CIVILIANISM PODCAST

Wondering what President Obama is busy doing to promote peace in the Middle East? He started with returning the US to the “moral high ground” by ending torture and signing an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He then continued on Thursday at the State Department with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East.

But, why are we still bombing Pakistan? These and other mysteries will be covered in episodes to come.

Played: Clips from Obama at the State Department and former senator, now Middle East special envoy, George Mitchell from last October.

Something on your mind? Send me news, tips, and music for the podcast by using the form here (Contact tab on the top), or email me with news and comments.

You can also call my Skype comment line 24/7 at : 320-300-4273.

The shorter episodes will continue for now, but Civilianism in its more in-depth format (i.e., really long form) will return at some point later on.

DOWNLOAD here or subscribe on the right.

It looks like the Democrats finally have their nominee.
Obama unofficially gets the nomination for the Democrats; Hillary and Obama give gracious, inspiring speeches after the last primaries finally end, and both of them would be better than McCain so let’s get them to run together. Seriously. Then the plan is: Get progressives to fill Congress. The day of Republican rule is over.

Now that he has the clout, Obama should fix what the Rules and Bylaws Committee did on 5/31 — they took votes from one person and gave them, arbitrarily, to another person. It was a backroom deal, away from the public and the cameras. No matter what you think of either candidate, this was wrong, and probably illegal. You can read the details I have gotten from another writer who know the rules better than I do here.

On Monday, McCain gave a frightening, misinformed and misleading AIPAC speech. Obama and Hillary are sure to give similar pro-Israel speeches on Wednesday but they will probably lack the highly paranoid tone of McCain’s speech. Paranoia combined with a war-glorifying tendency is much worse than just plain old tough talk.

The Lieberman-Warner climate change bill is being debated this week in the Senate with a vote next week. Call your Congressman! Dumb Army scientist story here.

Iran gets a new speaker for its parliament. Supposedly, he’s a moderating force. The Ayatollah calls Bush a few choice words. There is little love lost between us and Iran at the moment, thanks to the Bush administration.

Next up, a possible report from the Media Reform Conference. Don’t expect much! When I get back there will be more to it, but I may attempt something low-quality while I am there this weekend.

Blackwater gets a new fighter jet from Brazil and gives it to its new subsidiary, EP Aviation. Along with its new armed helicopters, Blackwater seems to be building its own private Air Force, — I wonder why?

Hear a clip of Terry McAullife on The Daily Show from Tuesday night at the end. You can download this episode here or subscribe on the right.

[tags]Obama, Democratic, nominee, Democrats, Hillary, Clinton, Primary, presidential election, speeches, Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul Minnesota, Iran, Ali, Larijani, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bush[/tags]

Politics, waste and fraud are related topics in the U.S. but one of them isn’t getting enough media attention. Meanwhile, our media has a problem fairly covering Hillary Clinton, and I play opinions from AAR of how someone else believes that also. What are Hillary’s plans, and will it all be over after this weekend, and will all the votes be counted? (It looks like they will not be, which was announced after this was recorded.)

Here is information on the movie In the Valley of Elah (trailor) and Democracy Now’s Winter Soldier episode.

What does the future Bush administration have in store for us this summer? It could be an attack on Iraq, or it could be random incarceration of anyone it chooses under Directive 51.
NSPD-51 and the Potential for a Coup d’état during a National Emergency.
Also discussed: Top Iraq Contractor Skirts US Taxes Offshore
Iraq Spending has ignored the rules, according to the Pentagon itself.
Byron Dorgan and the Senate appropriations committee on waste, fraud and abuse has found that billions of American taxpayer dollars have supposedly gone to fund war and reconstruction, but are now missing. There is little accountability in Iraq and contractors are war profiteers of the most irresponsible kind.

Pictured above is President Bush at the Air Force Academy, his last speech as commander and chief to Air Force graduates, May 28, 2008. His speech declared that they could fight terrorism by sitting in a cubicle in the U.S. and pushing a button so that a drone thousands of miles away could bomb a “terrorist hideout”. I’m sure that’s exactly what the Air Force graduates were hoping did not happen to their careers. You can find the original photo and others here. The video is interesting too.

This episode also discusses what happens if Karl Rove ignores his latest subpoena, and how Congressman Wexler is still pursuing the impeachment of George Bush.

Byron Dorgan, U.S. Senator from North Dakota, from the U.S. Senate talking about waste fraud and abuse by the U.S. contractors in Iraq is played. If you want more of an in-depth interview with him, see this one by Anti-war Radio in which he discusses corruption within the al-Maliki government, the State Department corruption in Iraq, Halliburton Iraq contracts, the situation of Iraqi judge al-Radi and more.
You can download this episode here or subscribe on the right.

[tags]Memorial Day, Byron Dorgan, Waste Fraud and Abuse, government corruption, Iraq, war, spending, taxpayer fraud, Scott McClellan, Hillary, Obama, Democrats[/tags]

The main portion of this episode is a radio interview with Australian climate specialist Philip Sutton on climate change and the future. Sutton is the co-author of Climate Code Red and he tells us what we should expect in the next few years and beyond, and why it’s a cause for action, not despair.

The Senate did it again. Who voted for more war? Hillary Clinton voted NO on the $165 billion for more war and occupation. McCain didn’t even show up. Obama was there but didn’t vote. Nice showing for the two “presumptives”. I hope that’s not an indication of how hard they would “work” as president. See a list of the other senators who voted to continue the war here: Who voted to continue the war.

If you are interested in the Synthesis/Regeneration magazine I mentioned, I found the website for it here.

Oil Change International: Who does Big Oil donate to the most? Find out here.

The Obama direct mail piece about Kentucky Coal that campaigned in the state of Kentucky for him can be found here on Grist.org.

” . . . . Meanwhile, Obama may believe in clean Kentucky coal, (that doesn’t exist) but many residents of the state are more familiar with the dirty kind. According to activists on the ground, strip-mining “is turning Eastern Kentucky into a despicable latrine.” Hundreds of mountains have been leveled, leaving poverty and unemployment in their wake. The number of jobs created in Kentucky by coal has dropped by 60 percent in the last 15 years.”

Not good.

Download “The Future Part 2” here or subscribe on the right.

Thanks again to everyone who has donated and is sending me to the Media Reform Conference!

Climate Code Red: The Campaign for a sustainability emergency

“Climate policy is characterised by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points.”

Download the report CLIMATE CODE RED here.

Music: Bombs by Faithless

[tags]Philip Sutton, Climate Code Red, Clean coal, Emergency, Obama, Hillary, Election 2008, environment, climate change, global warming, Kentucky, coal[/tags]

We know a few things about our future. A new president in 2009, ending the Iraq war, and restoring our rights. And the biggest challenge of all, a new way of dealing with energy so that we can stop climate change in its tracks. Sacrifices and concessions to nature are in our future so that we won’t succumb to climate change and so that we save numerous animals from extinction. The goal is survival of everyone, not just the rich, as the Cheney-Bush administration have set as their goal.

Scott Ritter and the Jerusalem Post think that Bush will drop bombs on Iran before he leaves office. That would unleash a disaster as we have never seen before, so we need to try to stop this from happening. Then while this podcast was uploading, the Senate passed more war funding; this time $165 billion. Don’t they have any willpower at all?

Also discussed: Big Oil testifies before Congress and offer excuses for their ginormous profits. The Democrats try again on the farm bill and funding the war, should the candidates run together on one ticket, and then Hillary and I, separately, discuss sexism in this campaign.

NPR talks to James Hansen and he lays out how we need to get up to speed on this climate change problem as soon as possible.

Do you know how much fuel war is using and how much pollution these wars are causing? The information is right here in A Climate of War

http://priceofoil.org/climateofwar/

James Hansen’s document on C02 goals, click here. (PDF)

For the extensive report on climate change, Climate Code Red is here.
From the site:

“We are facing rapid warming impacts: the danger is immediate, not just in the future

*Serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected (22-23). As the USA’s most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, told 15,000 of his colleagues at a conference in December 2007, significant “climate tipping” points have already been passed (8) (note 1 below). These include large ice sheet disintegration, significant sea level rises of up to 5 metres this century (9-10) and devastating species loss (17). The Arctic will soon be free of summer sea-ice (2-4) and the Greenland ice sheet is in imminent danger”

You can download this episode here or subscribe on the right. Make sure to check out part 2 for the interview with Philip Sutton, specialist in sustainable living.

[tags]future, oil, coal, energy, clean, sexism, Congress, Democrats, Obama, Hillary, McCain, Election 2008, Climate Code Red, Philip Sutton[/tags]

Today, a discussion of some reasons republicans have to go. They cannot take over the White House in 2009, or we might as well succumb to the next asteroid. It’s over for life as we know it if Republicans continue to run the country. Hillary and Obama: this is what’s left. For me, this leaves no choice, but at the same time, a bigger choice:Â Â Can I even support a Democrat who’s not really a liberal? The answer might surprise you.
Social and economic justice issues are but one reason that Republicans have to go! Royal Dutch Shell made 26.7 Billion dollars in 2007, while the poor people of Haiti are literally eating dirt.

In order to start battling climate change, we have to get out of Iraq. NOW.
And cap and trade is probably past its prime as an idea

Juancole.com — The surge is not working. Are you kidding me?
Polls: Most Israelies want Olmert to resign

Bush misleads on Troop withdrawals

The candidates refused to fight in the debate on Thursday night, so I fight for them! Hillary voted to authorize the war, sure, but she’s not alone. Barack Obama wasn’t ALL THAT against the war, either — more that he thought it was a bad strategy. And eventually, Obama got on board with AIPAC: see How Obama learned to love Israel and AIPAC.

One million Iraqis dead in war:

“MORE than one million Iraqis have died because of the war in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to a study.

The study based its findings on survey work involving the face-to-face questioning of 2414 Iraqi adults aged 18 or above, and the last complete census in Iraq in 1997, which indicated a total of 4.05 million households. “We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been in the order of 1,033,000,” ORB said in a statement. The margin of error for the survey was 1.7 per cent, making the estimated range between 946,000 and 1.12 million fatalities.”

Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) went to Norway to study a Department of Peace because he’s smart, so I guess that makes him Islamointelligentsia.

The surge is hampering Iraq reconciliation. Bush bragged that this is great. It’s not. All these stories and more in Civilianism episode #45, which you can directly download right here.

Thanks to AJ of the 2Cents Worth podcast for his weekly Eco Moment. Next one: Your voicemails and comments.

[tags]obama, debate, hillary, media, Ellison, Norway, Department of Peace, end the war, anti-war, progressive, liberal, podcast[/tag]