CIVILIANISM PODCAST

Obama is being influenced by his bad angels, listening to the wrong people, and doing the wrong things in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Giving him the Nobel Peace Prize for this was a mistake.

The drone attacks he orders are horrifying and illegal, killing innocent people even as they execute a few “real” targets.   The escalation of his war will not bring peace. Unfortunately, this war will drag on and on and on without the American people protesting it. There might not be a draft, but there are 56,000 contractors headed for Afghanistan too. . . . privatizing our military force in the Middle East even further, even as our peace/war president plans a “surge”.

Not only are another 30,000 troops being deployed to Afghanistan, “but also 56,000 military contractors will join them.”

Militarism grows and grows, even as we let other things go, like real health care reform, serious climate change work and the smart grid, etc.

An analysis of Obama’s Nobel speech and the “Just War”  and “Just Peace” theories is here.  I don’t buy it. I think no war that kills civilians, and keeps on killing civilians, can be anything but just another war.  Unless this war is solving some serious problem or threat, (and it’s not) we need to leave.

A good angel would know this.

This episode contains part of a protest rally including speakers Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, and it also contains bits of President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Get involved, contact your President and your Congressmen and tell them to stop this stupid war.  It might be the end of us if we don’t. War is still a racket.

Download this episode here, or subscribe on the right.
Artwork by Jay Long.

Besides devastating climate change, my 3 everyday concerns are: Health care reform, which we badly need, the Palestine-Israel conflict and when will it be over, and when will the wars the U.S. is in finally end? We need these things resolved. Obama has been President 9 months now, it’s time he fixed some of these monumental problems. That’s what he was elected to do! This podcast contains recordings about these 3 issues.

Hear Greg Palast, and Judge Goldstone on his Report about war crimes, and a very special “guest”.

For more information about all of the topics covered in this episode, see Civilianism News.

Of course, my biggest concern is still climate change. See Futurism Now Radio and Futurism Now for more information on that.

On September 8th I attended a presentation about occupied Palestine, given by a Christian Peacemakers team. These teams go in and accomplish some job or task while they live with the Palestinians. This team’s job was to escort Palestinian children to school so they would not get beaten up by Israeli settlers, whose settlement homes separated the Palestinian children’s homes from their school.

On Sept 9th, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published its findings on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

According to B’Tselem’s research, Israeli security forces killed 1,387 Palestinians during the course of the three-week operation. Of these, 773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18. Of those killed, 330 took part in the hostilities, and 248 were Palestinian police officers, most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of police stations on the first day of the operation. . . . .

B’Tselem’s figures, the result of months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources, sharply contradict those published by the Israeli military. However, B’Tselem visited homes and gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 children under 16, and has the details of 111 women over 16 killed.

The purpose of the presentation was to educate the public, but unfortunately the public does not attend these events; the people who already know what is going on do. Here are some recent facts they presented:

• The U.S. donates $23,000+ to every Israeli citizen in Israel, every year.
• In 2006, the Jewish settlement in Palestine total was 40 million, and the U.S. paid for it.
• In 2006 the total U.S. allocation to Israel from the U.S. was $4.36 billion, which we paid for.
• Israel took 95,989 acres of Palestinian land in 2006. We pay for this. We also pay for the wall, which snakes around strategically to cut off families and towns.
• The Berlin wall was only 96 miles long. The Israeli wall is planned to be 403 miles long, and it has nothing to do with preventing terrorists from entering Israel.
• Palestinians cannot even use Israeli roads, and their license plates mark them as Palestinians, which is a racist mark. These facts are just a few of many this CP team presented. At the end of the recording is an interesting Q & A also.

You can listen to this presentation of their experiences in Palestine last year by clicking here (opens a podcast file in a new window).

Highlights from Powershift09 sending a message to end the use of coal — and as speaker Robert Kennedy put it, coal is a criminal enterprise. What they are doing to mountains and our air is nothing short of criminal. It’s time to take action to stop coal. It’s time for a citizens arrest of coal. Speakers from Powershift09 include RFK Jr., Van Jones and Lisa Jackson; also Bill McKibben and Jimmy Carter in the second half.

The Age of Stupid movie trailer can be seen here.

Interested in the Clean Energy Corp — story link about green jobs from the Environment News Service:
“Clean Energy Corps Proposed to Create Jobs, Fight Global Warming”

In the 2nd half, you’ll hear about why natural gas isn’t such a great fuel, why it’s not “clean” like Pelosi is claiming, and whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s solar panels, and his dream of clean energy. It’s not a happy story, but 30 years later, we have another realistic chance at it. And at the end, bits of a speech from 32 years ago, much of which President Obama could be saying today.

Nancy Pelosi’s conflict of interest is her financial interest in T. Boone Picken’s natural gas venture.
From the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in T. Boone Pickens’s Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which could benefit from legislation the California Democrat favors to boost U.S. use of natural gas.

Nancy Pelosi’s letter about switching the CPP to natural gas: Read the whole thing here.

Pelosi has a conflict of interest with natural gas, being an investor in T. Boone Pickens natural gas company. She’s an investor in natural gas, so she is pushing the use of natural gas on the nation’s capitol, insinuating that it’s “clean” and renewable, which it most certainly is not. She should be installing solar panels instead. — like our president did 30 years ago. The drilling process for natural gas contains the use of toxic chemicals, including Benzene which causes cancer. And get this — the company who perfected this deadly technique was Halliburton. Here more about this in part 2 of this episode.

From Scientific America.

“Sublette County is the home of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.”

As for Jimmy Carter’s solar panels–they were removed by the Reaganites, and now you can hear why.
I read much of the story, but you can read the rest of it here.

You can download this episode here.

Related articles:

• Sen. Reid has plan to reform energy infrastructure (news.cnet.com)
• As Oil and Gas Prices Plunge, a Frenzy of Drilling Ends (nytimes.com)

This is a presentation of the latest science on climate change, as presented before the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works committee, one of our new “Burn Units”. The planet is burning up and our government is ready to get to work.

This is part one, and part two will only be on Futurism Now Radio.com.
This episode starts with a message about PowerShift09 from scientist James Hansen.

Here are the facts: this is the only planet any of us have, so let’s all work together to solve this climate problem. It truly is a crisis–more so than the banking crisis, but the government keeps bailing out banks while keeping action on global warming a lower priority. If there is any fire to put out, it’s climate change.

On February 4, 2009 Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told the Los Angeles Times:
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,” He sees education as a means to combat this threat.

Much of the Senate hearing is played in this episode, but it was very long so I’m splitting it in two. The Full Committee was titled, “Update on the Latest Global Warming Science.” I didn’t see any major American media cover this, and it should have been big news. After all, this is the latest science on climate change, straight from the scientists. More of the scientists will appear in part II — Part I contains the Senate panel’s member comments and the statements of two of the scientists, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC, PhD, and Christopher Field PhD, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University, Co-chair of Working Group II (continued in part II)

Climate change is the biggest threat to life on this planet, and we can’t stand by and watch it happen while our mainstream media treats it like no big deal–certainly less of a big deal than banks collapsing, so I’m asking people to spread the word. Our media is once again letting us down and even worse, treating this like a debatable political issue, which it absolutely is not.

The testimony Hansen gave to the House Ways & Means Committee is available at
this site (pdf)

Download this episode here.

This episode is mostly about the inauguration and what the new Secretary of State may work on in the next few weeks. Israel’s war with Palestine is finally over. Also, hear Obama take the oath of office a SECOND time.
If you have news to share, send it to me! Email me at news@civilianism.com.
Or use the form at the top of the page at Podcast Liberally, the official website.

This is the first episode of my shorter news broadcasts, called Podcast Liberally News and Commentary, or PLNC for short. I will be including them in my Civilianism RSS feed for a while, and then you will have to get them by subscribing or visiting the website for them, at Podcast Liberally. That used to be a review podcast that I did last year, but my own enthusiasm for it evaporated, so for now I’m back to news and opinion in a form short enough that I can do them more often. Shorter PLNC episodes will be far less draining on my time. And shorter to listen to!

You can subscribe to them at Podcast Liberally.com. I’m keeping this website for Civilianism news and podcasts.

You can download this episode here or subscribe at the PL website.

Song at end: My Country ‘Tis of Thee Pt. 1 by Learning Music from Yes We Puede!
(more free downloads there for everyone)