doing to them. That’s exactly what a person who has real patriotism, not the flag-waving type, but real patriotism, would do. So he should be honored, not just allowed back. It’s the people in the government who should be on trial, not him.

AMY GOODMAN: I was talking to a friend who was saying, you know, when you talk about Edward Snowden, what about the issues of terrorism and having to spy on those who might want to hurt others?

NOAM CHOMSKY: If they want to—first of all, it’s—we can raise this question, but it’s academic, because they are not preventing terrorism. You’ll recall, when the Snowden revelations came out, the immediate reaction from the government, the highest level—Keith Alexander, others—was that these NSA programs had stopped, I think they said, 54 or so acts of terror. Gradually, when the press started asking questions, it was whittled down to about 12. Finally, it came down to one. And that act of terror was a man who had sent, I think, $8,500 to Somalia. That’s the yield of this massive program.

And it is not intended to stop terrorism. It’s intended to control the population. That’s quite different. You have to be very cautious in accepting claims by power systems. They have no reason to tell you the truth. And you have to look and ask, “Well, what is the truth?” And this system is not a system for protecting terrorism.

Actually, you can say the same about the drone assassination program. That’s a global assassination program, far and away the worst act of terror in the world. It’s also a terror-generating program. And they know it, from high places. You can find quotation after quotation where they know it. Take this one case that I mentioned before, this child who was murdered in a drone strike after having watched his family burn to death by drone strikes.

AMY GOODMAN: In Yemen.

NOAM CHOMSKY: What’s the effect of this on people? Well, it’s to create terror. The close analyses have shown that that’s exactly what happens. There’s a very important book by Akbar Ahmed, who’s an important anthropologist, who is a Pakistani, who studies tribal systems and worked in the North-West territories and so on, and it’s called The Thistle and the Drone. And he goes through, in some detail, the effect on tribal societies of simply murdering—from their point of view, just murdering people at random. The drone attacks, remember, are aimed at people who are suspected of maybe someday wanting to harm us. I mean, suppose, say, that Iran was killing people in the United States and Israel who they thought would—might someday want to harm them. They could find plenty of people. Would we consider that legitimate? It’s again, we have the right to carry out mass murder of suspects who we think might harm us someday. How does the world look at this? How do the people look at this in this village where this child was who said that they’re terrorized by constant drone strikes all over North-West Pakistan? That’s true. Now it’s over most of the world. The U.S. war—so-called war against terror has been a smashing success. There was a small group up in the tribal areas of mostly Pakistan and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, and we have succeeded in spreading it over the whole world. Now they’re all everywhere—you know, West Africa, Southeast Asia—simply generating more and more terror. And I think it’s—you know, it’s not that the U.S. is trying to generate terror. It’s simply that it doesn’t care.