[PAA-Discuss] Article and Commentary on VFP's Radio Show

[Ron and Kris Graham]

I read some of the comments about Bob Buzzanco, Robert and they make me
sick. I know Bob, and I don't find him to be an egomaniacal purist at all. I
wasn't familiar with KPFT in 2002, so I can't say anything about what was
going on then with programming or with the smear campaign against certain
members. 

 

Kris

 

  _____  

From: robert [mailto:gram.graham at sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 4:13 PM
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; discuss at paa-tx.org; 'Deb Shafto '
Cc: 'Madeleine Crozat-Williams'; 'STANLEY MERRIMAN'
Subject: RE: [PAA-Discuss] Article and Commentary on VFP's Radio Show

 

in response...

 

wasn't it Stan Merriman who had the show"Jewish Voices" on Kpft 2002-04-17
Attack On Bob Buzzanco?  see http://acksisofevil.org/cointelpro/list.html
The COINTELPRO-Type Operation Against 
Pacifica and KPFT Progressive/Leftist Broadcasters 

 

I guess Mr Bradley thought it was a good time to bring the NeoCon Merriman
back on the air.

 

I listen to the show as well and got a similar feeling that the hosts were
attempting to frame the conflict (war) as a necessary evil to protect
women's rights.

 

I will try to call in tomorrow with a 911 question

 

robert

 

 

  _____  

From: discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org] On
Behalf Of Ron and Kris Graham
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 3:40 PM
To: discuss at paa-tx.org; Deb Shafto 
Cc: 'Madeleine Crozat-Williams'; 'STANLEY MERRIMAN'
Subject: [PAA-Discuss] Article and Commentary on VFP's Radio Show

I thought it appropriate to post this article from December 2009 because the
Houston chapter of Veterans for Peace is currently having a radio show
entitled Afghanistan: Out Now. Stan Merriman produced it. Anyway, he had
Robert Greenwald as his guest on Monday and Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code
Pink was the guest today. Supposedly, Tom Hayden will be tomorrow's guest.
Read the article below. Jodie Evans and Tom Hayden supported Barack Obama
for president 100% and believed all his rhetoric. Evidently, they had peanut
butter in their ears when he said he is against "dumb" wars and Iraq was the
dumb war and Afghanistan is the "right" war which anyone would take to mean
that he had no intention of getting the United States OUT of Afghanistan.
Now, it would seem some people are rethinking our little foray into
Afghanistan. I called and made a comment on today's Open Journal and asked
Jodie Evans if she agreed with my comment and she did. I strongly got the
impression that Stan's co-host, Madeleine Crozat-Williams wants U.S.
soldiers to REMAIN in Afghanistan in order to protect the women there.
Evidently, she read the book, Three Cups of Tea and it made some sort of
impression on her. I obviously cannot speak for Madeleine, but her comments
and questions to Jodie made me think Madeleine wants the soldiers to remain
in that hell hole ostensibly to protect women from the Taliban. I am cc'ing
Stan and Madeleine with this e-mail so they can tell us how they feel about
U.S. soldiers remaining in Afghanistan and how their president is continuing
the bloodshed in the Middle East.

 

According to the article below, Tom Hayden STILL plans on voting for Obama
if he runs in 2012!! I don't know why Stan Merriman is having Tom Hayden on
a radio show regarding Afghanistan and pulling all the soldiers out when Tom
Hayden evidently still supports the individual who is continuing the
bloodshed. This makes no sense to me at all. In fact, I don't even know why
VFP Chapter 12 is having a radio show! Any human being with an ounce of
brains and compassion realizes that our presence in the Middle East was and
is illegal and immoral. Must people be spoon fed all the time?! Must we
reduce everything to the economic consequences for Americans of our staying
in the Middle East as Robert Greenwald did on Monday?! Is ANYTHING AT ALL
about what is humane and morally right as opposed to what is economically
viable for the United States?!

 

Is anyone on this list listening to VFP's Afghanistan: Out Now radio show on
KPFT? If so does anyone have any comments on this? If you missed the last
two shows they are archived at the website.

 

Kris

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/nati-d04.shtml

 


The pro-war Nation and Obama's Afghan escalation


By David Walsh 
4 December 2009


The Nation magazine, the American liberal-left publication, has responded to
President Barack Obama's speech Tuesday night announcing the dispatch of an
additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan with a flurry of articles. The
commentary is both an effort at damage control and a new attempt to mislead
the US population and keep it within the bounds of the present political
setup.

Obama's speech represents a turning point for the American intervention in
the region and for the Obama administration itself. The government elected
on the slogan of "change," with the assistance of "left" forces such as the
Nation, has now fully revealed its warmongering character. The Afghan
escalation will lead to massive destruction and death, new atrocities, new
war crimes-all in pursuit of the US ruling elite's economic and political
interests.

The Nation strongly endorsed Obama in the summer and fall of 2008. In July
2008, the magazine authored an open letter to the Democratic presidential
candidate ("Change We Can Believe In"), eventually signed by a good many of
America's liberal luminaries (including Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich,
Jodie Evans of CodePink, Eric Foner, Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org, Norman
Solomon, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn and others). The letter
declared:

"Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing
seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a
vision of a better future-in which the United States sheds its warlike
stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality
and freedom for its citizens at home-that has thrilled voters across the
political spectrum."

Last October, on the eve of the election, an editorial in the Nation
asserted that "American democracy finds itself at another crossroads, facing
a new democratic vista. The choice between Barack Obama and John McCain
could hardly be clearer."

Obama's December 1 speech and the openly militaristic and aggressive
character of his policy, as well as its obvious continuity with Bush's
policies, embarrass the Nation and place it in a discomfited political
position. It has been exposed as an enabler of imperialist war and reaction.

In an even more troubling problem for the magazine's editors, ten months of
an administration that has handed over billions to the banks while doing
nothing for the jobless, and will now proceed with a major intensification
of the neocolonial war in Central Asia, have produced disillusionment and
disappointment within wide layers of the population. Inevitably, that mood
will turn to open opposition.

It is above all the danger of a popular break with Obama and the Democrats
that propels the Nation's editors and writers into print.

It would be wrong to characterize the Nation as antiwar in any serious
sense, or as an opponent of American imperialism. The magazine's leading
articles on Tuesday's speech, by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tom Hayden, John
Nichols, Robert Dreyfuss and Robert Scheer, make no attempt to dissect
Obama's lies and contradictions. They include no demand for an immediate
withdrawal of American forces from the region. There is no mention of
colonialism or American geopolitical interests. "Oil" and "energy" never
appear among the more than 5,000 words in the articles.

The Nation writers express virtually no concern for the decades of suffering
of the Afghan people as a result of US intervention. (Hayden makes the only
reference to the human devastation, the perfunctory comment that "Civilian
casualties are under-reported according to the UN mission in Afghanistan.")
Kunduz, the scene of a recent massacre, and Bagram, the US base where
torture and murder have been carried out, receive no mention. Remarkably,
the only use of the word "torture" in the various pieces (in Nichols's
article) is in the context of Obama's supposed inner anguish in attempting
to placate proponents and opponents of sending additional troops.

The Nation treats the Afghan intervention much as the rest of the American
mainstream media does, as either an appropriate or a misguided effort to
defend US interests or make Afghanistan and the region "secure" and
"stable." It is a thoroughly establishment organ.

Nichols (in "Obama Has Spoken-Now, Let's Have a Debate") calls Obama's
speech a "carefully-constructed and nuanced call.for the extension of the US
occupation of Afghanistan." He expresses his respectful disagreement with
the decision to escalate and urges a debate in Congress.

In his comment ("Exit: 2011?"), Robert Dreyfuss, fresh from his service on
behalf of US destabilization efforts in Iran, writes: "Having had lengthy
discussions with many, perhaps most, of Obama's advisers on Afghanistan and
Pakistan over the past two years, it's clear to me that those advisers
believe passionately that vital US interests are at stake in that conflict."
He too, however, begs to differ.

This extraordinary confession of closeness to top officials in the American
state appears in an ostensibly "left-wing" publication. Dreyfuss
unequivocally vouches for Obama: "He, and his team, aren't supporters of
global, military hegemony by the United States."

Vanden Heuvel, the Nation's editor and publisher, who could barely control
her rapture over Obama's victory last November, terms the Obama speech "a
tragic moment-both for the nation and his presidency" (but not, apparently,
for the people of Central Asia, who will by far suffer the most). By
"tragic," she means-although she does not care to spell it out-that the
escalation politically unmasks Obama.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, in his open letter to Obama issued on the
eve of the West Point speech, speaks somewhat more candidly, asserting that
an escalation "will do the worst possible thing you could do-destroy the
hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you."

In her Nation piece, vanden Heuvel writes of "a President we had high
expectations for," who is "escalating a war that may well deplete this
country of the resources needed to rebuild its promise, while doing little
to nothing to make us or the region more secure or stable." But why did she
and her editorial board have such "expectations," why, in short, did they
understand and foresee nothing?

Tom Hayden and Robert Scheer, veterans of the 1960s protest movements, play
at more leftish stances. Hayden, a former Democratic state legislator in
California, dramatically declares (in "Obama Announces Afghanistan
Escalation"), "It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car," before
hastily reassuring his readers that he will support Obama in the 2012
election!

Scheer ("Afghanistan: Here We Go Again") provides a history of US
intervention in Afghanistan, including the role played by President Jimmy
Carter, the latter's national security adviser and current adviser to Obama,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Richard Holbrooke, "now Obama's civilian point man
on Afghanistan," in fomenting and financing Islamic fundamentalism.

However, Scheer, the former editor of Ramparts magazine, draws no
conclusions from the history, except to observe cynically, "So here we go
again, selling firewater to the natives and calling it salvation." What is
the US doing in Afghanistan? He has no idea: "Thanks to the political
opportunism of the current Commander-in-Chief the Afghanistan war is still
without end or logical purpose."

What do the Nation's writers propose as a response to the Afghan escalation?

Vanden Heuvel bemoans the continuing grip of the "National Security State"
and the lack of "countervailing voices or centers of power and authority to
challenge the liberal hawks and interventionists." She advocates, in all
apparent seriousness, the establishment of a new think tank on "national
security issues," as well as the building of "a broad-based movement for
change" of an unspecified character.

The favored solution of the various writers, in keeping with the Nation's
central task of reinforcing or resurrecting illusions in the Democratic
Party, is the application of pressure on "progressive" Democratic members of
Congress, with the aim of slowing down or blocking funding for the
Afghanistan war.

Typically, Hayden places hope in "Representative Jim McGovern's resolution
favoring an exit strategy [that] has 100 co-sponsors and Rep. Barbara Lee's
tougher bill to prevent funding for escalation," which now has 23 sponsors.

He continues: "Key political questions in the immediate future are whether
Representative David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, will
oppose Afghanistan funding without a surtax [sic] is only bluffing, and
whether Senator Russ Feingold will step up with legislation for a withdrawal
timetable."

Nichols too depends on the "substantial Democratic discomfort with Obama's
plan to surge tens of thousands of additional troops" to Afghanistan, also
mentioning Reps. McGovern and Obey, Senator Feingold and Vermont Independent
Bernie Sanders. Nichols goes farther, however, holding out hope that
far-right Republicans will bloc with the "antiwar" Democrats. He cites
approvingly the positions of North Carolina Republican Walter Jones Jr., a
self-described "Pat Buchanan American."

There is hardly a more fantastical, futile policy than reliance on the
Democrats (and Republicans) in Congress to end the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. As Obama's decision to accelerate the latter conflict
demonstrates once again, the Democratic Party is an imperialist party,
devoted to the interests of the American corporate-financial oligarchy.

The Nation editorial board, composed of liberals, ex-leftists and
opportunists of various stripes, expresses the interests of a section of the
American upper-middle class. Their collective superficiality, self-delusion
and impressionism have a social basis. The Nation writers speak for a highly
privileged, complacent section of the population, largely insulated from the
consequences, military and economic, of the Obama administration's policies.

The American "left" to a prominent man or woman endorsed Obama in 2008, or
greeted the victory of an African-American candidate with enthusiasm as a
"historic" moment. Individuals with the reputation for opposition to the
status quo, such as Moore, professors Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and
many others, lined up behind the Democratic candidate, misleading the
American population.

Words and political endorsements have consequences. The Nation has thousands
of readers, the individuals just referred to have a large audience. This
"left" shares responsibility for Obama's policies, including the bloody
results of his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

The escalation in Afghanistan vindicates the perspective of the World
Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party: uncompromising
opposition to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. We base
ourselves on a class analysis of this administration and the Democrats.

The old "antiwar" movement has collapsed, as serious protest against the
wars in the Middle East and Central Asia cuts across its support for Obama.
Resistance to Obama's wars can be based only on socialist opposition to
imperialism as a global system and a turn to the working class, the only
social force that can do away with the source of imperialist war and
oppression.

 

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