Challenging the Corporate Media Blockade!

Coming Up on Pirate TV, Three Shows this Week:

The Loss of Liberty, Monday 11/17/08 8-9pm PST

Over the years I have gone out of my way to counter the almost total information blackout on US television and corporate media in general that would allow a fair assessment of the US client state relationship with Israel.  In this interest I sponsored the “Palestinian Perspective” film series on SCAN.  Unfortunately this series ran very early in the morning and not many of these films were rebroadcast during the day.  Many of the most extraordinary of these films such as the BBC documentary “The Killing Zone”, and some of the ones from the Media Education Foundation such as, “Hijacking Catastrophe” and “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land” as well as the John Pilger film: "Palestine is Still the Issue" had already been broadcast on Pirate TV over the years.  I have sent the box of films back to the Global Information Services and am happy to discover that several of them can now be viewed on their website.  Before I did that I loaded a couple more on my hard drive.  One of these is a shocking documentary “The Loss of Liberty”.

The Israeli war machine could not be possible without massive infusions of capital and hardware from US taxpayers.  Most of the money used to build the illegal settlements that encompass the ever increasing confiscation of land from what is left of historic Palestine is also funded by you and me.  However, the foreign policy agenda of Israel and the US don’t always coincide.  One instance of this was in 1967 when Israel launched the attack on it’s neighbors known as the “Six-Day War”.  So viscous were the war crimes committed in this illegal attack and possibly unsure of the total support of their chief weapon suppliers [the US Congress] if they knew the extent of the secret operations that they deliberately attacked and tried to sink a US intelligence ship –the USS Liberty.  The Liberty was actually sent to monitor Soviet activities in the area and had no Hebrew translators onboard.  I wonder how many of the bombs, torpedoes, and napalm munitions that were used on our sailors were made in the US or paid for with our tax money.

So important is the Israeli/US client state relationship to the US empire that the existence and details of this attack were kept from the US public for 36 years.  Over two thirds of the US seamen aboard this vessel where killed or wounded and the ones who survived were ordered to keep silent under threat of severe punishment.  Not until 2002 with the release of Tito Howard’s film did the crewmen finally get the chance to tell what really happened.  A top Navy attorney finally admitted in 2003 that the Johnson White House had ordered the U.S. military investigation to “conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary… He said he was prompted to come forward following the publication of the recent book “The Liberty Incident” which concluded the attack was an accident.” –source Democracy Now October 27, 2003.

The last time I had Jeff Halper on Pirate TV four years ago, it showed on Free Speech TV and brought overwhelming positive responses from all over the country, largely from people of Jewish heritage.   The courageous and increasingly powerful peace movement that exists within the Jewish community both here and in Israel is something you would never know about if you got your information from the corporate propaganda machine in the United States.  Jeff Halper is one of the most outspoken leaders of this movement within Israel.  He recently returned from his participation in the “Break the Siege” Gaza aid flotilla and subsequent arrest by Israeli authorities.  In this program, he tells the story of the flotilla action from an inside perspective.

The organizers renamed one of the boats that they purchased for the action the “Liberty” in honor if the sailors who were victims of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Unfortunately I am unable to broadcast his talk and slideshow on television for two reasons.  One is that he talked far too long to make it feasible to edit down to 58 minutes, the other is that Jeff was talking in the dark most of the time while he was showing his slide show and video cameras don’t work so good in the dark.  I was able with a little doctoring to at least bring out an image of him but it’s not anywhere near television quality.  However, what he has to say is invaluable.  I used a key segment of his talk to fill in the remaining minutes of the “Loss of Liberty” broadcast where he quotes from Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine”.  He explains how in the Neo-con economic scenario 60% becomes “excess population”.  Policy planners have contracted US and Israeli corporations to create the first experiment in the interning of massive populations in open air prisons.  This is what the “the wall” is all about.  Be looking for a wall in your future sometime soon.

Jeff Halper is an Israeli peace activist and documentary producer.  He is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University.  He has lived in Israel since 1973.  Jeff has researched and written extensively on Israeli society and is the author of the book Between Redemption and Revival: the Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, Westview, 1991 and most recently, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Pluto Press, 2008.  He has been active in the Israeli peace movement for many years.  As the Coordinator of ICAHD, he has forged a new mode of Israeli peace activity based on non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to the Israeli Occupation authorities and in close cooperation with Palestinian organizations.

Robert Fisk: The Age of the Warrior, Monday 11/17/08 12-1pm PST

We are going to try to broadcast this program again since it did not air when it was supposed to in October.  Hopefully SCAN will get it right this time.  Please continue to notify me and SCAN when the scheduled shows don’t air.  Thank you.

I have wanted to have Robert Fisk on Pirate TV for many years.  The only western journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden (3 times), he has won more awards than any other foreign correspondent in the world.  In September he finally found his way to Seattle.  In addition to being one of the most preeminent journalists of our era (currently writing for The Independent) he is a prolific author as well as a producer of documentaries for the BBC.

There are several things that set Fisk apart from your ordinary hit and run journalists, one of which is just that- he doesn’t drop in and fly out; he lives his beat, residing in Beirut for over 30 years.  Robert Fisk doesn’t need a translator, he speaks fluent Arabic.  And unlike so many others, he has the ability to put things in context.  As this talk and his many books reveal, he is an accomplished historian.  Not only is his understanding of the Middle East second to none among western correspondents, but it is clear that he is well versed in British, US, and ancient history as well.   Robert Fisk says that “what journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centers of power”.  He has demonstrated time and again that he has absolutley no compuncion against “afflicting the comfortable” –an attitude that would likely get him fired if he worked for an outfit like the New York Times.  In fact, he has a lot to say about the state of journalism (if you want to call it that) in our times.  –Just the kind of talk we like to hear on Pirate TV, since our main focus is the media.  Robert Fisk’s latest book is a compendium of pieces written since the U.S. invaded Iraq titled: The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays.

Thanks to Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library and Elliott Bay Bookstore

The War at Home   Steven T. Wax         Paul Wright and      Cathy Wilkerson:   Kafka Comes to       Silja Talvi: Who       My Life and Times  America                     Makes $ frm Mass    as a Weatherman                                     Incarceration? 1:18                                     Jules Boykoff &      Above the Law pt 1   Above the Law pt 2  Edwidge Danticat: Kristian Williams      Juanita Young, Nicholas Heyward Sr.,        Brother, I'm Dying New St. Repression    Ophelia Randall Ealy, and Ivan Morgan Chris Finan:            Amrit Singh:          Sasha Abramsky:     Matt Rothschild: Palmer Raids to        Administration of    Age of Mass             You Have No   the Patriot Act          Torture                     Imprisonment             Rights ____________________________________________________________

 

Tariq Ali:                  Kathy Kelly:             David Barsamian:   Vincent Warren:
The Duel                    Living the Work &  What We Say Goes The CCR and the
                                    Walking the Talk                 1:56                  Struggle for the
                                    of Nonviolence                                             Rule of Law 

   
Robert Fisk:              Dexter Filkins:       David Wasdell:         Nena Baker:           
The Age of the          The Forever War     Positive Feedback  The Body Toxic      
Warrior                                                           Crisis in Global                                        
                                                                         Climate Change
   
Michael Parenti:     Iraq: War Against  Jonathan Steele       David Cay Johnston:
Capitalism's               the People                 Defeat                        Free Lunch
Apocalypse

Kevin Phillips:          Silja Talvi:               Michael Klare:         Inslee&Hendricks:
Bad Money                Women Behind        New Geopolitics        Apollo’s Fire
                                     Bars                           of Energy
   

Barbara Ehrenreich:   The Easiest          George Lakoff:         Amory Lovins:

This Land is Their         Targets                 The Political Mind    Profitable

Land                                                                                                    Solutions

Steven Kazlowski:  Alternative Views:   Dahr Jamail:           Ahmed Rashid:
The Last Polar          FEMA-A Signature  Iraq and Iran            Descent into
Bear                           and Fascism               -In Context                Chaos

Eric Alterman          Jim Douglass:          Jeremy Scahill:        Mordechi Vanunu:

Why We’re               JFK and the               Blackwater                  Global Warning

Liberals                      Unthinkable                                                 

NW Winter Soldier Hearings

GI Testimony            GI Testimony 2         Solidarity Panel       Future of GI
                                                                                                           Resistance

Loretta Napoleoni:   David Sirota:            Cindy Sheehan:       Norm Finkelstein:
Rogue Economics     The Uprising             Moving Toward      The Fake
1:20                                                                  a Peace Economy    Controversy

Daoud Hari:              Raj Patel: Hidden     Maude Barlow:       Fr. Roy Bourgeois:

 

Jeffrey Toobin:        West Coast                E.J. Dionne, Jr:       Col. Ann Wright
The Nine                   Shut Down!                 Souled Out               Dissent: Voices  
1:19                                                                  1:18                            of Conscience 1:18

Aidan Delgado:        Norman Solomon    Alice Rothchild:       Michael Weinstein

The Sutras of            Made Love, Got      Broken Promises,      With God on Our

Abu Ghraib               War                           Broken Dreams 1:12  Side 1:26
 
Helen Caldicott:      Charles Hardy:        Thom Hartmann:     Wall of Shame
Nuclear  Power is     Cowboy in                 Cracking the Code
Not the Answer        Caracas                     

Carl Bernstein:       Michael Parenti:       Frances Moore      Benjamin Barber: 

A Woman in             Lies, Wars,                  Lappé: Getting a    Consumed

Charge                       & Empire  1:36             Grip 
 

Jonathan Kozol:       Dahr Jamail:           Trita Parsi:              Dr. Robert Morris:

Letters to a Young   Beyond the Green    Treacherous             The Blue Death

Teacher  1:08             Zone                          Alliance 1:17                     

FCC Media              John Ross:                 Robert Henson:       Step it Up Seattle
Consolidation          Zapatistas!                  Rough  Guide to
Hearing 11/9/07                                             Climate Change

Cynthia McKinney: John Dean:                Julian Darley:        Clean Energy Expo
Free the Jena 6!         Conservatives           Responses to 

        1:23                      Without                     Energy Descent

                                      Conscience                         1:29
 
Christine Harold:   John Perkins:         Impeachment            Cullen Myrphy:
OurSpace                   Secret Hist.              Forum                        Are We Rome?

Rev. Rich Lang:      VA protest rally:      David Donnelly:      Catherine

The Emergency       Fund the Wounded, Clean Elections        Thomasson:
Call                            Not  the War!             Update                      Eye Witness Iran

Peter Irons:               Laura Flanders:     Voices from the       Hans Blix:  Cold
God on Trial               Blue Grit                    Frontlines                War to Cold Peace